help desiding between widescreen and non-widescreen lcds?

i want to get a newer bigger screen monitor, but i am having a dificult time deciding between a normal and a widescreen monitor, can you guys help me decide? why would one buy a widescreen versus normal 4:3 lcd?

thanks,
andre.

Widescreen:

PROS:
More desktop area
Possible better gaming viewing experience
CONS:
Takes more horsepower from your video card to drive more pixels (big concern)
Typically not as fast (response time) as 4x3 19's
Some games aren't capable of displaying correct resolutions for widescreens
More expensive

I'm trying hard to decide this as well. My biggest concern is the speed of these thing (response rate.) I'm coming from a 21" CRT and even on the newest 8ms monitors, I can't play games because of the ghosting/brlurring. What sucks is no local stores have hardly any monitors that I can test out to see if they're fast enough. This sucks. I have like $800 to drop on an LCD right now but I can't decide!

Techically speaking doesn't the 4:3 have larger viewing area? Total cm2 would be larger on the 4:3....

"Takes more horsepower from your video card to drive more pixels (big concern)"

that's so so. 1600x1200 compared to 1680x1050 has more pixels i think.

"More desktop area"

that's only good for the new gadgets on vista imo.

"More expensive"
i disagree...

i think i am moving towards a 20.1" widescreen, going to depend on cash reality.

For desktop applications I actually prefer the widescreen(or a larger horizontal resolution). I'll typically have two windows in a split screen fashion where I need to read out of both readily. I'd consider a 1680x1050 widescreen a cheaper alternative than a 1600x1200 4:3 screen.

16x12 = 1920000 pixels
16x10 = 1764000 pixels

So you don't necessarily need any more horsepower if you're already playing at 16x12. Unless you go for one of those really big widescreens in which case it should be expected. I don't find the extra vertical res to be that much more helpful in games so widescreens can actually be a faster alternative than similarly sized 4:3 screens.

Your eyes are naturall a widescreen viewing - so it is more "natural" layouts for your eyes.


most games run in widescreen now anyways nand if not you can hack them or they will just center in the LCD.

I love my widescreen because...I do.

I orginally bought a 19" LCD - forgive the bandwagon sound of this but I am quite happy I didn't stick with it and went with a widescreen LCD instead. Yeah, surfing can be a touch annoying since my browser doesn't fill the screen anymore but it is totally worth it in gaming.

"Your eyes are naturall a widescreen viewing - so it is more "natural" layouts for your eyes."

that's the answer i am looking for.

but what about the height (top to botton) reality compared to 4:3 lcds, annoying?

Bottom line, it's about personal preference. You should take the time to physically sample the field of lcd's you narrow it down to.

If you don't like 8ms lcds, then that really restricts your array of options. The viewsonic VX2025 and NEC 20WMGX2 are probably your best bet.

For me, I recently received a traditional 20" Viewsonic VP2030b. With all the issues of widescreen lcds, I dediced to stay at a resolution that I am already comfortable with and wait another year for widescreens to become more mainstream.

Human vision is wide, not tall. When you are driving down the road, where are you constantly looking? Side to side, hardly up or down. While a 20" 4:3 monitor is technically bigger (in terms of screen area) with smaller dot pitch (and therefore more pixels), it won't look as "big" as a 20" 16:10 monitor.

I'd definitely go for a widescreen...everything in the display world is shifting in that direction. May as well hop on board. I used 19" Trinitrons for about 6 years prior to grabbing a 2005FPW a few months back, and I was blown away at the difference. I noticed plenty of ghosting playing CS:S at first, but now I could never tell (I've moved up to a 2405FPW as my primary monitor, but thats beyond the point). Also - keep in mind the fact that a quicker response time generally means a lower-quality panel in terms of color depth (6-bit rather than 8-bit).

So you are saying your eyes got used to the ghosting/blurring? I tried playing oblivion on my wifes 19" 8ms VA912b for 5 nights straight and almost ripped my eyeballs out I couldn't take it anymore.

live2sk8 said:

Human vision is wide, not tall. When you are driving down the road, where are you constantly looking? Side to side, hardly up or down. While a 20" 4:3 monitor is technically bigger (in terms of screen area) with smaller dot pitch (and therefore more pixels), it won't look as "big" as a 20" 16:10 monitor.

Click to expand...

A guy in this Dell thread just recieved a Dell 2007fp and wfp at the same time. He thinks the fp is bigger and better for games as well:
http://forums.us.dell.com/supportfo...essage.id=58082&view=by_date_ascending&page=2

Here is an actual scale size representation:
20,23,24 inch compare


This wide vision theory is a bit of perpetuated nonsense. You almost contradict yourself here. Note you are always looking side to side because you are limited, and you can take everything in easily in the up and down. That implies the opposite, that your vision is more central than wide.

The truth is the shape of your vision only counts for peripheral vision.To actually look at things in detail you have to move the Fovea Centralis around at anything you wish to see. And that is much easier on things that are centralized.

Try this experiment if you have a wider monitor. Open notepad full screen with some unbroken text that will now span the full width, pay actual attention to what your eyes do. Now make notepad half the screen width and put it in the center, repeat. You will find that it is much less fatiguing to read the centrally located text than shift your eyes so far side to side.

I'll definitely get a widescreen if Movies are my prime requirement, But for me the greater vertical on 4:3, is much more useful for productivity and web surfing, since documents/web pages are always taller than they are wide, it helps to get as much on the screen as possible.

Also the 4:3 has nearly the same width/pixel count in that direction anyway. It just has more vertical to play with.

So widescreen vs 4:3 in the same size (20.1) you get the widescreen by taking the 4:3 and masking off the top and bottom, not by extending the width.

As to the science behind how the eyes work, it is true that you do only have a single narrow focal point and the rest is peripheral vision. I think what makes it more 'natural feeling' is the fact that the human eye is better at scanning side to side than up and down. Think of our evolution...we would have been always scanning the horizon for prey/predators, but rarely would we have to worry about looking up (we were never a big prey for birds ) Anyway...just a theory.

It is definately more about personal preferance. As a fairly new widescreen gamer I have to say that I think widescreen is a hell of a lot better than 4:3. It feels more natural in FPS games (which are my main thing). If FPS's are your thing I especially think that a WS is the way to go. If you are more of a RTS guy though, you may find the decreased height of the screen makes your field of view too narrow. And depending on the size of your widescreen, you may find documents are too small (height wise).

Most newer games will all have WS support...plus if you're trying to get an old game to run in wide-aspect, the guys in the widescreengamingforum can tell you how to do it.

This is all coming from a guy running widescreen on an old Radeon 9800 too! Even with my old vid-card not running my games well enough I still know that there is no going back to 4:3. I'm just biding my time till I can do my next system build. It is definately personal preference though.

I tend to play RTS and RPG so I find the extra height important, is more important especially when you still have almost the same width to work with anyway.

I guess it also comes down to how often you game. I use my computer every day. But probably only game 1/week if that. Unless I am on a game binge(when I get a new RPG/RTS). I would say actually computer usage is something like 50% internet surfing, 20% productivity, 20% video (much of which is 4:3 old TV shows), and 10% gaming.

You don't really lose anything with 4:3 as it is almost the same width and horizontal pixel count, but much higher and much more vertical pixels.

If all I did was game a Widescreen would be fine. Maybe even a 19" widescreen, save money and less graphics card power needed. But for general surfing/productivity. I really want the most pixels 2MP and up.

The first LCD I tried was the 24" Dell 2405 (1920x1200). Funny thing, one time I fired up my RTS it was still in 4:3 and I didn't even see the black bars on the sides. I guess I see things centrally. Later I tried the 2007FP (1600x1200) and didn't feel like I was missing anything much at all. Certainly the 2405 was not worth double the price.

Anyway lots of factors to consider.

Snowdog said:

A guy in this Dell thread just recieved a Dell 2007fp and wfp at the same time. He thinks the fp is bigger and better for games as well:
http://forums.us.dell.com/supportfo...essage.id=58082&view=by_date_ascending&page=2

Here is an actual scale size representation:
20,23,24 inch compare


This wide vision theory is a bit of perpetuated nonsense. You almost contradict yourself here. Note you are always looking side to side because you are limited, and you can take everything in easily in the up and down. That implies the opposite, that your vision is more central than wide.

The truth is the shape of your vision only counts for peripheral vision.To actually look at things in detail you have to move the Fovea Centralis around at anything you wish to see. And that is much easier on things that are centralized.

Try this experiment if you have a wider monitor. Open notepad full screen with some unbroken text that will now span the full width, pay actual attention to what your eyes do. Now make notepad half the screen width and put it in the center, repeat. You will find that it is much less fatiguing to read the centrally located text than shift your eyes so far side to side.

I'll definitely get a widescreen if Movies are my prime requirement, But for me the greater vertical on 4:3, is much more useful for productivity and web surfing, since documents/web pages are always taller than they are wide, it helps to get as much on the screen as possible.

Also the 4:3 has nearly the same width/pixel count in that direction anyway. It just has more vertical to play with.

So widescreen vs 4:3 in the same size (20.1) you get the widescreen by taking the 4:3 and masking off the top and bottom, not by extending the width.

Click to expand...

You may as well say that they are almost the same vertically as well (a 120 pixel difference vs the 80 pixel difference horizontally). Using that logic, you get a 4:3 monitor by just taking the 16:10 and masking off both sides. So what's the difference anyway? I mean they are both "almost" the same in both dimensions...

The point of widescreen monitors is not to ever have a document open full screen. With those extra 80 horizontal pictures, it's much easier to have, say, 2 Notepad documents open side-by-side. You can concentrate on one at a time, easily reading your more "concentrated" text. Using your logic, we'd all be better off getting widescreen monitors and then rotating them 90 degrees into portrait mode, right? Then we could fit our one web browser quite easily, but have tons of that single page on screen at once! Awesome!

Here's a little test for you: rotate your monitor into portrait mode (whether its a 4:3 or 16:10 WS) and tell me it doesn't look smaller. I have my 2005 in portrait mode right now, and it's much harder to be productive and definitely appears visually smaller.

Going along with silentsammy's argument: in almost everything humans do, we look side to side. If it's just as comfortable to look up and down, why did just about every isolated civilization develop written language that is read from side to side? If human vision showed no "preference" as to one dimension or the other, you'd think there'd be at least one civilization that wrote using characters than could be read and written from top to bottom (or bottom to top) of a page rather than from side to side.

Hell, even the human neck is "designed" in such a way that makes it tons easier and less fatiguing to rotate it side to side rather than up and down.

live2sk8 said:

You may as well say that they are almost the same vertically as well (a 120 pixel difference vs the 80 pixel difference horizontally). Using that logic, you get a 4:3 monitor by just taking the 16:10 and masking off both sides. So what's the difference anyway? I mean they are both "almost" the same in both dimensions...

The point of widescreen monitors is not to ever have a document open full screen. With those extra 80 horizontal pictures, it's much easier to have, say, 2 Notepad documents open side-by-side. You can

Click to expand...

More falacies here:

1: that widescreen is better for side-side viewing:
False: http://i.pbase.com/o4/04/606404/1/59792622.facing.png
This is 4:3 and the wasted space is already on the sides, more width is just more wasted space.

2: That no civilization developted vertical writing:
False: See china/japan

3: That the difference in width is similar to difference in height.
False:
1680/1600 = 5% increase in widht for 16:10
1200/1050 = 14% increase in height for 4:3

The differrence in height is just about triple the differrence width.

The bottom line here for productivity is that the FP has more screen real estate (over 150 000 more pixels) and while the difference in width is negligible, The difference in height is much more significant.

The real arguement for Wide in this case is that you like that shape better.

I have a 19" 4:3 LCD and a Dell 24" widescreen LCD. I haven't found a huge difference in gaming on one or the other, but using a widescreen has had a huge impact on how I work. Side by side views means that documents, spreadsheets and side web browsing will never be the same for me. I agree that side to side seems like a much more natural way to look at things.

I have a Viewsonic VP912b 19" LCD (1280x1024). I just ordered a 20.1" widescreen Benq FP202W (1680x1050). We'll see how I like it. I'm concerned about the roughly 1.5 inches of height I'm going to be losing, but since I mostly play World of Warcraft, I think the extra space on the sides is going to be nice since that's where my status bars, quests lists, and group members are so it'll take up less of my central view space with being able to push them out further to the sides. Guess we'll see. If I don't like it, it's going to be my spare computer monitor where it'll be replacing my old 19" Sony Trinitron beast.

c1001 said:

I have a 19" 4:3 LCD and a Dell 24" widescreen LCD. I haven't found a huge difference in gaming on one or the other, but using a widescreen has had a huge impact on how I work. Side by side views means that documents, spreadsheets and side web browsing will never be the same for me. I agree that side to side seems like a much more natural way to look at things.

Click to expand...

Geez I would hope so. You are comparing 1.3MP 19" (5:4 BTW) to a 2.3MP 24inch. You are moving do almost double the pixels.

I am only talking about comparing the same size 4:3 and 16:10 at 20.1 inches.

Comparing 19" 5:4 to even a 20" 16:10 would be no contest in favor of the widescreen IMO. The 19" will be taller but it still has less vertical pixel and that matters more to me than physical size. Stepping up is always good.

I have been using 1600x1200 for 6+ years at home and at work and to go to 1680x1050 would be a step back for me. YMMV.

I would like a nice 23" S-IPS 1920x1200. That would be win-win for me, or better yet a 30" 2560x1600.

I have nothing agaist wide, but I won't throw away 150 000 pixels to go wide.

I'll definitely get a widescreen if Movies are my prime requirement, But for me the greater vertical on 4:3, is much more useful for productivity and web surfing, since documents/web pages are always taller than they are wide, it helps to get as much on the screen as possible.

Click to expand...

So then you rotate your monitor 90 degress and have a dam high screen

i cant wait to get a scond vx2025wm - have one horizntal and the other veritical

Snowdog said:

More falacies here:

2: That no civilization developted vertical writing:
False: See china/japan

Click to expand...

Hmmm.... If they read up and down then I wonder if they automatically spin their widescreen monitors into 'tallscreen' viewing mode. Perhaps there's a whole 'Tallscreen gaming' phenomenon over there!

Snowdog said:

More falacies here:

1: that widescreen is better for side-side viewing:
False: http://i.pbase.com/o4/04/606404/1/59792622.facing.png
This is 4:3 and the wasted space is already on the sides, more width is just more wasted space.

2: That no civilization developted vertical writing:
False: See china/japan

3: That the difference in width is similar to difference in height.
False:
1680/1600 = 5% increase in widht for 16:10
1200/1050 = 14% increase in height for 4:3

The differrence in height is just about triple the differrence width.

The bottom line here for productivity is that the FP has more screen real estate (over 150 000 more pixels) and while the difference in width is negligible, The difference in height is much more significant.

The real arguement for Wide in this case is that you like that shape better.

Click to expand...

Ok, you win. Neglecting price, a 20.1" 4:3 is probably preferable to a 20.1" WS for everything but watching movies and maybe WS gaming. I still think differences in width are more noticeable than differences in height (it's much more common to scroll down a page than side-to-side, and much more convenient to cut off a page vertically than to have to scroll to the side every time you reach the end of a line) - making that 14% and 5% difference numerically larger than they are significant - but I have no way of proving that factually.

live2sk8 said:

You may as well say that they are almost the same vertically as well (a 120 pixel difference vs the 80 pixel difference horizontally). Using that logic, you get a 4:3 monitor by just taking the 16:10 and masking off both sides. So what's the difference anyway? I mean they are both "almost" the same in both dimensions...

Click to expand...

120? How about 150. That's almost twice as big a difference vertically than the 80 pixel horizontal difference--significant for me, maybe not for others.

The point of widescreen monitors is not to ever have a document open full screen. With those extra 80 horizontal pictures, it's much easier to have, say, 2 Notepad documents open side-by-side. You can concentrate on one at a time, easily reading your more "concentrated" text. Using your logic, we'd all be better off getting widescreen monitors and then rotating them 90 degrees into portrait mode, right? Then we could fit our one web browser quite easily, but have tons of that single page on screen at once! Awesome!

Click to expand...

And why not? I'm sure there are some out there who read documents all the time who would do such a thing. If 1/2 of 1680 pixels is wide enough to read a document, then certainly 1050 pixels would be massive.

If human vision showed no "preference" as to one dimension or the other, you'd think there'd be at least one civilization that wrote using characters than could be read and written from top to bottom (or bottom to top) of a page rather than from side to side.

Click to expand...

Wow. Just wow. Snowdog already answered that one pretty definitively, but I just wanted to stick a boot in while I still could. This was just so priceless I couldn't help myself


I find it hilarious that so many are advocating widescreen over 4:3 because that's how our eyes work, as if somehow our anatomy makes one format necessarily better than the other. It's a simple matter of preference--you don't have to justify your preference by making the case that we're built to prefer widescreen. That's just a bit silly. You like widescreen because it suits you, and others (me included) like 4:3 because it suits them. And actually, I like the widescreen aspect ratio better, but with 20" diagonal monitors you get more vertical resolution on a 4:3 than a widescreen, which is better for me as a programmer. The day a reasonably priced 23" widescreen that does 1920x1200 and uses a good panel comes out, I'll get it. Notice that such a monitor has the same vertical resolution but 320 more lines horizontally compared to a 20" 4:3, and at 23" the pixel pitch almost perfectly matches the 20" 4:3 LCDs I already have.

I'm not a widescreen bigot--in fact I actually prefer that aspect ratio--but it's just funny to me to read over and over again how widescreen is better because our bodies prefer it that way.

Well theres some fact to that statement, many people do find it more comforting to use widescreen and increase horizontal viewing, its a fact that it is more natural to look horizontally than vertically.

Think of it this way, when you have to look up or down (at a more extreme angle) wouldn't you just simply tilt your head instead of focusing your eyes? So when sitting stationary at the computer, I find it more comfortable in widescreen since I don't really have to move my head in order to take advantage of the increased horizontal view. Thats not to say I have to tilt my head or anything when viewing 4:3 ratio, i'm just making a point.

If anything, widescreen creates the illusion of more pixels, just because we more readily take advantage of the larger field of view sideways. So in turn it seems more natural to many people. Now before I get blasted with "science" and "math" and all that, i'm not saying widescreen is better or anything, simply that there is a reason so many people like it better, and that I believe this is due in part to the extreme field of view we are used to with our eyes.

this whole business about eyes prefering to go left/right to read and not up/down and whatnot. I have this to say:

Japanese.

Hell, if you wanna go to extremes, you could say its better for us to look up and down. The highest and lowest we can look, uses both eyes. However, looking all the way left or all the way right, you only use on eye after a certain point because we have a thing called a nose that gets in the way.

Rrael said:

many people do find it more comforting to use widescreen and increase horizontal viewing, its a fact that it is more natural to look horizontally than vertically.

Click to expand...

Many people find it more comforting to dull all their senses with drugs. So I guess it is a fact that being drugged is more natural? Wonderful logic.

Think of it this way, when you have to look up or down (at a more extreme angle) wouldn't you just simply tilt your head instead of focusing your eyes? So when sitting stationary at the computer, I find it more comfortable in widescreen since I don't really have to move my head in order to take advantage of the increased horizontal view. Thats not to say I have to tilt my head or anything when viewing 4:3 ratio, i'm just making a point.

Click to expand...

That is looney. Your field of vision is nearly equal Horizontal and vertical. You don't tend to move your head any more when look up at an angle than you would looking horizontally at the same angle. You might have very slightly greater field of vision horizontally than vertically, but it is no where near what 4:3 already gives you.

If anything, widescreen creates the illusion of more pixels, just because we more readily take advantage of the larger field of view sideways. So in turn it seems more natural to many people. Now before I get blasted with "science" and "math" and all that,

Click to expand...

Science and math and all that. Uh huh. As oppossed to random stuff you make up. The illusion of more pixels. Brilliant.

i'm not saying widescreen is better or anything, simply that there is a reason so many people like it better,

Click to expand...

Yeah, and it's called fashion.

The wide is more natural crowd has this is all backwards to the way we actually scan information. Maybe you actually like those speedometer mounted in the middle of the dash instead of behind the steering wheel, I certianly don't. But I guess the horizontal is more natural must love them. Me I find it easier to glance down than over to the right.


Realistically speaking, we can only process a very small central area in any detail. It is no more difficult to scan up and down a monitor than left and right. Actually it is probably already more difficult to scan left-right because even a 4:3 is much wider than it is tall.

If you actually have a screen that is at least 1600 wide (I do) go here:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-06/uoc-aew060906.php

Now make your browser full screen. No see how comfortable it is to read the text. Now shink the the browser to half width and try again. I think if you are remotely capable of being honest you will agree that it is much more comfortable and less tiring to read when you shrink the width by half. How can that be if you naturally see better horizontally? The same reason we print text documents in portrait mode than landscape mode. It is more taxing to read wide and short than it is to read narrow and tall. Which completely flies in the face of more natural horizonal vision crap.

The argument always gets so jumbled up and confused because some talk as if one is necessarily better, whereas I tend to believe that each has its place, regardless of which one is more pleasing to the eye in general. Arguing about which format is "better" becomes a moving target when we disagree on the context of "better"--are we talking about in general or at the practical application/use level? If all I did was watch movies on my screen, I would get a widescreen; there's really no other choice. But since I browse, type, program, etc., I like the extra vertical resolution that a 4:3 20" LCD gives me over a 16:10 20" LCD. If they had come out with a 16:10 20" LCD that did 1920x1200 I would've gotten that over a 4:3 that only does 1600x1200. It's all about resolution for me, not aspect ratio. My aspect ratio preference for computer screens is merely a side effect of my preference for higher resolution.

So what do people who choose a 20" widescreen LCD get that's better than a 4:3 with the same diagonal? Ok, aside from the debatable anatomy argument, what else? Well, it's wider I guess. If you're in the habit of opening 2 Word docs at the same time, 1680 pixels width is better than 1600. I personally find that setup too cramped, which is why I have 2 4:3 monitors. In a way, I'm actually already an ultra-widescreen guy if you take into account my whole desktop space of 3200x1200.

I'm convinced that to a certain extent many widescreen "converts" actually like it mainly because it's new and different. If we had widescreen first and then this newfangled 4:3 format came out, they'd think 4:3 was the shiz. Hardly anybody will admit that though. It makes you look too fickle when you admit something like that, and most of us (me included) don't usually have the guts to admit when we're being silly or fickle. But that's just my speculation; obviously I can't prove that. It's just that we are a society of newer-is-better, and I don't think widescreen is any different. Just look at the Razr cellphone (now I'm about to piss off all the Razr owners out there too ). That phone has the worst buttons I've ever seen on a cellphone, which in terms of functionality makes it a terrible phone as the buttons are what you interact with the most, yet it's extremely popular. Why? Because it's sleek, sexy, and new. I'm not saying widescreen is exactly like a Razr, but you get the point.

Once again, it's all about preference IMO. Just don't try to argue that widescreen is inherently better. There are clearly situations where it is not.

Bottom line folks it is a preference, we certainly don't have more naturally horizontal vision.

And it is a preference I actually share provided you don't give me a smaller screen to do it. And the 20.1" 16:10 is a smaller screen than the 20.1" 4:3.

As illustrated before(screens to scale):
http://tvcalculator.com/?ec05dc2d34fef178f45bf762ffba04da

I will gladly take that 23" 16:10 as it is bigger than 20"4:3, but that 20" 16:10 is quite small in comparison. Same height as a 17" LCD (5:4).

Some of you are coming from smaller screens so it is a step up for you, but I have 20" trinitron so nothing smaller than 20" 4:3 will do.

My post was simply to explain why widescreen is prefered by some people even though you lose out on larger deskspace. In my opinion widescreen seems bigger, thats why I said the illusion of more pixels, I should have said simply that it seemed as if widescreen panels are larger and not that there are more pixels, I know that there aren't.

I said at the end I don't think either is better, theres no need to get so offensive about it. I'm not in the "wide is more natural" crowd, I just think that there are many explanations as to why people think that, but I've used a 4:3 monitor for a long time so i'm not biased in that regard.

We do have a larger horizontal field of vision, our eyes are side by side so its inherently true, although yes it is a very small difference, not enough to make widescreen any more suited to our vision. I just think that explains why widescreen can indeed seem more natural to people. Of course if you need all the deskspace you can get a non-widescreen panel may be the way to go, but I find it great for games, movies, and word processing.

You would be correct if using a widescreen monitor for viewing a single window. The advantage of widescreen displays is in having various windows open at the same time on the desktop, such as browser windows, IM windows, etc. With a 19" or smaller 4:3 display, the tendency is to have one full-screen window open, and other windows minmized. Widescreen gives you a better capability of having multiple windows open or cascaded.
Anyhow, that's my humble opinion.

Andrew

Snowdog said:

More falacies here:

1: that widescreen is better for side-side viewing:
False: http://i.pbase.com/o4/04/606404/1/59792622.facing.png
This is 4:3 and the wasted space is already on the sides, more width is just more wasted space....

Click to expand...

aamsel said:

You would be correct if using a widescreen monitor for viewing a single window. The advantage of widescreen displays is in having various windows open at the same time on the desktop, such as browser windows, IM windows, etc. With a 19" or smaller 4:3 display, the tendency is to have one full-screen window open, and other windows minmized. Widescreen gives you a better capability of having multiple windows open or cascaded.
Anyhow, that's my humble opinion.
Andrew

Click to expand...

Why are you comparing to 19" or smaller? There is no 17" or 19" 4:3 display,17" or 19" is 5:4. Certainly if you are choosing between the tall 5:4 19" (1.3MP) and the 20" 16:10 (1.74MP) choose the latter, but I would instead get the 20" 4:3 which is essentially as tall as the 19" and wide as the 20" 16:10 and has more pixels (1.92MP).

People seem clueless to the fact the 20" 4:3 is essentially just as wide as the 20" 16:10. Just much taller. So you can have just as much if not more open in the more usable space you have.

17,19" 5:4 1280x1024: No contest, I don't want one of these either.

20" 4:3 1600x1200: 1.94 MP - Wide and Tall. Large mount of screen pixels (what I have and my minimum point)

20" 16:10: 1680x1050: 1.74 MP - Wide and short. Less screen pixels.

23" 16:10: 1920x1200: 2.3MP - Wider and as tall as the 20" 4:3. This is the first widescreen I would like.

And again, see this tool to compare 16:10, 4:3 and 5:4 monitors with different sources.
http://tvcalculator.com/?ec05dc2d34fef178f45bf762ffba04da

I agree completely with you snowdog.

I've always find people's attraction to widescreen displays bizarre. I speculate that it is largely the result of effective marketing from hollywood + display manufacturers. At equal sizes (diagonal), a 4:3 display has ~1.15 times as much area as a 16:10. Though size ratings have never been comparable.

Having said that, I don't have anything against widescreen displays. I recently purchased a 24" 16:10 display and find it very nice to use. A big screen is going to be enjoyable, regardless of the aspect ratio.

I find it impossible to work on the full width of the display for any one application (with the exception of some IDEs). Normally I just end up using two windows side by side. Movies are nice of course, as you're wasting less screen space.

what is the gaming comparison from wide to full, and not only with field of vision, but also the m/s between the two, its my understanding that although HL2 looks beautiful in widescreen, that it has slightly more ghosting than say a 4:3( im comparing the 20 inch dell monitors)

IanSMK said:

what is the gaming comparison from wide to full, and not only with field of vision, but also the m/s between the two, its my understanding that although HL2 looks beautiful in widescreen, that it has slightly more ghosting than say a 4:3( im comparing the 20 inch dell monitors)

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The panel type is going to dictate the response time of the LCD, not the aspect ratio.


Wide vs Non-Wide is all personal preference. It's how it looks to you, and what you plan to use it for.

I'm a gamer, programmer, media watcher, and lots of other things that involve a computer. My monitor is my TV as well as my interface to my computer. For this reason, I chose widescreen. I have been using a 19 CRT for years, @ 1600x1200, and I have had zero regrets moving to 1680x1050. Losing 150 vertical pixels hasn't left me feeling cheated at all.

But again, there is no winner to which is better in this argument. Lots of computer equipiment is this way. It's the same as asking, "Which is better for games, ATI or Nvidia?" There is no clear winner; it's up to the buyer to decide what he/she is going to use the product for, and which solution will meet their needs the best.

I just purchased a Benq 20.1" widescreen display. I currently have a 19" Viewsonic LCD display and have no problems with it. I was in the market for a 2nd display (to replace an old 19" Sony Trinitron) and felt the widescreen was of more value to me.

Keep in mind, the 5:4 vs 4:3 vs 16:10 arguement has no bearing on me. I have no problem with 1280x1024, 1600x1200 or 1680x1050.

My reasons for going widescreen were:

1) Games. I play World of Warcraft a lot and the extra space on the sides can be used for icons, group member bars, quest info, and status screens. It leaves my main focus area more open to viewing the game world and not status bars. With the extra width of the widescreen it really opens up my field of view. This is probably similar to why a lot of people who game a lot choose widesreen. Your field of view to the sides is more important in fps and mmorpg style games where most of the action is happening left to right and not bottom to top.

2) Movies. When I watch movies on my computer the 16:10 is simply a better aspect ratio to have. The movies I watch fit the screen better.

3) Cost. Many 20.1" widescreen monitors are dirt cheap. Sure, they might not have height, swivel, and pivot adjustments, but I never used those anyway, execpt to play my emulators, and I sill have my 19" Viewsonic for that. I really wanted to keep this purchase at or under $300. The only 20" 1600x1200 display at Newegg under even $400 is the Samsung 204B and Samsung (amongst others) is really bad about overexaggerating their response times)

4) No Preconceived notions. I have no inherent hatred or love of any type of screen, having been around for a while. My first monitor was a Commodore 64 13" screen with less than 10" viewable space. My first VGA computer monitor was a 14" 640x480 max res screen, with less than 13" viewable. The main reason I got the 19" Viewsonic monitor I have now was because it had landscape/portrait tilt so I could play my emulated arcade games in the proper format. (a lot of old arcade games had the monitor turned 90 degrees) It had nothing to do with pixel count. Oh, and in case you would think I just bought into the widescreen hype, I've had a 37" widescreen LCD TV for a while now and I understand completely what the benefits and drawbacks of each type of aspect ratio are. I wouldn't have bought the 20.1" widescreen on hype.

The size and shape of the monitor is irrelevent in and of itself. It's whether or not it benefits you and the things you use it for.

5) Bigger isn't always better. 1920x1080 (and up), like my LCD TV displays, is too high of a resolution, at this time, for me to run my games in native resolution and still have frame rates in my target area. (50fps+) I don't see a cost/benefit of spending a fortune on video cards just to run 1920x1080 on my LCD TV. So basically my options were between a widescreen 20.1" at 1680x1050 res or a 20" at 1600x1200. I've used 1600x1200 at work and home before (I had a Viewsonic VP201s at home for a while but didn't like the 16ms refresh) and I think it's a great size.

So, I could've got a 1600x1200 monitor or 1680x1050 monitor, but reason (1), (2), and (3) influenced my decision there a lot.

I ended up with the 20.1" Benq FP202W for $300 at Costco. I figure if I don't like it or the response time isn't good enough for me I can always take it back and reassess my options.

MentatYP said:

120? How about 150. That's almost twice as big a difference vertically than the 80 pixel horizontal difference--significant for me, maybe not for others.

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Excuse me, I made a subtraction error. I'm sure you've never done that, but some of us are what we call "human."

And why not? I'm sure there are some out there who read documents all the time who would do such a thing. If 1/2 of 1680 pixels is wide enough to read a document, then certainly 1050 pixels would be massive.

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Thanks for clearing that up. I have my 2005 set up vertically, but it would be useless like this as a stand-alone monitor for any kind of multitasking. But I'm sure your speculation carries more weight than my real life experience with it.

I find it hilarious that so many are advocating widescreen over 4:3 because that's how our eyes work, as if somehow our anatomy makes one format necessarily better than the other. It's a simple matter of preference--you don't have to justify your preference by making the case that we're built to prefer widescreen. That's just a bit silly. You like widescreen because it suits you, and others (me included) like 4:3 because it suits them. And actually, I like the widescreen aspect ratio better, but with 20" diagonal monitors you get more vertical resolution on a 4:3 than a widescreen, which is better for me as a programmer. The day a reasonably priced 23" widescreen that does 1920x1200 and uses a good panel comes out, I'll get it. Notice that such a monitor has the same vertical resolution but 320 more lines horizontally compared to a 20" 4:3, and at 23" the pixel pitch almost perfectly matches the 20" 4:3 LCDs I already have.

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And I find it hilarious that, after I concede I was wrong, you pull out an older post (of mine), pretty much exactly copy someone else's argument, and what, try to rub something in all the while pretending you are somehow adding to the discussion? Good for you.

my hole reason for wide screen was because

1. i had "heard" it was a more natural viewing angle
2. loooking left to right is considerably less straining for my then up and down.


i guess #2 simply has to do with your culter and where you are from, since we learn to read left to right should be a significant impact.

it would be funny if in Japan / China they create games that ran in portrait mode mode on LCD's.


So why is it then the other thing with "widescreen" theaters pushed it so hard - showing side by side with widescreen you see MORE of the movie then 4:3 ?

Just a new way to make money?

I recently upgraded from a 17in CRT (at 1024x768 res) to a 17in LCD. The increase in screen area is very evident, but text size is quite small for me at the LCD's native resolution of 1280x1024. I need to wear my reading glasses for more comfortable viewing, unless I increase DPI setting to 120 (from default 96).
I'm now considering getting a bigger LCD instead, and was considering the 19in or 20in WS but after reading this thread, it seems that I wouldn't be getting any improvement in text size since the actual vertical screen dimension would actually be less than or just the same as my current 17in LCD. I know that there will be more pixels, but text would still look small at native resolutions of 1440x900 or 1680x1050, right? Am I correct in thinking I'm better off getting a regular 19in LCD instead? 20in (4:3) LCD is not available here.

idoc said:

I recently upgraded from a 17in CRT (at 1024x768 res) to a 17in LCD. The increase in screen area is very evident, but text size is quite small for me at the LCD's native resolution of 1280x1024. I need to wear my reading glasses for more comfortable viewing, unless I increase DPI setting to 120 (from default 96).
I'm now considering getting a bigger LCD instead, and was considering the 19in or 20in WS but after reading this thread, it seems that I wouldn't be getting any improvement in text size since the actual vertical screen dimension would actually be less than or just the same as my current 17in LCD. I know that there will be more pixels, but text would still look small at native resolutions of 1440x900 or 1680x1050, right? Am I correct in thinking I'm better off getting a regular 19in LCD instead? 20in (4:3) LCD is not available here.

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Take a picture (with camera) of your screen with your browser open on this thread and post it (if you can take a picture on your crt too for comparisons)