Are TN panels really as bad as everyone says?

I'm in the market for a 20-24" monitor that doesn't break the bank. It will be mostly used for gaming, coding, and web design.

On this forum, many of you make it seem like TN panels are unbearable for any type of design work. The main points were this:

- Poor viewing angles
- Moving your head slightly causes the colors to change/distort
- Poor color accuracy

So, I was dead set on avoiding TN. But, today I decided to check out these monitors at my local best buy, and I don't really see what all the fuss is about. The colors did NOT distort if I moved my head slightly and I even tried viewing these monitors at extreme angles and saw nothing wrong. Am I completely missing something or are have TN panels improved recently?

Also...what monitor would you recommend? I don't really want to shell out $400 for a Dell 2007WPF if I can avoid it, but the monitor needs to be suitable for web design.

If you were looking panels from "extreme angles" and didn't see anything wrong, it wasn't a TN panel, or you have eyesight problems. TN panels severely "yellow" the image when viewed from right or left, and from below the colors darken starting at the top and eventually invert completely. This is an aspect to the technology that cannot be avoided or significantly improved upon more than it already has.

I am using one of the better TN panels and there are definite problems when I am doing Photoshop work. Certain color gradients have banding (though this is rare), many greys seem decidedly blue, and so forth. Remember that a TN panel can only natively display about 262,000 colors (rather than 16.7 million) and uses dithering or FRC (frame rate control, basically makes a pixel alternate between two colors really fast to emulate another color.) to "fake" the other colors.

Unfortunately in your price range everything but a couple of 20" are TN panels. For simple web design you'll probably be okay though. Photo work is where it shows up most, its not particular good at recreating a lot of the tones and colors you see in photographs.

Unless you're worried about professional color accuracy, don't listen to them. For general web design etc, theres nothing wrong with TN. For that matter I read a huge range of digital comics on my 22inch TN and think they are fantastic looking.

I'm at a loss as to why people worry about how their monitor looks from some extreme viewing angle. I personally tend to sit in front of my monitor and would think this is rather natural..

I agree about the viewing angles not being a huge issue, but even for non-professionals, I'd disagree that color isn't a big issue. Better color means better looking games and movies, more true to what the designer/director intended and more natural looking. And definitely color accuracy matters for web designers (though make sure not to get a wide-gamut display for that!), though perhaps not as much as some people make it out to be.

It probably depends somewhat on the individual monitors in question (perhaps the much-lauded BenQ G2400W is a better TN, for instance), but in my case I can say that the P-MVA LG L246WP looks a hundred times better than the TN Samsung 205BW, both right in front of me right now and both from around the same era (about a year old), and both (non-professionally, by eye) calibrated the best that I can. The MVA has much better contrast ratio, better blacks, and the colors look much more natural. With the Samsung, everything looks either too saturated, too washed out, or too tilted towards one color depending on the settings. Tweaking it forever can't get everything right. With the LG, everything was pretty close to perfect out of the (open) box, and lowering the red by a few percentage points made it show much truer whites than I'd ever seen out of the Samsung. Don't get me wrong; the Samsung TN served me well and is a decent monitor, but even with its faults (e.g.: gamma shift), the LG MVA is leagues ahead.

Ideally, I want to spent around $250 give or take. Many 20"-22" monitors fall in this range.

Which models, specifically, would you recommend for my purposes? Are any of them non-TN?

Also, this is for use with my macbook pro if that matters.

22" Acer AL2216Wbd (1680 x 1050) 16:10 aspect ratio
Panel: TN

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16824009094

I did some testing on a 22" monitor (TN panel) at the store I was considering buying. When I put up a gray test screen, the monitor made it look like it was a gradient instead of a solid color. The full ugliness of TN became apparent to me right there.

when i look at a tn, i can clearly see that both of my eyes often aren't seeing the same image. i can also see that black on the top of the screen is different from black on the bottom. these things annoy me significantly; the difference is not JUST apparent at extreme angles.

Originally Posted by NKDietrich

If you were looking panels from "extreme angles" and didn't see anything wrong, it wasn't a TN panel, or you have eyesight problems. TN panels severely "yellow" the image when viewed from right or left, and from below the colors darken starting at the top and eventually invert completely.

Well given that 99% of monitors that are on display are TN, chances are he did see TN.

I have a TN in front of me. It does not yellow from the sides.

TNs merely have a "tell" in that the darken when looking at the monitor from below, otherwise like from the side, I find them better than *VA screens because they don't cause as much gamma shift, or do it in a more natural manner.

Viewing angles:

Vertical: IPS>VA>TN.
Horizontal: IPS>TN>VA.

Color is fine for anything but pro work IMO. My TN has better looking color than any CRT that I have owned, including the Phillips 202P4 21" trinitron sitting next to it.

Buying monitors is subjective. You need to see them for yourself. Do you let other people tell you what flavor of ice cream you like? No one can know which set of tradeoff will work for you.

For me TN has a good set of compromises and I find them overall better than PVA/MVA panels. If you like TN go ahead and get one.

Originally Posted by Snowdog

Buying monitors is subjective. You need to see them for yourself. Do you let other people tell you what flavor of ice cream you like? No one can know which set of tradeoff will work for you..

In the end, that is pretty much what it comes down to. Ideally you (the OP) would buy from a place that has easy, no-hassle, and no (or low) restocking-fee returns and try for yourself. If you like it (whichever monitor the "it" is), great, keep it! If not, return it and try again.

Flat images will show uneven illumination and a shift in luminance from top to bottom, even when viewed from head on. An image with a smooth gradient (a sunset or dusky sky, for example) will make dithering apparent. Instead of a smooth transition there will be blocked up patches of color which are there to compensate for the limited color palette that the monitor can display. If you can get past these aspects of the display then by all means pick one up.

Originally Posted by Snowdog

Buying monitors is subjective. You need to see them for yourself.

Exactly. LCDs are all about tradeoff and compromise unless you are talking about the high end $1000+ displays. To see which set of compromises you are happy with you need to give them a test drive and run them through their paces. View some webpages, some photos, play a game if you can, and then decide what you like.

I JUST got a BenQ G2400W, one of the "better" TN panels.

I honestly thought that the TN complaints were just due to forum users being a little to...obsessive about these things(sorry guys).

Nope. The viewing angles are driving me absolutely crazy! My screen isn't uniform, it's impossible to move my head to a position where it is uniform. It's driving me nuts. And I made the idiot mistake of ordering from newegg where they have a horrid return policy. Honestly, what was I thinking?!

TN panels are good...
but the worst thing about them is their very bad viewing angles !

incase u are a movie watchin buff and love to lie on ur bed or sofa... leave the idea of gettin a TN panel.

Originally Posted by theactioncombo

I'm in the market for a 20-24" monitor that doesn't break the bank. It will be mostly used for gaming, coding, and web design.

On this forum, many of you make it seem like TN panels are unbearable for any type of design work. The main points were this:

- Poor viewing angles
- Moving your head slightly causes the colors to change/distort
- Poor color accuracy

.

Because I was concerned about SDTV/DVD/HDTV PQ on my LCD, I bought an 8bit panel, however, I also have a friend who has a 226bw, and it was okay by and large{but not as good as mine}, but both Samsung and LG have newer high contrast ratio monitors with 8000-10 000:1CR, I'd look at one of those.

As for vertical contrast shift, there's none on my 8 bit when I'm sitting at my PC, but there was a tiny amount on the 226bw, but it was insignificant, and my understanding is that the viewing angles of the latest TN's have improved.

I think most people would be happy with a good quality 22-24TN, but I also think once you've owned a 8bit, you can't and won't want to go back.

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1287726

Here's my review of the Samsung 226bw.

In my case it was different. I have a Gateway 24" S-PVA monitor 8 bit. I moved up in size to this Hanns-G 28" TN. This Hanns displayed sharper text and has less backlight bleeding than my Gateway 24" On top of that, the Gateway has an annoying buzzing sound. My first 22" Westinghouse LCD did have backlight bleed all over and color was terrible, it was washed out compared to my Gateway 24" S-PVA panel.

Originally Posted by HardwareGuru

In my case it was different. I have a Gateway 24" S-PVA monitor 8 bit. I moved up in size to this Hanns-G 28" TN. This Hanns displayed sharper text and has less backlight bleeding than my Gateway 24" On top of that, the Gateway has an annoying buzzing sound. My first 22" Westinghouse LCD did have backlight bleed all over and color was terrible, it was washed out compared to my Gateway 24" S-PVA panel.

Yep....I do think that the latest TN's are better than the 2405Dell's etc, but the latest 8 bit panels are still numero uno.

Yes and no,

I have a BenQ G2400W sitting right next to a BenQ FP241VW and to be honest, the contrast shift from top to bottom is very slight compared to the contrast shift left and right on the FP241VW's MVA screen. Whereas looking at HF on the FP241VW shows a "3d silvery" gray which is darkest in middle, the TN screen only shows a very slight darkening at the top.

Of course I have found that all TN screens look best when viewed from a slight "up" angle where my eyes line up with the top of the screen.

My belief is that widescreen popularity is the greatest thing to happen to TN panel manufacturers because screens just aren't as "tall" as they used to be. No way I could recommend going any more than 24" on a TN panel, but that's personal taste.

So while I don't recommend getting a TN panel for color sensitive work, for the occasional photoshop user to do touch ups, or someone who is mostly doing office work or playing games, TNs are still tough to beat for value.

But I always suggest someone view them before buying them, as some are more sensitive to viewing angle changes than others.

Regards,

10e

BenQ G2400W piece of junk.. LOVE IT
also dell, acer and a hyundai
Dell is the only one NOT TN and it sucks for games.

the BenQ is great in games and supposed to have low input lag.

IF I was watching movies off center I would not get a TN
BUT who the really watches movies on a 24" monitor... IF that is all you do then get something else.
ps mine has hdmi input....do I replace my tv with it...no
but it would work for me if i had to I guess.