early lcd monitors price

Whether you"re looking for a deal on an old computer monitor for your old computer or you"re a vintage computer monitor collector, buying the right old monitor on eBay for your needs and desires requires knowing how to identify and evaluate old PC monitors.

One obvious way to peruse old monitors for sale is by brand. This is especially important if you plan to use the monitor with an existing computer. In that case, you either want to buy the same brand or a compatible brand of old computer monitor for sale to make sure it will actually work. If, on the other hand, you"re collecting vintage computer monitors, then you may have a specific brand, or even model, you"re looking for. There are far more brands of old monitors than there are of computers to go with them. Brands of old monitor include:

Monochrome or color - Even if a monitor supports color, not all color monitors support the same number of colors. An old PC monitor may support 16 colors or 256 colors, among other possibilities.

Resolution - How vivid a picture a given monitor can produce is indicated by the number of pixels it contains per square inch, often seen like 720p or 1080p, meaning those monitors have 720 and 1,080 pixels per square inch, respectively. The more pixels per square inch, the higher the resolution and the richer the image.

Screen size - Monitors will also differ in their screen size, normally listed in dimensions of length and width, but sometimes given as a single measurement of the diagonal length between two opposite corners.

But while 15-inch LCDs have become more affordable in the last year or two, very large flat-screen displays--whether for a desktop, a boardroom, a reception area, or a state-of-the-art home theater--have continued to command astronomically high prices that leave them out of reach for all but businesses with specialized needs, or the super rich.

LCD monitors won"t compete in price with their CRT counterparts anytime soon. But the same price drops that have already brought many 15-inch displays under the $1000 mark are beginning to make larger LCDs more affordable--less than $1500 in the case of two 17-inchers we review here.

By then, we will probably have new display choices that solve problems today"s offerings don"t even address. Technologies such as organic light-emitting diodes promise to unite energy savings and a CRT-quality display in a superthin--possibly even flexible--panel. Meanwhile, advances in ultra-high-resolution screens and microdisplays may offer eye-soothing performance and render extremely clear text in a way that today"s monitors can"t even approximate.

So who needs to go larger? Anyone who"s ever tried to write a report in a word processor while doing research in a browser, running a spreadsheet, and keeping an eye on e-mail will appreciate a roomier screen. We looked at four of the latest large LCD models from Eizo, NEC-Mitsubishi, and Samsung, all offering terrific-looking displays and good value. Text looks so sharp and crisp that most people will feel no eyestrain at these models" 1280 by 1024 native resolution--although 17-inch LCDs benefit from a larger font size.

The chief strength of NEC-Mitsubishi"s MultiSync LCD1700M ($1499) is its exceptionally wide viewing angle--160 degrees horizontally and vertically--coupled with decent built-in speakers. Samsung"s new $1199 SyncMaster 170T has both an analog interface and a newer DVI digital interface; the latter will become useful as more graphics adapters that support digital video output (which offers superior quality for LCDs) appear. Both of the units carry 17-inch screens.

Once the screen sizes exceed 17 inches, prices rise steeply: Some 17-inch monitors are half the price of their 18-inch counterparts. (Blame lower yields for 18-inch screens for this disproportionate price differential.) For example, Eizo"s 18-inch FlexScan L675 screen costs $2900--which is still an improvement over the $3000-plus prices 18-inch LCDs used to command. In the Eizo"s case, you"re also paying for such high-end features as an ultrathin bezel and a screen that can be rotated for landscape or portrait-style viewing.

Even some of the largest screens cost less than they used to. We were impressed by NEC-Mitsubishi"s 20-inch MultiSync LCD2010X, which goes for $3899--not cheap, but far better than the $8000-plus price tags on comparable-size displays of the last few years. And the LCD2010X can handle both analog and DVI digital hookups.

Rhoda Alexander, an analyst with display market research firm Stanford Resources, expects prices to continue falling through the rest of 2001. By year"s end, some 17-inch displays will likely sell for less than $1000, with average prices resting at that mark or slightly higher. But don"t wait beyond then if you"re serious about buying: By early 2002, supply is expected to get tight again, and then prices will stabilize or rise once more.

Plasma is subject to image burn-in, however, much as early CRTs were (remember the days when screen savers were more than a personal statement?), and it does lose brightness over time. Display manufacturers have been hard at work on that problem. Craig McManis, vice president of sales and marketing for the industrial displays division of Pioneer New Media Technologies, says that it takes 30,000 hours for his company"s plasma displays to lose half their brightness. An always-on display in an airport might need replacement every three years or so, but that translates into a lot of TV viewing at home.

And thanks to supply finally starting to catch up with demand, combined with the slump in PC sales growth, LCD monitors prices look set to continue to fall.

The steepest price erosion for LCDs is in the 15-inch monitor market, where prices dropped around 30 per cent in 2000, according to IDC. During the year they also grabbed around 30 per cent market share.

For example, last week Dell started selling 15-inch flat-panel monitors for $499. The 1503FP monitor is part of a package - it must be bought with a Dell OptiPlex desktop or Precision workstation - otherwise it costs $549 if you buy it alone. This same monitor cost $999 in September 2000, and $699 in February this year.

A year ago, it seemed LCD manufacturers couldn"t churn the products out fast enough - and most of the supply was gobbled up for laptops, meaning desktop LCD monitors stayed expensive. Now, not only are more countries, such as Taiwan, making them in volume, but overall demand for computers has also fallen.

The result is a more competitive market, with flat panel monitors not much more expensive than CRTs. Consumers can look forward to prices continuing to drop over the next couple of years, according to Kay. ®

Of all the things folks love about consumer electronics, constantly falling prices probably ranks with big-screen televisions and MP3 players. But in the past year, flat-panel computer monitors refused to go along with the trend.

DisplaySearch, an Austin, Texas, research firm, said wholesale prices for all LCD (liquid crystal display) flat panels 10 inches or larger fell 3 percent in July, and the firm expected them to fall another 3 percent in August and 2 percent a month the rest of the year.

DisplaySearch President Ross Young said it takes about 60 days for those lower costs to work their way through the retail chain, but prices are definitely coming down. He believes 15-inch monitors - which averaged about $332 in the first quarter of this year - could sell for $299 by year"s end, with some promotional models as low as $249.

Waiting is exactly what consumers started doing as prices began to rise in April last year and kept going up for more than a year. The higher prices finally took their toll in the first quarter of this year, when flat-panel sales dropped for the first time in three years. And while sales of traditional cathode-ray tube (CRT) monitors had been declining every quarter, they stabilized during the first quarter, he said.

Semenza said iSuppli"s research shows that the average retail price of a 15-inch LCD monitor rose 13 percent from $293 in the first quarter of last year to $332 in the first quarter of this year. In the same period, the average price of 17-inch LCD monitors was nearly unchanged, slipping $2 to $425 this year.

Basic economics also explains why flat-panel monitor prices rose in the first place. The same LCD panels that make computer monitors make LCD TV sets. With LCD televisions selling for thousands of dollars and computer monitors selling for hundreds, the choice for LCD manufacturers was clear.

Those flat-panel makers, concentrated in Taiwan and South Korea, churn out LCD panels in sizes as large as 2-meter squares, then cut them to meet customer demands, Semenza said. The top seven manufacturers, he said, provide more than 85 percent of the world supply, estimated to be worth $65 billion this year.

"The panel makers looked at the TV market and started converting. They could throw up a 30-inch panel and make a lot more money than selling 15-inch desktop computer monitors," said Gene Ornstead, director of TV products for ViewSonic Corp., a big marketer of computer monitors and more recently LCD TV sets.

There was only one problem with the strategy: LCD TV sales didn"t rise as much as hoped. Although consumers like having a flat TV set they can hang on a wall, projection TVs are also getting thinner and cost a fraction of LCD or plasma TVs, another flat-panel technology.

"It was sticker shock for consumers - a $3,000 price tag for a 30-inch LCD TV. That didn"t fly, so now there"s a push back into monitors," Semenza said.

"We see good supply compared to a few months ago," said Willey of computer monitor panels. And Semenza said iSuppli estimates that worldwide capacity of LCD panels will rise more than 50 percent next year.

iSuppli forecasts that the average retail price of 15-inch LCD monitors will fall 5 percent by the fourth quarter to $315, while 17-inch monitors will dip nearly 15 percent to $355.

Prices of flat-panel monitors are likely to continue dropping through the first half of 2003, but stabilise by mid-year, according to NEC/Mitsubishi, one of the biggest manufacturers in the UK of LCD monitors.

Speaking in London on Tuesday at the launch of nine new NEC/Mitsubishi LCD monitors, general manager John McGrath said he expects a recovery in the notebook market to soak up a lot of the over-supply next summer.

"Prices of 15 inch monitors have come down substantially," said McGrath. "When demand for notebooks gets weak, LCDs are routed to the monitor market, and the monitors get cheaper... the market is being used as an outlet" said McGrath. But, he added, "Some panel makers are hurting to the point where they can"t afford to go on. I expect prices to stabilise by the summer -- there could even be a shortage by then, which could push prices up marginally."

Although LCD monitor prices have fallen for much of 2002, NEC/Mitsubishi"s 15-inch displays underwent a price hike at the beginning of the year when the typical street price rose form about £290 to £310, according to the company"s own figures. The typical street price is currently just under £280, while for some brands such as Samsung and Philips, it is closer to £240.

Like many other monitor manufacturers, NEC/Mitsubishi is turning its attention to LCD technology because prices of CRT monitors have dropped so far that there is no more value to be extracted from 15-inch and 17-inch products; they have become commodity items.

CRT monitors are also losing popularity both among manufacturers and buyers as governments worldwide are preparing new environmental laws that will increase further obligations to recycle computer equipment. CRT monitors, with their high lead content, are both difficult to dispose of in an environmentally friendly fashion and to recycle.

NEC/Mitsubishi"s new LCD range includes models with analogue interfaces for the soho (small office/home office) sector, and models with digital and analogue interfaces aimed at business users.

Prices start at £229 ex VAT for 15-inch models and £599 for 18-inch models. The 19-inch LCD1920NX costs £659 and the 20-inch £LCD2080UX will cost £1,199 when it ships at the end of December.

Three 17-inch models are to launch, with the speaker-equipped multimedia LCD1760VM costing £399 when it ships at the end of December, the thin-bezel LCD1760NX costing £375 due in January. Pricing has yet to be set for the low-end, analogue interface-only LCD1701, which is also due to ship in January. A 30inch display, the LCD3000, tops off the range at £2,697. A 40-inch model is due in February.

In November the company began selling for the first time through a retail store when PC World began stocking the 15-inch LCD1511M and the 17-inch LCD1711M - priced respectively at £279 and 429 inc VAT.

LED display technology was developed by James P. Mitchell in 1977, but LED monitors were not readily available for purchase on the consumer market until about 30 years later.

LCD monitors outsold CRT monitors for the first time in 2003. By 2007, LCD monitors consistently outsold CRT monitors, and became the most popular type of computer monitor.

NEC was one of the first companies to manufacture LED monitors for desktop computers. Their first LED monitor, the MultiSync EA222WMe, was released in late 2009.

Touch screen LCD monitors started to become cheaper, more affordable for the average consumer in 2017. Prices for 20 to 22-inch touch screen monitors dropped below $500.

Last year, consumers bought 13.5 million flat-panel monitors, more than double the 6.4 million shipped in 2000, said Rhoda Alexander, director of monitor research at Stanford Resources-iSuppli. In 2002, 23.5 million are expected find their way to consumers and businesses, fueled in part by the cool factor and by efforts of Dell Computer, Apple Computer and others to promote the space- and energy-saving screens.

Bruce Berkoff, executive vice president at LCD maker LG Philips LCD, said that he"s been predicting a shortage for some time and sees it as part of a cycle that consists of two-year periods of oversupply and two-year periods of shortage, causing price fluctuations. Berkoff anticipates an industrywide shortage as early as mid-2002 that will last through 2003.

The cycles are in two-year intervals mainly because that"s how long it takes to build a manufacturing factory, Berkoff said. Newer factories generally equate to higher manufacturing capacities and lower prices in the market, as well as more large monitors.

Berkoff expects prices for 15-inch LCD monitors to increase from around $200 to $300 now to up to--but not over--$500 this year. He also expects 17-inch and 18-inch displays to become more mainstream with prices ranging from $700 to $900.

Although flat-panel displays have been around for years, high prices kept them from the mainstream of the consumer market. A low-end 14-inch flat panel for a desktop computer, for instance, cost about $2,000 in 1997. A shortage of LCD glass, partly driven by growing demand for notebooks and handheld devices in the late 1990s, prompted makers to invest in glass plants in Taiwan and Korea in 1998 and 1999.

Declining prices, though, drove sales up. Other factors, of course, also helped. Flat panels take up far less space than standard cathode-ray tube monitors and are aesthetically more appealing. They also consume less energy.

"The California energy crisis, whether real or manufactured, had a tremendous impact on LCDs. I received lots of calls from government agencies asking about them," said Alexander, who added that the energy savings "for a large corporate account makes a significant difference."

Although supply still outstrips demand, the LCD glut is expected to begin to dry up and prices are likely to rise. Unlike other PC products, which only go down in price, flat panel prices have jumped occasionally in the past. "LCD is one of the few (markets) where things have actually gone up in price," said Bob O"Donnell, an analyst with IDC.

Driving the demand are notebooks, which are becoming a larger percentage of the overall PC market. Consumer electronics devices that use LCD screens, such as cell phones and handhelds, use small screens and thus haven"t affected supply very much.

Another consumer electronics product category that may affect supply in the future is televisions with LCDs. Berkoff predicts this market will reach seven million units annually by 2005.

will not be able to supply LCD glass substrate until February or March, according to reports from Asian newspapers and analysts. The company"s customers include LCD producers Fujitsu, Samsung Electronics, International Display Technology, Chi Mei Optoeletronics and HannStar Display.

At the same time, other variables exist. An expansion of LCD manufacturing facilities in Korea from Sharp, Samsung and LG Philips means that more supply is on the horizon. And like in 2000, an influx of products could depress prices. (Samsung and other LCD panel manufacturers take glass and other components and manufacture the LCD panel. The panels then get shipped to notebook or monitor makers, which can be sister subsidiaries and which incorporate the LCD panel into monitors).

LCD manufacturers are working on other types of display technology, such as organic light-emitting diode displays. But it will be at least 10 years before any of them can replace LCDs.

You’ve probably seen terms like HD and Full HD on the boxes of monitors and TVs, but what does that mean? As you may have guessed, HD refers to “High Definition,” a quick way to refer to a high-quality video output. So if you see the term “Full HD” on a monitor box, that’s just a shorthand to denote its resolution, which would be 1920 by 1080, also called 1080p. The reason why it’s specified as “Full HD” is that there are also some TVs and monitors that output at 720p (high definition but not relatively as high as 1080p), which is 1280 by 720 pixels. 1080p is considered the current standard for monitors, and popular manufacturers, including Dell, Acer, Samsung, LG, BenQ and Viewsonic, offer a variety of 1080p monitors in their product lineups.

As you can imagine, the more pixels there are to display, the more critical it is that your monitor has a high refresh rate, especially when it comes to gaming. Typically, the standard has been a 120-hertz refresh rate in gaming monitors, but many features a 144-hertz refresh rate. The quicker a monitor can refresh the display, and the smoother the visual experience will be. This is because the refresh rate in the monitor works in tandem with a low response time (which specifies how quickly the monitor can send and receive new information) to make a seamless visual transition. Sometimes, if the response rate is not quick enough, some residual pixels can remain on the screen as the monitor is trying to refresh new ones. This is called ‘ghosting.’ Although it’s standard to have a four-millisecond response time on many gaming monitors, Samsung, LG, BenQ, Viewsonic, and more all offer 2k and 4k monitors with one-millisecond response times. It is also important to ensure refresh rates are identical if you plan to sync two monitors for your display.

Regarding the internal specs, response time and refresh rate are the main factors contributing to a smooth, immersive viewing experience. Still, the physical panel type of the monitor can also play into this. First, there’s the matter of how the monitor lights up: either with LCD or LED. The main difference lies in the material that is used to light the liquid crystals in the display. In LCD, it’s cold cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFLs), and in LEDs, it’s tiny light emitting and low-energy consuming diodes. This is the preferred type in most monitors because it consumes less power and produces less harsh light, so darker colors appear more vivid. Additionally, LED monitors can be much thinner than LCD ones.

Newer LCD monitors have improved with the implementation of IPS (In-Plane Switching) panels. For some, it’s a matter of preference, but where the IPS panels have shown their strength with accurate color reproduction, which is great for content creators who want to do photo editing or graphic design. The panel type you choose depends more on preference than anything else. Samsung is well known for championing the IPS panel in their monitors, and many people also enjoy using them for gaming.

Finally, another consideration is whether there are enough HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) ports. HDMI allows simultaneous digital video and audio transmission from one source to another. While HDMI ports are often standard, especially on gaming monitors, verifying that a monitor has enough HDMI compatibility for your setup before purchasing is essential.

Since monitors have to be lit in order for the viewer to see anything, the difference between the two types is in what is used to light up the crystals within the display. For LCD, that’s cold cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFL’s) and in LEDs, it’s tiny light emitting and low-energy consuming diodes. LED monitors tend to be thinner and more power-efficient, but improvements in the panel types have made LCDs more competitive.

CRTs can be abundant if you have good places in your local community to look, but they are getting trickier to track down each passing year. And while nothing’s stopping you from using a modern LCD for retro gaming, you may want to track down a square-shaped LCD (mostly 4:3 aspect ratio) so your classic content seems a bit more “at home” — avoiding those black bars.

So whether you’re looking for a cheap 4:3 LCD to use with your MiSTER FPGA setup, have a classic personal computer, or just want something for watching “full screen” video content or a emulation box to run on, I’m hoping this guide is helpful in your shopping.

Granted LCDs, especially older models, aren’t ideal for retro gaming compared to CRTs. LCDs often down’t have as deep of black colors and there is input lag involved among some other issues.

However, LCDs are easier to move around and store and use less electricity. And even though there are many die-hard CRT fans out there, there are also many long-time retro fans that have been using the recommended monitors below for a while and been happy with their performance. I’ve even quoted and handful of enthusiasts to give you a good perspective on these recommendations. And don’t forget, eventually LCDs might be much easier to find and purchase remotely then the CRTs counterparts.

Early LCD monitors may show a lack of technical maturity, however, near some of the later ones that we are focusing on have some decent IPS technology with reasonable color and response times.

In the end, I thought this would be a fun, lighthearted look at some options for those that are interested. If you have any commentary on the matter, please share your thoughts and suggestions in the comments section below. Just be respectful — not looking for CRT vs LCD wars