[obelix112za]

I'm buying a new 20" iMac in a few months, probably November.

I've been looking at external monitors no smaller than 22". I'll be using it for Photoshop & gaming.

Looked at 23" Apple - seems a bit expensive for what you get - also 16ms, to slow.

These are the other ones I've looked at

www.dell.ie 22" & 24"
Samsung 226BW Syncmaster 22" www.pixmania.com (Ireland)
LG L245WP-BN 24" www.pixmania.com (Ireland)

Note: I'm giving you the websites as well so you can have a look at the same monitors I'm looking at.

Coolest One - I think
Acer AL2616W 26" Widescreen (also the 24")

Any advice will help, so I can sleep at night. Any other suggestions on monitors will help as well.


Thanx

[mduell]

The Dell 24" was just updated with "TrueLife" (or whatever their dumb name is), so it provides 92% of the NTSC gamut. That may be important to you, or may not. If not I'd just go with the non TrueLife Dell.

Also, note that not all the monitors you're looking at are the same resolution. The 24" and 26" are 1920x1200, but the 22" are 1680x1050. That's 30% more pixels (useful screen area) for the former.

The 24" has the same pixel-density as the 20" in the iMac, but the 22" and 26" have lower pixel density. So everything will be the same size on the iMac and the 24", but the 22" or 26" will make everything appear larger, which may cause eyestrain when looking from the iMac to the external display.

[steamy]

Acer is cheap in price, manufacturing and quality.
I am not saying go get apple screen cus this is proly as extreme as getting acer just on the other side of things.
Check out illyama, they are experts and 22" I have from them serves me well for gaming and some basic image edition in inkscape. This is not a dream screen because of the over-saturated colors though. I switched from good CRT and it was a downgrade. But if you are after good value ilyama is worth checkin out

[OreoCookie]

First of all, don't care about those marketing numbers. If you want nice colors, `slower' can be `better' (the more expensive panels have tend to be able to display more colors, have a larger angle, etc., but are slower; don't trust the marketing numbers, they are almost surely bogus and meaningless!).

I like Samsung LCDs, the image quality is great and the latest series features a very nice black lacquer design.

[obelix112za]

Still think I'll wait till I'm buying my new iMac, and then I may decide on an external monitor. All I really want is a big 22"-26" monitor for gaming and a bit of Photoshopping