My 21" Sun Trinitron CRT was starting to show its age. Text near the edge of the screen was getting blurry, and I had faint blue and red lines running diagonally along the screen for some reason. So I picked up the hanns.g for $630 shipped from costco.com! It is big... but not overly huge. Immersing I would say. I wanted something a bit bigger than 24" because I wanted to play my Xbox and use my TV tuner card on it as well. Included is a DVI to HDMI adapter to hook up to a computer.
After plugging everything in and turning it on, the first thing I noticed was that something was very wrong about my backlighting. The sides of the screen were lighter than the middle, the bottom being the brightest by far. I'm hoping that I just got unlucky and got a screen that isn’t the norm. However, this is only noticeable on a black or near-black background.
Despite the backlighting, the screen is bright and clear with no dead pixels. Colors look good as well and I couldn’t really notice much color banding either. I can barely make out banding in some video game textures if I stand still and look closely. Blacks look good too; I can make out all the squares in the dark level test from http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/ including the top 5, though they are somewhat tough to see.
Here is an exaggerated pic of the backlighting; the camera takes in a lot more light than is actually seen. Not sure why the light is red and yellow in the pics, it's just white to the naked eye.
Of course, it is a TN panel so viewing angles aren't going to be spectacular. The extreme left and right of the screen is slightly discolored, and only really noticeable on a light, plain background. Doesn’t bother me, but if that annoys you I would either steer clear of this monitor or look at one in person first. The response time is great. I haven't noticed any ghosting at all and this is my first LCD I've ever purchased.
Direct viewing
From below
From above
To the side
I also remember hearing someone talk about the input lag for either this hanns.g or the viewsonic version, but I couldn’t notice any lag at all (and I am picky about that). So I setup a test hooking up both the LCD and my old CRT to my geforce 7950gx2. I set the card to clone the screen to both monitors, started a timer, and busted out my camera. The results were pretty impressive in my opinion... The hanns.g had an average of 9ms of input lag, with the low being 0ms difference and the high being 16. Out of curiosity I changed the refresh rate of the CRT from 60hz to 100hz and that changed the average difference to 7ms... low of 0ms, high of 16ms. From what I've read, 16ms is about 1 frame, so 9ms and 7ms average are pretty good numbers and nothing to worry about.
The CRT looks pretty bad here because I think it is using some weird contrast settings or something
For some reason my monitor doesn’t like to turn on when it’s cold. When I press the power button for the first time (or when it comes out of suspend) the screen will just flicker white for a split second and then stay dark. I have to turn it off and then turn it on again to get the picture to come on. Another thing that annoys me is that the right side of the monitor is slightly lower than the left... the stand isn’t perfectly level. It is a nice stand though, despite a lack of height adjustment. It is sturdy and the monitor doesn’t shake at all. I think I am going to return this to Costco and get another of the same model because I like the screen, but I hope I just got a bum monitor. I'm not a fan of the backlighting at all. To be continued...
Good:
-28"
-Cheap!
-low input lag
-Bright screen
-No noticeable ghosting
-no dead pixels
-HDMI w/ HDCP (+ HDMI switch & Xbox 360 = sechs)
-stand is sturdy
-Thin, evenly spaced, shiny black bezel
Bad:
-Shiny bezel attracts dust
-Stand cannot adjust height and sags slightly on the right side
-viewing angles
-color banding is slightly noticeable in some cases
-Horrible backlighting on my screen
-Monitor doesn’t come on if it's cold, requires power button to be pressed again
Raw data shown in milliseconds
60hz
crt-lcd
1.203-187=16
2.890-875=15
3.390-375=15
4.796-781=15
5.953-953=0
6.343-328=15
7.140-140=0
8.859-843=16
9.093-093=0
10.578-562=16
11.234-234=0
12.265-250=15
13.953-953=0
14.312-296=16
15.906-906=0
16.343-328=15
17.384-384=0
Low: 0
Avg: 9
High: 16
100hz
crt-lcd
1.875-875=0
2.828-828=0
3.890-875=15
4.671-656=15
5.843-828=15
6.953-937=16
7.937-921=16
8.390-390=0
9.496-496=0
10.140-125=16
11.703-687=16
12.093-093=0
13.071-071=0
14.750-750=0
15.250-250=0
Low: 0
Avg: 7
High: 16
After plugging everything in and turning it on, the first thing I noticed was that something was very wrong about my backlighting. The sides of the screen were lighter than the middle, the bottom being the brightest by far. I'm hoping that I just got unlucky and got a screen that isn’t the norm. However, this is only noticeable on a black or near-black background.
Despite the backlighting, the screen is bright and clear with no dead pixels. Colors look good as well and I couldn’t really notice much color banding either. I can barely make out banding in some video game textures if I stand still and look closely. Blacks look good too; I can make out all the squares in the dark level test from http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/ including the top 5, though they are somewhat tough to see.
Here is an exaggerated pic of the backlighting; the camera takes in a lot more light than is actually seen. Not sure why the light is red and yellow in the pics, it's just white to the naked eye.
Of course, it is a TN panel so viewing angles aren't going to be spectacular. The extreme left and right of the screen is slightly discolored, and only really noticeable on a light, plain background. Doesn’t bother me, but if that annoys you I would either steer clear of this monitor or look at one in person first. The response time is great. I haven't noticed any ghosting at all and this is my first LCD I've ever purchased.
Direct viewing
From below
From above
To the side
I also remember hearing someone talk about the input lag for either this hanns.g or the viewsonic version, but I couldn’t notice any lag at all (and I am picky about that). So I setup a test hooking up both the LCD and my old CRT to my geforce 7950gx2. I set the card to clone the screen to both monitors, started a timer, and busted out my camera. The results were pretty impressive in my opinion... The hanns.g had an average of 9ms of input lag, with the low being 0ms difference and the high being 16. Out of curiosity I changed the refresh rate of the CRT from 60hz to 100hz and that changed the average difference to 7ms... low of 0ms, high of 16ms. From what I've read, 16ms is about 1 frame, so 9ms and 7ms average are pretty good numbers and nothing to worry about.
The CRT looks pretty bad here because I think it is using some weird contrast settings or something
For some reason my monitor doesn’t like to turn on when it’s cold. When I press the power button for the first time (or when it comes out of suspend) the screen will just flicker white for a split second and then stay dark. I have to turn it off and then turn it on again to get the picture to come on. Another thing that annoys me is that the right side of the monitor is slightly lower than the left... the stand isn’t perfectly level. It is a nice stand though, despite a lack of height adjustment. It is sturdy and the monitor doesn’t shake at all. I think I am going to return this to Costco and get another of the same model because I like the screen, but I hope I just got a bum monitor. I'm not a fan of the backlighting at all. To be continued...
Good:
-28"
-Cheap!
-low input lag
-Bright screen
-No noticeable ghosting
-no dead pixels
-HDMI w/ HDCP (+ HDMI switch & Xbox 360 = sechs)
-stand is sturdy
-Thin, evenly spaced, shiny black bezel
Bad:
-Shiny bezel attracts dust
-Stand cannot adjust height and sags slightly on the right side
-viewing angles
-color banding is slightly noticeable in some cases
-Horrible backlighting on my screen
-Monitor doesn’t come on if it's cold, requires power button to be pressed again
Raw data shown in milliseconds
60hz
crt-lcd
1.203-187=16
2.890-875=15
3.390-375=15
4.796-781=15
5.953-953=0
6.343-328=15
7.140-140=0
8.859-843=16
9.093-093=0
10.578-562=16
11.234-234=0
12.265-250=15
13.953-953=0
14.312-296=16
15.906-906=0
16.343-328=15
17.384-384=0
Low: 0
Avg: 9
High: 16
100hz
crt-lcd
1.875-875=0
2.828-828=0
3.890-875=15
4.671-656=15
5.843-828=15
6.953-937=16
7.937-921=16
8.390-390=0
9.496-496=0
10.140-125=16
11.703-687=16
12.093-093=0
13.071-071=0
14.750-750=0
15.250-250=0
Low: 0
Avg: 7
High: 16