Where/How to evaluate an LCD

[popupsquad]

Everyone always says that the only way to evaluate an LCD is to see it for yourself. That's sage advice.

My question is, where the hell are you supposed to see an LCD in a good setting? The two stores closest to me are Staples and Circuit City and I went to both of them today.

At Staples, all the LCDs were hooked up to one hidden PC. Because it was one analog connection split among them, they were all flickering like crazy. Plus, all they were looking at was the Windows login screen, so there was no way to test game performance.

At Circuit City, there were a few LCDs watching a DVD(once again via a split analog connection, so the quality sucked on all of them), a few hooked up to computers, and a few just sitting on the shelf not hooked up to anything at all. None of the ones hooked up to computers had any games installed(and also weren't the models I went there to see), so that was a wash too.


So now what do I do? Do any other stores have a better setup(don't say Fry's, I'm in NJ)?

 

[MavericK]

I've been to both Best Buy and CompUSA here in Washington and neither have a setup to try out game performance. All they do is either sit on the desktop from a hidden PC (like you mentioned) or play some pre-recorded video.

 

[MrArmyAnt]

I am a repair tech for BestBuy, and do you know how much it would cost to have a decent system running the LCD's just to test gaming performance? I agree it would be nice, but it is still a smal niche of people. The majority of shoppers are there because there hard drive broke, meaning monitor. It just isn't cost effective. Unfortunately the only thing I can think to tell ya is to go by pecs, subtracting 10% for scewed stats, and also go by unbiased reviews.

 

[popupsquad]

I am a repair tech for BestBuy, and do you know how much it would cost to have a decent system running the LCD's just to test gaming performance? I agree it would be nice, but it is still a smal niche of people. The majority of shoppers are there because there hard drive broke, meaning monitor. It just isn't cost effective. Unfortunately the only thing I can think to tell ya is to go by pecs, subtracting 10% for scewed stats, and also go by unbiased reviews.

Well the main reason I wanted to test was for ghosting, which is very user-dependent. Some people say they see no ghosting at 25ms, others claim they can still see it at 12ms.

Since I've never used an LCD, I don't know where I fit in. If my eyes are such that I don't notice ghosting at 25ms, I could save a lot of money by buying one of those.

That said, do you know if Best Buy(or anywhere else you know of) charges a restocking fee on LCDs? If so, I'll buy a 25ms one, use it for a few days, then decide whether I want to return it and get something with a lower response time.

 

[BillR]

Well the main reason I wanted to test was for ghosting, which is very user-dependent. Some people say they see no ghosting at 25ms, others claim they can still see it at 12ms.

Since I've never used an LCD, I don't know where I fit in. If my eyes are such that I don't notice ghosting at 25ms, I could save a lot of money by buying one of those.

That said, do you know if Best Buy(or anywhere else you know of) charges a restocking fee on LCDs? If so, I'll buy a 25ms one, use it for a few days, then decide whether I want to return it and get something with a lower response time.

On my first LCD I went to the CC and BB store managers and asked rather then use their return policy and stick them possibly a bunch of open box stuff could I purchase the floor models of the ones I was interested in for evaluation and then return that one for a new one. At that time both managers agreed and I bought my Envision 9110.

I tried that this year and both manager were new and didn’t like that idea. I ended up dragging a PC of my own into the store and tested that way. Not that they were exactly happy about it but they really couldn’t say much. This time I chose the Samsung 213T.

CC didn’t have one for sale BB did but the manager had been such a dick I made my purchase from Buy.com.

I work in a Brick and Mortar store and hate to do that, but the BB manager got what he deserved. He had one unit that was open boxed and tried to tell me it was not even though all the packing was missing.

On the other hand I was in Ohio the other week and stopped by Micro Center where they actually had a game machine set up (Doom 3 no less). They had no problem with my changing monitors to see what I liked.

I still like my 213T

 

[MavericK]

Yeah, it doesn't seem like it would be that difficult to have ONE machine capable of even simple gaming like CS or CoD or something, and have some kind of splitter box to different monitors. The way they have them set up normally you can't tell jack about the quality or ghosting because it's all just crappy quality videos.

 

[flippantremark]

I think the best option is to actually lug your PC down to the store and hook it up to the demo display.

Easy for me to say.
I've got a Shuttle

 

[agentzero9]

On my first LCD I went to the CC and BB store managers and asked rather then use their return policy and stick them possibly a bunch of open box stuff could I purchase the floor models of the ones I was interested in for evaluation and then return that one for a new one. At that time both managers agreed and I bought my Envision 9110.

I tried that this year and both manager were new and didn’t like that idea. I ended up dragging a PC of my own into the store and tested that way.

+1 BillR

So now what do I do? Do any other stores have a better setup(don't say Fry's, I'm in NJ)?

Your best option is probably to buy from a store that does not charge a restocking fee on monitors.

And if you buy online, make sure you at least buy from someone without a restocking fee, and if you can manage... buy from somewhere that will pay return shipping (like DELL). And BillRs method would work quite well, especially if you have a SFF PC.