I think I might need a new monitor sometime soon

The last monitor I actually purchased was a 15" Sony CRT sometime in the late nineties. Since then, I've obtained progressively larger CRT displays, culminating with a 21" Sony Trinitron, for free. I remember, around 2000, meeting a girl who had a funky LCD monitor. I looked at it, compared it to a CRT, and wondered why the heck people were so gonzo over them. They were more expensive than a CRT and had awful image quality. The problem is that my 21" CRT is starting to get flaky, where the main symptom is that the blacks are only as black as an ancient LCD. But it's not all of the time, it's just that the time when I feel like editing a batch of pictures and the time that the CRT is working right aren't aligning properly anymore.

I'm stingy, but I also accept that sometimes you can't work around stuff forever... and this is taking some of the fun out of Photography for me. Clearly, it's better to kick over some money into the savings account now such that when the monitor finally goes from annoying to useless, it won't do nasty things to the household budget.

Except I'm not sure how much money I'm really talking about. See, I've missed out on a lot of degenerate LCD designs over the years, but I've also not been paying attention, so I'm not actually sure what's "good enough". A few years ago, there was a series of articles that basically stated that people at places like Pixar were still unimpressed with LCDs so had a warehouse filled with the last batch of Sony 21" Trinitrons. I'm not sure if this is still the case. I do see some fairly inexpensive large displays on newegg and wonder which ones would fit the bill.

Clearly, I do not need a pre-press editing station with finely-tuned accuracy and a display shield. Nor do I especially want to spend that kind of money.

I do know that my office display is an HP L2465 and that it's not objectionable, but I'm also not trying to edit on my work machine. Basic requirements are that I get a display with blacks that are black (measured in absolutes, not marketing BS) , a decent reaction time (also measured in absolutes, not marketing BS), and good color fidelity (also measured in absolutes, not marketing BS).

I'm aware that some displays don't actually break out all 8 bits of each color channel, which allows the display to do better on certain specifications at the cost of reduced color fidelity. I'm sorry, LCD makers, but I remember the days of 16 bit Hi-color and do not want to return to those days.

So... overall, I'm not sure exactly what I can get away with. Most of the good-color-fidelity displays have a longer reaction time... but I'm not a gamer, so as long as it can play and edit video properly, it's fine with me.

Thoughts, lazyweb?

Comments

The problem, of course, is that you can't run the clock back. My old 21" CRT that I should probably pitch at this point can only do 1280x1024 at a reasonable refresh rate... and that's just not good enough anymore.