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This past week I got my hands on someone's old 17" LCD monitor. The monitor itself doesn't work but I hooked the panel itself up to my own monitor and lo and behold it works. I'm comparing specs between the two. The only thing my current panel has over this one is that it is a full 16M color panel whereas the other one can only display 262K colors. Here are the specs on each:

Current Monitor is a TOPCON LC17-AE from Hong Kong:

Panel is an AU Optronics m170en04 which has a 250nit brightness, 400:1 contrast ratio, can display 16.7M colors, but only has a 40ms response time.

The panel I aquired is also made by AU Optronics model m170en05. It has a 260nit brightness, 450:1 contrast ratio, a 16ms response time, but can only display 262K colors.

Kind of a decision. The backlight on the original panel has kind of been flaking out. Every once in a while after it's been in standby for a while after waking up the backlight will come on for about 5 to 10 seconds then go off. I can still see the image if I shine a light on it so I know it's just the backlight. It's not bad right now but could get worse.

I'm kind of wanting to switch out the panels but the fact that it only displays 262K colors makes me want to just keep it as a backup for when the backlight on this one finally outright fails. Both panels have a couple dead pixels so there's no clear cut choice there. It's a battle of specs.

Taddeusz wrote:

It's a battle of specs.

It's a battle of crappy used LCDs

Actually, even with the old one in it looks great. I've got DVI on it. I wouldn't have bought an LCD without DVI. That would have been stupid.

Try to look at various gradient screens (i.e. gradually going from say green to black) to see if you can really tell that it's 262k. Or any type of movie screen or anything I guess.

I thought my laptop was 16.7M for about a month because on such tests, it was absolutely smooth (lines are supposed to show up if it's 262K or 16.2M). But no, I then tested out the 253-255 colors and it didn't have it. Turns out its dithering is pretty good -- and it doesn't even have frame rate control, but just old-fashioned dithering.

If you're going for color accuracy, then maybe the 16.7M color would be good. But otherwise, you probably don't want your monitor burning out on you. I think it's really a matter of which one bothers you more 1) crappy response time and backlight can fail at any time 2) color accuracy. I personally don't care too much about colors but that's me =P

totally agree about buying an LCD w/o DVI... its stupid.

I have a Dell FPW2005 20.1" widescreen (just got it today) & a Viewsonic VP171b-2. I've been doing the dual monitor thing today but my video card only has 1 DVI & 1 VGA.

I ran both monitors DVI & VGA and the difference is incredible. At first I had the 2005 hooked up to analog and i was completely unimpressed.. then i switched it to DVI & put the 17" viewsonic on analog & it looked equally as crappy lol.

I'll be buying a new card that has dual dvi in the next few weeks.