Flat Screen Monitor Guide

There are lots of features and bells and whistles that you will come across when shopping for a new monitor. Some of them may be important to you, and some of them may be completely irrelevant. In this article we’ll help you to determine what you should or shouldn’t pay attention to during your shopping.

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.