New monitor
Buying a new monitor is more complex than it should be.  You would think that all you really need to know is how much money you want to spend and what size you want to get, and whether you want to spend more to get a brand-name, but there are a lot more considerations than that.

I ended up getting a 20" Acer AL2051W monitor.  If you want to read about why, follow the cut.  See a pic of my monitors.


I wanted to get a second LCD to compliment my two year old Dell 2005FPW 20" widescreen.  I have been using an old Samsung Syncmaster 900IFT 19" CRT monitor as my second screen, but it left much to be desired.  It was very dark compared to the LCD, even when it had its brightness set to maximum and LCD's brightness was set to minimum.  It was nowhere near as sharp as the LCD, and it took way too much of my desk for much less screen space than the Dell.

LCD monitors come in three basic types: TN, VA, and IPS.  You generally will not see them advertised as such though, so finding out which type of panel a given monitor uses can be difficult.  I find this odd, since each type is better at different types of applications, so advertising the types makes sense to me (sort of like advertising whether a car is front, rear, or all-wheel-drive).  Some monitor makers  (Dell especially) are infamous for substituting different panel types in the same monitor model, in what is known as a panel lottery.

IPS monitors are very good at color reproduction.  The Dell 2005FPW I have is an S-IPS monitor, and colors look beautiful on it.  Also, the viewing angle on them is very large, so colors and brightness looks uniform over the entire screen.  The downside is that the response time of IPS monitors is lower than of the other technologies, so games and video can look blurry on them.  However, most modern IPS panels use techniques to improve response time to the point that I cannot see any blurring on my monitor while playing games or videos.  Some people are more sensitive to that than others though.  IPS monitors are also quite expensive.  20" IPS panels, such as this NEC, go for about $400 right now.  IPS screens are also found commonly in high-end monitors, such as the 30" Dell 3007WFP-HC.

TN screens, which are the vast majority of 22" and smaller monitors right now, have very fast response times and are very inexpensive.  The downside is that they are all 6-bit panels, meaning that they cannot natively display all of the 16 million colors that your video card is sending.  Instead, they use dithering or frame-rate control (in which they rapidly change the pixel color between two intermittent values to simulate an in-between value) to approximate colors.  This makes them very poor for color reproduction.  Also, their viewing angle is quite poor.  On big screens, this means that colors on the top and bottom or left and right of the screens look quite different.  Most laptop screens, probably including my Macbook Pro (although Apple never admits to what panels they use), use TN panels as well, which has led to a lawsuit over false advertising.  For general purpose use, TN screens are probably fine.  My laptop screen works fine for everyday work.  However, when I place it next to my Dell, colors definitely look washed out on the laptop.

VA screens, which come in PVA and MVA flavors, try to bridge the gap between IPS and TN panels.  They have faster response times than IPS, but far better color reproduction than TN since they use true 8-bit color panels.  Viewing angles are closer to IPS than TN as well.  Contrast is the best of all the panel types, so dark areas in images and videos show up much better on VA panels, especially if they are glossy.  They are also considerable less expensive than IPS panels.  The Acer AL2051W has a glossy PVA screen.   Most 24" screens, such as the Dell 2407WFP-HC are PVA panels, although cheaper ones are starting to use TN screens.

When buying the Acer, I wanted a 20" or larger monitor, with at least a resolution of 1680x1050, to match or better my existing Dell.  I also did not want a TN screen because I wanted excellent color reproduction, and since response time is not so important to me.  The Acer, at $200, seems to be the only affordable 20" screen which fits that criteria.  TN 20" panels can be cheaper, down to $170, and IPS panels are far more expensive, starting at $400.   I considered moving up to 24", but decent 24" monitors are almost 3 times the price of the Acer, which is not worth it for me.

For more information, Anandtech's forum has a very good post which is kept up-to-date with information on LCD technologies and monitor recommendations.


In the few hours I have had the screen, I've noticed that colors are more saturated and brighter on the Dell 2005FPW with its IPS panel, but dark areas in photos pop out better on the Acer with its higher-contrast VA panel.  The Acer is the monitor you would use for watching The Matrix, with its abundance of dark scenes, but the Dell is what you would use to watch R.O.D. or other bright, colorful animes.  On the whole, I am pretty happy with the Acer, especially since it cost less than half what I paid for the Dell two years ago.