I got a new monitor, and was wandering if I made a good choice...

General Forums Off-topic Chat
#1

The monitor is an LG L226WTQ, and I was wondering if anyone has any experience with this brand or maybe this exact monitor. I got it for 220 USD by the way, and that includes the tax. Without tax it was 199 USD.

I’m asking because my last monitor seemed great for about a week, then the menu would continuously (quite literally would press the menu button by itself about three times in one second non-stop, so it would go through the whole menu and into the auto-adjust once ever second), and finally the display went bad. I also had a tough time calibrating it.

So far, this new one seems quite nice, and it was easy to calibrate (as soon as I read the manual… Default settings make everything yellow, but there’s an obscure menu item called “White Balance,” which calibrates it perfectly), and has several modes that will automatically adjust brightness/contrast depending on the image displayed, for movies and games, so it seems nice there too. I’m just worried it will have problems like my last one, which was an X2Gen MW19U I got for my birthday.

#2

Well LG is a good brand name for LCD monitors, up there with Philips, Sony and Dell.

I would put HP, Acer, and Viewsonic as second teir Brands for Monitors.

I never heard of X2 as a brand.

For all intensive purposes there is only one monitor manufacturer in the world (who supplies all LCD screens to all companies) but as you experienced the user interface and components around that didn’t work on your last monitor.

I’d say you are pretty safe on the new one.

I personally stick with Philips whom I have had good customer relations with (when one of my monitors years ago had a few problems).

Enjoy your Blending with your monitor.

#3

Yeah. I sent my old monitor back for repair, and when I finally got it back, it was even WORSE. The buttons didn’t work at all (their way of fixing the constant “pressing”), and VGA didn’t work, and it did before. Luckily I had a DVI cable. Of course, a few days later, the buttons “worked,” again, so it turned from mildly worse to much worse.

LG is a good brand? That’s good to hear. And, I don’t think there’s just ONE manufacturer that makes monitors. The X2Gen one was made in China, and the new LG one is from Korea (doesn’t say north or south, though).

Edit: Are the specifications on the LG one good? I know 3000:1 contrast ratio is quite excessive. Will this cause the screen to wear out fast?

#4

Anything with a flat screen is cool!

#5

At work we researched a whole pile of monitors for a project, they were all ChiMei branded on the Inside, so we just bought the cheapest to take apart rather than spending more to get the same thing.

They sell something like NT$352 Billion dollars worth of monitors a year (at wholesale component prices)

#6

After a bit of Googling, ChiMei is in Taiwan. So, I guess they didn’t make either of my monitors.

#7

I have the exact same monitor, quite new. The uneven brightness at the sides bugs me. I read about it in a review, so it is not my monitor only.

Even after the white balance, it can’t correctly display a good grayscale. A light gray looks slightly bluish while white looks yellowish. This is not an exclusive problem of this monitor, I have seen it happen in similar models.

On the other hand colors are rich and saturated, looks a lot better than the laptop’s screen, I now have twice the space as compared to my older CRT and a much brighter display, although sometimes too bright.

It also saves on electricity, according to my measurement it uses about half of what my old monitor (CRT ~65W) uses.

#8

Well, with the color issue, after white balance, everything is perfect except that greys are ever so slightly yellow. I don’t have the problem with light areas on the edges, though, but I’ll have to watch for that.

I’ve found that turning the gamma down to the lowest setting helps with the color. You might want to try that, toloban.

#9

This is a common problem with many LCD monitors of all brands.