An LCD (or probably still CRT) buying advise needed

[alexzabr]

Well, my 5-6 years old CRT went dead today, so its time to re-invent
a new PC monitors market...
I'm not yet sure whether LCD or yet still CRT is way to go for me, but here are my consideraitons:
1. Budget is within 500 US$.
2. Being an avid photographer, I do a lot of photo editing (photoshop work), thus as much faithful as possible color response is desired, along with acceptable contrast range. Must be suitable for futher callibration by hardware means (monitors calibrators).
3. No larger then 20", 19" is also good enough.
4. My graphics card is quite dated Matrox G550 which has both VGA and digital outputs, the monitor is likely to be compliant with this kind of cards.
5. No gaming considerations to be taken into account - I'm not a gamer at all, but graphics is important for 2D representation (such as photography).
6. Will also consider CRT aside of LCD, if a particular CRTs would provide much beter price/performance then competitively priced LCDs.

My current monitor (which is dead now) is CRT Iyama Vision Master pro 454 (Mitsubishi Diamondtron tube) and in general I was satisfied by it performance (has its own drawbacks, but who doesn't ?)

Thanks in advance, Alex

[AlphaKilo470]

If you do photo editing, I would reccomend a CRT since despite how far LCDs have come, CRTs still provide more contrast at a smaller price. CRTs are also good for their larger amount of flexibility with different resolutions.

One company I'd reccomend giving a look at is Samsung as they always seem to have some of the cheapest monitors on the market for the performance they give. I have a 19" Samsung SyncMaster 997DF flat CRT at the desk in my "office" which I bought brand new for $200 back in the summer of 2004. This monitor does resolutions of up to 1920x1440 (though Samsung reccomends 1600x1200) so real estate will never be an issue and the color and contrast on this monitor is excellent to say the least. I've done much photo editing and page layout and the results have always been very stellar.

[alexzabr]

Thanks, a valuable opinion.
As among LCDs - I'm leaning towards EIZO 19" S1910 which gets quite rave reviews, however I realize no one, but a really expensive LCDs have approached the quality of a good CRTs once it comes down to photo editing.
Unfortunately, so far couldn't figure a good CRTs of Lacie or similar kind sold locally in my country, perhaps just didn't look carefully enough...
For some reason, I used to avoid Samsung, LG, MAG and many other CRTs. Among CRTs I would prefer Lacie, NEC, higher Iyama models, perhaps even higher Viewsonics, all these used to be a good values on the market ...

[dsigma6]

i think staying with a crt will certainly benefit you. ive had a samsung before but it was a bit old- but still had great color reproduction. i now have a $75 MAG that i bought 5 years ago- still ticking, but definitely lacks in the color/contrast department.

[440roadrunner]

I've got 4 18-19" CRT monitors, all less than 40.00 each from various thrift stores.

[bill bolton]

2. Being an avid photographer, I do a lot of photo editing (photoshop work), thus as much faithful as possible color response is desired, along with acceptable contrast range. Must be suitable for futher callibration by hardware means (monitors calibrators).

In that case buy another new, good quality CRT display. Perhaps next time, when that CRT display goes to electron gun heaven, there will be affordable flat panel technlogies that can adequately handle serious graphics arts colour rendering tasks.

Cheers,

Bill

[daeojkim]

I

One company I'd reccomend giving a look at is Samsung as they always seem to have some of the cheapest monitors on the market for the performance they give. I have a 19" Samsung SyncMaster 997DF flat CRT at the desk in my "office" which I bought brand new for $200 back in the summer of 2004. This monitor does resolutions of up to 1920x1440 (though Samsung reccomends 1600x1200) so real estate will never be an issue and the color and contrast on this monitor is excellent to say the least. I've done much photo editing and page layout and the results have always been very stellar.

I am with AlphaKilo on this. I had one of this monitors and it is just superb monitor and plenty of connection options. I used at 1600 x 1200 resolution and images and letters were crystal clear to me. Contrast level is also excellent. I am not sure if you can still get those as new, but if you can find one I don't think you will be dissapointed.

[christopher_wolf]

I

One company I'd reccomend giving a look at is Samsung as they always seem to have some of the cheapest monitors on the market for the performance they give. I have a 19" Samsung SyncMaster 997DF flat CRT at the desk in my "office" which I bought brand new for $200 back in the summer of 2004. This monitor does resolutions of up to 1920x1440 (though Samsung reccomends 1600x1200) so real estate will never be an issue and the color and contrast on this monitor is excellent to say the least. I've done much photo editing and page layout and the results have always been very stellar.

I am with AlphaKilo on this. I had one of this monitors and it is just superb monitor and plenty of connection options. I used at 1600 x 1200 resolution and images and letters were crystal clear to me. Contrast level is also excellent. I am not sure if you can still get those as new, but if you can find one I don't think you will be dissapointed.

Same here; I have a few Samsung's in my lab and they have probably been the best value for the performance they deliver.