Two 19" LCD monitors or one 30" LCD monitor?

I

isai95

Limp Gawd
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Nov 9, 2005
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I'm working with PDFs doing imaging, photos, tracking system apps, email orders, supply inventories, data base, etc. Also, I listen to music in the background with WinAmp; sometimes I watch DVD movies and keep track of stocks, news, etc. What display setup would accommodate my needs/wants? I like the 1280 x 1024 native resolution of the 19 inchers vs. the big 2560 x 1600 of the 30" LCD. At this resolution, text looks really small.
Besides for photo editing I could double the 1280 x 1024 combining the 19 inchers, if I would have the need to go that high. I still could get the 2560 x 1600.

Notice: I don't play games.
Please give me your ideas. Thank you.
Two 19" 932B about $460.00, less than $500.00
One 30" 3007WFP-HC about $1,500.00
 
Wow, all of that on 1280x1024? I write a lot and 2304x1440 seems way too little space for me. Go with the 30".. as long as the text is nice and clear it should be okay. It's better than 2304x1440 on a CRT, it's not the clearest.

Personally if I did as much as you did with my computer... I would probably go with two 30" monitors so I could see it all at once! :D
 
Wow, all of that on 1280x1024? I write a lot and 2304x1440 seems way too little space for me. Go with the 30".. as long as the text is nice and clear it should be okay. It's better than 2304x1440 on a CRT, it's not the clearest.
I got you, but text for me is a big problem, I read a lot and text needs to be clear and has to be to of a decent size, I know I can make it bigger, but some apps that I use don't allow it. And I want to be consistent with the text size for all apps. I get headaches if text is not a certain size or if it is not in the native resolucion of the LCD monitor.
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Personally if I did as much as you did with my computer... I would probably go with two 30" monitors so I could see it all at once!
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Yes, I know, but I don't have the space to use two 30 inchers. Two 19 inchers will fit at least the two apps that I use the most. I'm tired of minimizing or clicking in the task bar or alt tabing. I do that every 30 secs. That's tiring for an 8 hrs shift.

Besides, that would be over $3,000.00 and my partner is not that merciful or generous with the money. He watches every penny. I was bugeting around $1,000.00
 
Well my budget is around $1000 also.. I am going to be getting the Planar PX2611W 26" S-IPS monitor, 1920x1200.. it will be my first LCD. And the text should be nice, clear and readable.
 
Why not look at either 2x 20" wide screens, or 2x 24" widescreens. The 20" keeps price low, while getting pretty good resolution (1680x1050), or if you want to spend more (but still less than a single 30"), two 2407-HC's would run a bit under $1400, and give you really good resolution, and the benefits of dual monitors (being able to divide your different tasks onto different screens is very helpful).
 
Why not look at either 2x 20" wide screens, or 2x 24" widescreens. The 20" keeps price low, while getting pretty good resolution (1680x1050), or if you want to spend more (but still less than a single 30"), two 2407-HC's would run a bit under $1400, and give you really good resolution, and the benefits of dual monitors (being able to divide your different tasks onto different screens is very helpful).
Today 12:51 PM
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Does the 20" lcd monitor 1680 x 1050 font/text size look/is the same size of the 19" lcd monitor at 1280 x 1024? I like the size and crisp text readable of the 1280 x 1024 19" LCD monitors.
 
I'd say that it's roughly equivalent. I haven't spent a lot of time with 20" monitors, so maybe others can help you out there.
 
If you are willing to go with a TN panel the 22 inchers might also be an option, but I don't think the samsung 19 inch TN monitor fits your needs for imaging and photos..

how about combining a 24/26 inch monitor with a 19 inch one?

With your kind of work I'd personally go for a set of two different monitors, one that fits the imaging needs (more expensive), and a 2nd one to accommodate the extra spreadsheet when needed.
cheap TN 22'' + va/ips 19''? don't forget that you're not limited to two equal monitors.

As you can see at RaynQuist's link 20'' ws wouldn't be to great if you got a problem with small font readability.
 
I vote for 2 20" monitors with 1280 resolution. cheap, can find decent ones, give you immense coverage, doesnt require much to run them.
 
If you like the font size on the 19" than a 22" is something you should look at. Should just be as clear but at a higher resolution.

You can get this Acer 22" widescreen for $180 after rebate and coupon.

$270 - $50 MIR = $220 - $40coupon = $180 before tax.

I recommand going in person to view the different sizes and monitors out.

You can also get a 19" Acer from Bestbuy for $130
 
that's a really nice deal.

jeez. i know it's a TN Panel, but tn isnt that terrible for certain uses. That's a large amount of space for such a small price and being non online makes it 2x as good.

makes me hate the h-ips im getting this week :(
 
If you don't play games, the easy answer is one 30''.
Sit back, relax, and watch a really nice movie on a 30'' LCD monitor. Hook your 360 to it...whatever. IMO, a 30'' would be better in you situation.
 
F1a^_^ said:
If you don't play games, the easy answer is one 30''.
Sit back, relax, and watch a really nice movie on a 30'' LCD monitor. Hook your 360 to it...whatever. IMO, a 30'' would be better in you situation.
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You can't hook up an X360 to a 30".

30" is sexy, but I'd take 2x 20" (1600x1200) for work.
 
Isai95, unfortunately much of the advice received in this thread is inaccurate. Two 20” widescreen monitors would be a poor choice for you, as would two 24” monitors or one 30” monitor.

I am not the most knowledgeable technical person on this board, but I can assure you I have a keen interest in comfort, ergonomics and usability of the technology at my desk as I spend most of my waking hours using it.

Most of your decision comes down one simple statistic that you will not see published in any LCD manual, PPI, not to be confused with DPI. This stands for pixels per inch. Based on your comfort level using a 19” monitor at 1280 x 1024 you prefer PPI to be in the high 80’s. Any combination of the above monitors would have PPI’s far higher than that and cause problems reading text. I am amazed at how little attention is paid to this. I see people using 17” monitors with 1280x 1024 resolution who are hunched over trying to get as close as possible to the monitor in an attempt to increase their reading comfort level.

Some users, especially those that work with photos all day, prefer a very high PPI, but I do not. I think staring at a screen with 115 PPI for text work from any distance further than 8” will cause problems for peoples eyes over the years.

This is one of the most use charts I have ever seen:

http://users.tkk.fi/~tgustafs/screensize.html

It states: “The actual size of text and images on the screen is measured by Pixels Per Inch (PPI). It simply indicates how many pixels there are per inch. The smaller PPI, the larger texts and images are. PPI's of 96 (±10) are used in many screens, but some graphics designers and programmers work with screens that have PPI values of 117 and more, which allows them to have more workspace.”

The other thing to consider is how much area your eyes can take in without straining by moving your eyes up and down or too far side to side constantly. You don’t want to feel like you are in the front row of a movie theater when you are trying to work. So the physical dimensions of the viewable area on the screen are very important. You will notice from the chart I provided that your 19” monitor is approximately 12” tall and 15” wide (5:4), so this is what you are most comfortable viewing. If you get a monitor that is 22” tall, this could become a problem. I personally use two 19” screens at work and would not consider using anything else. I use 4 different applications all day long and always need at least two up at any given time. I prefer my PPI at about 85, which means I run my 1280 x 1024 19” screen at 110% of original size or 106 dpi in the advanced settings in the display area. If someone made 20” screens at 1280 x 1024, I might consider those without any adjustment, but no one does. They all jump to 1600 x 1200. Which raises the PPI to 100. I am 36 years old and have 20/15 vision (laser corrected) and plan on keeping it that way. I am going to purchase one 26 “or 27” panel for my home, but will be using it for some work, but also movies, games, photo editing and other less critical work. One 26” at 1920 x 1200 will look much nicer for many of the applications I use.

What this mostly comes down to is the functional, physical manifestation of all the statistics. Therefore, my advice:

Go with two 22” widescreen at 1650 x 1050. Based on its viewable area, this will give you a PPI as close to your current 19” monitor. If your really want one bigger monitor then go with the largest (or nearly) monitor you can get before the resolution bumps up again. This means 26” – 27” at 1920 x 1200. Any larger than 28”, is, in my opinion, too large for desktop viewing (front row of movie theater effect). Addtionally, the resolution jumps up again on the 30” monitors from Dell, Samsung, Apple etc…Just be aware that with the single monitor solution, you may find yourself resizing windows more often than you’d like because you cannot fit two 1280 images side by side with only 1920 horizontal pixels. Most websites and other material are optimized for 1024 x 768 resolutions, though, so you are coming close with 1920 pixels. There are a few programs that will help with the resizing issue. Gridmove is a program that will snap windows from programs you use to set places on your screen each time they are opened and thereby mimicking a dual monitor set-up. This should work reasonably well on a 26” 1920 x 1200 monitor like the Planar. It will still not be as useful as two monitors, however.

What you do not want to do is get 20”, 24” or 30” widescreen monitors as those PPI’s will be too small.

I hope that this will help.

Regards,
 
At home I use a 22" and a 19" together. The ppi is very close. Two 22's would give you the size and resolution you seem to be after. The only downside is that they would be TN panels. I find the newer TN's are better than the older ones but there are still viewing angle problems and banding. Also two 22" monitors side by side will take up a lot of desk space.
 
I run a boutique systems consulting firm and for what it is worth I would generally agree with impactdax regarding PPI. PPI is a very important personal preference. However, I don’t generally agree about the movie theater comments. We clearly see "more pixels"= "more productivity".

Over the last few years, we moved from a 21 inch CRT as standard, to dual 20 inch LCDs, to mostly multiple 30 inch LCDs. Time to produce a deliverable has improved with each upgrade and everyone’s upgrade paid for itself easily within two weeks of billable. However there are funky corporate custom systems and some IDE’s that are unreadable on a 30 inch because they cannot be easily resized.

If that is the case for isa95 then you will be stuck with a monitor PPI that best displays the corporate apps. Most modern COTS tools and environments can be easily resized if the font seems too small so the PPI is less critical.

But there is a caveat. Most workstation set-ups are terrible on your neck, shoulders and arms. A really large screen will just make this more obvious than somewhat smaller screen set-ups.

I’m in my fifties and wear contacts. My personal set up is four monitors at about 30 inches from my face. I have severe pinched nerve problems and use a “Perfect Chair” with medical wall and ceiling mounts (no conventional desk).

There are three 30 inch Monitors in a left-center-right with the fourth 27 inch for those client programs with unreadable fonts above the center.

Since I switched to this set-up my eyestrain headaches have gone away and my neck problems diminished. The right chair and right monitor mount is critical for long days!

Get that right to avoid disability. Then get a 30 inch monitor if you can afford it (unless you must use funky sized apps).
 
Keeping in mind what the OP actually said he wanted, I recommend 2x24".

I'm sorry impactdax but starting your advice with "I'm not the most knowledgeable technical person on this board" doesn't make for a good argument, I'm not calling you out or calling you stupid, so don't take MY opinion the wrong way.

First off, if you deal with a lot of PDF, you will want a larger resolution monitor than 1680x1050 can provide, not because it sounds good.. if the PDFs you deal with are high resolution scans, it'd be advantageous to have the ability to see them full screen. Secondly, if you do database work(which I have done a lot of myself) having 1050 pixels of vertical real estate is very limiting sometimes. I've done a lot of coding and database work on a 2007WFP (1680x1050) and I can tell you the entire time I sit there and think to myself, man it would be more productive if I had some more vertical real estate. You assume that he has poor vision, and you also assume how far he will be sitting from his monitors. You should not assume.

The PPI differential from a 22" to a 24" isn't much. Unless of course you sit 6 feet from it, which no one using a monitor for work would be doing. He is going to be doing a lot of imaging work, resolution with digital imaging.. aha. I hope I don't even have to explain that graphics/coding is the majority of the reason why monitors of the larger sizes started appearing(of course now that the consumer side sees them and the prices come down, its a viable option for some of us.)

I've used 17" 19" 20.1 24" LCDs, and multiple CRTs from 15-21".. I can tell you from experience, if you sit within working distance, you will not be bothered by the PPI/DPI, unless you have a lot of vision problems. I have 20/200 vision corrected to 20/20 and I find that the 24" is the best mesh of resolution/size.. I mean you could bump up to the 2707 or 275T and "keep your PPI the same" ~1100$ though.. for which 100 more or so and you could get 2 24"..

In the end, if you want to keep it realistic and you don't need more than 2-3 apps open at once and can afford the time to alt tab.. get one 24".. if you really want that extra space, get a second.. keep in mind the panel quality of the 3007 is a lot nicer than the 19" 932b's.. and its slightly better than the non SIPS panels in the 2407HCs...

If you gave us a price range to fall within, it'd be a little easier to recommend something. We don't know if you prefer to spend 1500 or 500 :)

Also, with the photo editing and having the resolution from doubling 1280x1024 I hope you realize this is a 5:4 resolution (incongruent with 4:3 camera resolutions).. From how it sounds though, it sounds like your photo needs are secondary to everything else, just write down a list of your priorities in order, that'd help a lot :)

Also, I have to strongly disagree again with impactdax because everything he says is contradictory, I'm not going to quote it all and be an ass and point it out. If he took regards to your needs he would not have suggested 22" panels as every single one of them is a Twisted Nematic, they have pretty bad viewing angle problems and the color reproduction isn't satisfactory for most users when it comes to photography/imaging work.

I'll post this again, great source, but I think everyone might have overlooked it due to the link name..it shows what all the different text sizes will be @ native resolution on each size of monitor, you can see for yourself if you think it would be a problem or not. http://www.behardware.com/articles/658-1/lcd-tests-the-acer-and-dell-26-and-27.html
If you ask me the 24" seems like the sweet spot, I have no troubles on my 20.1, and Bumping up to the 24" would make everything just a little bigger when it comes to text. Sharpness/crispness is not going to be a problem on 20.1 or 24 or 30" screens.. thats an outright lie.
 
Good Analysis from both Weenis and ckv1. Definitely some information that I had not considered or knew, especially that every 22" panel is a TN and that they are not particularly suited for his application. I am digging the triple 30" with one 27" on top set-up. I'm guessing that the movie theater effect argument is not really holding water with him. lol.

Based on this post from him:

Does the 20" lcd monitor 1680 x 1050 font/text size look/is the same size of the 19" lcd monitor at 1280 x 1024? I like the size and crisp text readable of the 1280 x 1024 19" LCD monitors
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I still think 24" or 30" screens would have a PPI too high for him though. I would go with a 26 or 27 inch screen.
 
I think we're all missing a big point here. Text can be really small on a 30" high-res monitor if it's not adjusted to be larger. Nobody ever said that we had to suffer tiny text just because the monitor has a smaller dot pitch.

Try CTRL+Scroll wheel if you want an example in FireFox/Internet explorer.
 
-=Antimatter=- said:
Nobody ever said that we had to suffer tiny text just because the monitor has a smaller dot pitch.
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There's nothing suitable that can be done for those 16x16 icons in your system tray...or those jpg menu buttons on your favorite web site...or those dialog boxes that have been created using fixed pixel layouts...or those programs that aren't DPI aware.

Not to mention that turning on large fonts in XP does poorly scale those 16x16 tray icons and makes many things look "goofy".
 
As well as those obscure corporate apps that you need to use so you can pay your mortgage.
 
You have to get as close to the PPI you like and then slight tweeks using the control + function or adjusting size in the diplay area of control panel can be helpful if your spending a lot of time in one application. But I don't want to do this with any kind of regularity. I still come across website or programs that for some reason has text the size of a pin head and I use the contol + function then.
 
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