How to shop for a monitor

If you choose to shop in a store for your monitor, then you can get a more hands on experience and feel for the monitor. Since most stores will have the monitors setup and attached to a computer with a mouse available, you’ll be able to see how the monitor performs.

When shopping in a store, you should try and do some research beforehand. Check the stores website to see what models they are offering, what specs they have, and what the reviews are saying about them. Its’ best to have a good feel of what you are looking at before you step into the store. Also, we recommend that if you are shopping at a big box store such as Best Buy, Target, Wal-Mart, etc. that you don’t ask the employees for their opinion or rating of the monitor. In most cases, they aren’t trained to give you an accurate response, so if they come up to you, it’s a safe bet to count any opinion they give you as invalid.

In conclusion, you should use the internet as a reference for getting information and opinions on monitors before you go and see them in store. Be wary of employee advice and opinions, instead be self educated and find your information from reputable online resources.

How to shop for a monitor online

When you are shopping online for a monitor, you obviously don’t have the benefit of being able to physically see the monitor in person. Therefore, it’s important to buy from sites that have detailed descriptions as well as many pictures covering all angles of the monitor. This way you can still get a good feel of the monitor’s appearance and shape.

You can also get a good idea of the quality of a monitor based on the user reviews that it is receiving. A great site to not only get user reviews, but also plenty of information and pictures from about the monitor, is newegg.com. You can often find pages of user written reviews for popular monitors, giving the product a rating out of five stars.  Since the buyers have little incentive to write reviews, they can be used as a trustworthy basis for how well a monitor performs.

To sum things up, whether you are buying offline or online, reviews written by buyers of the monitor are perhaps the best way to gauge how good of a product that monitor is. So when shopping, be sure to take advantage of the abundance of user reviews that are out there.

One option that you can usually disregard when shopping for a monitor is whether or not it has built in speakers. The speakers that any monitors have inside of them will almost always be of subpar sound quality. There simply isn’t room for high quality speakers, so you’ll end up with poor sound. If it was possible to squeeze speakers capable of high quality sound inside there, then the price would be significantly different enough to make the decision easy enough for you. Your best option is to use a set of standalone speakers, which will offer you much better quality. So unless you have a need for built in speakers due to space limits or the like, then you can pretty much look over them.

There are some other options that may or may not be important to you, it’s really just personal preference and need. These include things such as USB ports, a 3.5mm port (for headphones), etc. These things may be very convenient to you, or you may not really care. It’s completely up to you whether or not to make these a priority, but we do advise to always put the monitor with the better picture in first place.

So what really matters then when you are purchasing a flat screen monitor?

Simple. The single most important thing in a monitor is its picture quality. And this will be determined by the response time(ms), screen size, connection options, and the native resolution of the monitor.  You should put these factors above all else when shopping for a monitor. Don’t skimp out on the response time, especially if you plan on playing a lot of video games. Screen size will come down to personal preference, but try not to undersize yourself. For the best image quality, try to pick out a monitor that has a DVI or HDMI connector. And finally, make sure that the native resolution of the monitor is a size that you are happy with and appropriate relative to the size of the monitor screen. In conclusion, the little extras won’t end up mattering to you if your image quality is subpar, so be sure to select a monitor that will give you a high quality image.

You should also be on the lookout for the display ratio of the new monitor that you are purchasing. As we mentioned in one of our earlier posts, flat screen monitors perform at their best when used at their native resolution (you can use other resolutions should you choose to, but you won’t get the same quality as the native one). However, if your video card doesn’t support the monitor’s native resolution, then you may have a problem. While you may be able to live without using it, you might be faced with a slightly bigger problem: complete lack of picture. If your card doesn’t support the monitor’s native resolution, then you may be straight out of luck with using that monitor with that card. Therefore, we strongly recommend when buying a new monitor that you make sure the display ration is compatible with your current video card, unless you plan on upgrading that as well.

If you do need to buy a monitor where your video card doesn’t support the native resolution, then there are a few things you can look at to try and determine whether or not it will work. Basically, it will be dependent upon two things: the age of your video card, and the resolution of the monitor. The older your card and the bigger the resolution, the less chance you have of it actually working. So if your card is relatively new and the monitor isn’t huge, then you should be okay, but you still won’t get maximum performance. Bottom line, you should try and select a monitor that is completely compatible with your current computer.

If you’re choosing a monitor to do your work on and for internet browsing, then you don’t need a super high refresh rate. Shoot for a monitor with a large display area so that you can manage multiple programs at once easily and have plenty of space. A 17 inch monitor can do the job, but we wouldn’t recommend this size as it’s really just not enough space.  A 19 inch monitor is a much better alternative, and there isn’t much of a price gap between these two sizes. If you are willing to spend more, you can go bigger. It eventually all comes down to personal preference. Another thing to pay attention to is the adjustability of the monitor. Since you’ll be sitting in front of it for long periods of time working, you want it to be flexible so that you can be comfortable.

If you enjoy playing games, especially high definition games, then you’ll need a monitor with a fast response time so that you get a clear picture. Generally, the bigger the monitor the better experience you’ll have when playing games. If you intend on hooking up a console to your monitor, you’ll want to make sure you have multiple input options and an easy way to switch inputs back and forth so that you can swap between your gaming system and windows when need be. Some monitors have a dedicated button for this purpose, so if you see yourself needing to switch back and forth a lot, then it may be wise to seek out a monitor like this for your convenience.

In conclusion, you need to decide what you intend to use your flat screen monitor for so you can make the right purchase. If you don’t intend to use your monitor for gaming, you can easily get away with selecting a monitor with lower specs without any negative effects. But if you plan on playing games or other graphically demanding applications, then it’s best to get a monitor with a higher refresh rate.

Pixel: A digital unit used to measure screen space. For example, one of the most common widescreen resolutions is 1680×1050 pixels. For reference, a period in Times New Roman size twelve font is the size of one pixel.

Dead Pixel: A pixel that is either permanently black, or permanently displaying part of an image that is no longer on the screen. When you buy a new monitor, be sure to check for these immediately.

ms: This is the response time for how long the pixels in a monitor take to change from black to white and then back to black once again. You should aim to find a monitor with a low response time, as high response times can cause lag when watching videos or playing games.  4ms-5ms is the most common, but if you need higher performance out of your monitor, you may want to pay more and go with 2ms-3ms.

Native Resolution: The default resolution of the monitor. While other resolutions can be run, the picture quality and crispness will be at its best when using the monitor’s native resolution.

VGA: Analog display, the original standard used for monitors. If you have a CRT monitor, then this is the connection method it uses.

DVI: Digital Visual Interface, a high quality interface used on flat screen monitors.

HDMI: High Definition Multimedia Interface is a compact method of transferring high definition audio/video digital data. HDMI offers a higher quality picture than VGA and DVI. Also, if you intend on using your monitor with a Blu-ray player, you’ll need a monitor with an HDMI port. You’ll also benefit greatly from it if you intend on using your monitor with either Xbox 360 or Playstation 3.

This should wrap up this section in covering the basic terms and abbreviations you need to be aware of when purchasing a flat screen monitor. For more information, you can always check out our other posts.