BenQ launching 6ms LCD monitor?
posted January 18th 2005 12:48PM
A few days ago, BenQ quietly revealed an interesting detail on its European website stating that one of its new LCD displays will have a "Grey To Grey response time" of just 6ms. This got lots of folks concerned with such things really excited, but it also caused a bit of confusion since all the CES coverage reported that BenQ's displays had a more standard pixel reponse time of 8ms. We saw so many BenQ displays at CES (see above) that we really can't be sure if we missed a detail about the reponse time or if BenQ was keeping a secret from us.
But we digress. Depending on who you ask, a 2ms difference in reponse time is either a big deal or it isn't. As most of you probably know, a lower response time generally means less blurring and ghosting on screen, but there are other factors, like contrast ratio that can have just as big an effect on picture quality and, in that department, the BenQ doesn't look so hot. It only has a 450:1 contrast ratio—compared to an 800:1 ratio on some Viewsonic monitors—something which may well negate any advantage in response time. So, BenQ, you wanna clear things up for us?
Won't be too long before we're seeing BenQ on Pimp My Ride.
There is a very good article on just this subject at the Inquirer:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20773
Huge differences in contrast ratios is meaningless if both monitors have very different maximum brighness levels. A manufacturer can crank up the maximum brightness of an LCD and it can have a massive contrast ratio even if it has a terrible black level.
Also, if the response time measured is black to white, gray-to-gray is usually slower. Toms Hardware has some good information on this and they do the most comprehensive testing of LCD response time.
Tom, learn how to read, they link to that in the post.