What Hardware Should I Buy? - May 2009

Displays

So you might have built the perfect gaming system, but it's hardly worth it without a decent display to do all those fancy graphics and high definition movies justice. Sadly it isn't as easy as simply picking the biggest screen you can afford and hoping for the best, with enormous differences between even similarly priced monitors in colour accuracy, inputs, viewing angles and refresh rate.

It's become something of a myth in the monitor industry that for gaming, response time is king, with many manufacturers willing to compromise on other fronts to ensure ridiculously low response times which don't have any real world advantage outside of enlarging your gaming e-peen.

There's also the issue of which panel technology a monitor is using, with cheap TN+Film monitors featuring fast response times but conventionally poor colour accuracy and viewing angles filling the market, and better PVA, MVA and IPS monitors traditionally priced out of many users' reach.

As you can see, going beyond response times and diagonal size soon complicates the issue of which monitor to choose immensely, but fear not, because here at bit-tech we've found the best monitors to suit any budget.

Sadly monitor availability differs significantly between Europe and the USA, so we're only covering those models available here in Europe for the time being, although we'll be looking at including transatlantic models in the coming months.

Affordable

HannsG HG221AP 22-inch widescreen monitor

UK Price: £119.06 (inc. VAT)

When your budget is squeezed, a monitor is an easy place to cut costs, especially as there's so many no-name brands currently flooding the market with cheap (but ultimately totally crap) TN+film panels.

The HannsG is different and for just a snifter over £100 you can bag yourself a perfectly capable 22” 1,680 x 1,050 flat panel that’s more than up to doing justice to modern games and video playback. While the image quality isn’t going to be up to professional image editing, it’s certainly respectable, and at this price point that’s better than a lot of the more expensive competitors.

However, it’s not going to win any awards for connectivity, providing just one solitary VGA input connection – so no DVI or HDMI connectivity - but at this price, it’s still a very attractive and capable monitor. If you're looking for a DVI-based monitor, HannsG has a similar display - the HW223DP - which sells for a similar price and should feature the same panel but we haven't tested it yet.

Mid Range

Viewsonic VX2260WM - 22-inch Full HD monitor

UK Price: £174.78 (inc. VAT)

While it's long been possible to pick up a TN+film 1,680 x 1,050 16:10 panel for under £150, this 22" model from Viewsonic was one of the first to boast a full 1080p compliant resolution of 1,920 x 1,080, making it a very attractive prospect indeed.

While image quality is predictably not amazing, it's certainly far from a complete let down. Images are sharp and clear thanks to that lofty resolution and while there are still some hangovers from the affordable price tag such as some minor colour compression and less than stellar viewing angles, this is an excellent choice for the money.

It even ships with an HDMI for connectivity to a next-gen console or other high definition source. There's also no pesky back light bleed and the depth of blacks are as good as we've ever seen on a TN+film panel.

It's the sharpness garnered from cramming such a high resolution into such a (comparatively) small display that really elevates this monitor above the competition, a quality that makes it deliver eye-popping detail along with a generous amount of real estate in terms of viewing area. Just bear in mind that picking a monitor with such a high native resolution over a cheaper 1,680 x 1,050 monitor will mean you'll need some serious graphics grunt if you're looking to play PC games on it.

High End

HP LP2475W - 24in H-IPS LCD Monitor

UK Price: £426.65 (inc. VAT)

Sadly the much loved BenQ FP241W has finally slipped from e-tailer shelves almost everywhere now as the product line is retired. This means we've been on the lookout for a new high end 24" panel and in the HP LP2475W we think we've found the ideal candidate.

We'll be publishing a full review of this 24" monitor in the near future, but the use of a H-IPS panel (an evolution of S-IPS) rather than TN+film technology you'd usually find in many cheaper modern TFTs, means it's able to reproduce an extremely wide colour range without compromising on response time, making for simply brilliant image quality.

It's extremely well featured technically, sporting dual DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort, Composite, S-Video and VGA inputs as well as S/PDIF out for HDMI audio.

And yet despite the high quality H-IPS panel and huge range of connectivity, the HP LP2475W still manages to cost just £425. For such a high quality and well featured TFT, that's a bit of a bargain, and we thoroughly encourage you to pick one up if you've the budget to spare and really care about getting the highest quality images possible.

Premium

NEC MultiSync LCD3090WQXi

UK Price: £1,622.86 (inc. VAT)
US Price: $2,129.99 (ex. Tax)

If your budget for a monitor stretches to quadruple figures, then there really is only one monitor we can recommend, the NEC MultiSync LCD3090WQXi.

Here at bit-tech we were so impressed with the 3090WQXi that we got hold of one following our review to use to run some of our ultra high resolution graphics benchmarks. Every time we have to go back to playing games on our meagre 20” and 22” monitors we die a little inside - but it is a lot of money, though.

The NEC’s stunning image quality really is unrivalled for gaming or high definition video playback, and the sheer amount of desktop real estate on hand thanks to the monster 2,560 x 1,600 resolution makes other monitors seem puny in comparison.

The price tag might be ludicrous to many, but as is so common with high end hardware, you get what you pay for. This is the monitor we at bit-tech all lust after for our home set ups and if your budget is big enough (and in which case we’re all insanely jealous) you need to get one – it’s as simple as that.

That's all from us this month! If you've any recommendations or suggestions you'd like to make to future editions of this series, please let us know in the forums. Also, if you have recently built a system of your own to a cost - we're keen to know how you got on with it!