LG's 19-inch, 2ms Flatron L1970HR reviewed

So PCMag decided to run LG's 19-inch Flatron L1970HR LCD through their suite of tests to see if its 2-millisecond response time really performs as advertised, and the good news for gamers is that this display indeed delivers excellent motion performance with little ghosting and few artifacts. You're also getting good color reproduction and a contrast ratio of 1600:1 that sounds great on paper, but in reality you can expect some loss of shadow detail and noticeable compression at both ends of the greyscale. Another trade-off for that zippy response time is resolution, as the 1,280 x 1,024 pixel array may not be enough for hardcore gamers or folks working on documents and photos all day, with the biggest knock being the monitor's inability to render smaller-sized fonts. In the end, unless all that you're doing is watching movies and playing video games all day (in which case we'd like to hear more about your job), it sounds like super-smooth video may not be worth the sacrifices you're making in other departments.

[kent @ Jul 3rd 2006 6:06AM]

I really don't get this:
"I was also disappointed with the monitor's text readability, as it couldn't display Arial fonts smaller than 6.8 points."

That is a damn small font. I'm not surprised it couldn't be displayed. But on an LCD a pixel is a pixel. If the monitor can't display something that small, surely that's an anti-aliasing/OS issue?

Show me a font that small displaying correctly on something else...

[Spike @ Jul 3rd 2006 6:53AM]

Yay, just what the world needs, more 6 bit panels. *sighs*
I wish they would dump those pieces of crap by now. We already have 8ms true 8bit panels now.

[Jerry @ Jul 3rd 2006 8:11AM]

Agreed.

6bit panels are lower quality. I mean we stopped using dithering in games about 10 years ago so hey here is an idea. Let make a panel that looks like crap but runs real fast.

I will pass. Also the lowest response rate is useless. I like the reviews at toms hardware where they graph the response curve. I would be fine with a 12 ms panel is it was truly 12ms (i.e for all colors changes from 0-255 it reacts in less than 12ms).

The truth is lots of 8ms panels are 8ms only for a small portion of the greyscale. For other changes they balloon out to 18ms, 20ms, even as high as 28ms.

Lets gets a full color depth (8bit) panel with a decent 12-14ms response across the board, HDCP support (HDMI prefered but DVI will work), and resolution high enoough to support 1080P (or at least 1900x1050) and I will buy it otherwise I'll pass.

[GhostDoggy @ Jul 3rd 2006 8:22AM]

Maybe he was attempting a small font because of the overly limited resolution. I have a 21" monitor with a 19-20" viewable and run it minimally at 1600x1200, which is what I use to run my 19" on (with an 18" viewable).

Without pixel resolution you have to work around limitations. For instance, I could probably use a 9-10 point Ariel font just because I'm running at a much higher resolutiuon that this POS monitor.

Maybe the almost-blind will find it useful. :)

[kent @ Jul 3rd 2006 11:03AM]

19" LCDs that are more than 1280x1024 are pretty rare...Certainly 1600x1200 is much more common on CRTs of that size.

[GhostDoggy @ Jul 3rd 2006 6:13PM]

"19" LCDs that are more than 1280x1024 are pretty rare"

They are? I can go buy a Westinghouse 42" (or 37") with 1920x1080 resolution. Sure, refresh is lacking, but not in resolution. In fact, these have been available from Best Buy for almost a year.

[Anonymous @ Jul 16th 2006 10:23AM]

Please read the comment.

"19" LCDs that are more than 1280x1024 are pretty rare"

That means that 19" LCD screens hardly ever come in anything higher than 1280x1024. Not that you couldn't get one capable of displaying a higher resolution than that at all or even in higher screen sizes. Also you specified a widescreen resolution where as 1280x1024 is a 4:3 resolution.

[Russ Prince @ Jul 28th 2006 3:39AM]

Yes this monitor is of soso quality but it has a really nice profile (very thin edge), does have a really good picture, and it can be found for $230 or less. That sounds like a pretty good deal to me regardless of it's setbacks. This monitor looks perfect for a dual screen setup. I usually prefer a 1280x1024 on my home setup anyways so the resolution limit wouldn't bother me at all especially if I had a dual setup...