Best ~£200 24" HDMI monitor?

PostBest ~£200 24" HDMI monitor? by **Tafdolphin** » Fri Sep 11, 2009 3:05 pm

So, I'm looking for a new monitor, specs as topic title and I've got a shortlist:

SAMSUNG SyncMaster T240
BenQ E2400HD
Dell SP2309W (23" but looks good)
Dell S2409W (24" version but apparently has serious sound problems)

Anyway, for around £200, which monitor is the best bet? One of those, or something different? Looking to use it with my PC and 360.

I picked up a Dell S2409W for £150 a few weeks back. It's amazing, and is true HD. I don't know what that means. All I know is that there are no dead pixels, and the bevel reflection thing on the edge doesn't bother me at all.

They fixed the fault where sound would go off if there were silence for 5 seconds, taking 15 to reboot. There's nothing of the sort, anymore.

What they mean by 'TrueHD' is that you're getting a gooseberry fool 1080p resolution instead of the much more superior 1920x1200 picture. They're taking away your pixels and slapping a tag on it saying 'TrueHD' and people are lining up to buy a shitter screen :lol:

Go for a 1920x1200 screen if you have a graphics card to power your games through 1920x1200 resolution. Otherwise if it doesn't matter to you about having a 1080p screen, then buy one of those 'trueHD' screens.

I wanted to go for the BenQ but it was much more expensive at the time.

$ilva $hadow wrote:What they mean by 'TrueHD' is that you're getting a gooseberry fool 1080p resolution instead of the much more superior 1920x1200 picture. They're taking away your pixels and slapping a tag on it saying 'TrueHD' and people are lining up to buy a shitter screen

Go for a 1920x1200 screen if you have a graphics card to power your games through 1920x1200 resolution. Otherwise if it doesn't matter to you about having a 1080p screen, then buy one of those 'trueHD' screens.

I wanted to go for the BenQ but it was much more expensive at the time.

It is 1920x1200.

$ilva $hadow wrote:What they mean by 'TrueHD' is that you're getting a gooseberry fool 1080p resolution instead of the much more superior 1920x1200 picture. They're taking away your pixels and slapping a tag on it saying 'TrueHD' and people are lining up to buy a shitter screen

Go for a 1920x1200 screen if you have a graphics card to power your games through 1920x1200 resolution. Otherwise if it doesn't matter to you about having a 1080p screen, then buy one of those 'trueHD' screens.

I wanted to go for the BenQ but it was much more expensive at the time.

I especially needed a 16:9 monitor as I want to plug my PS3 into it. At 1920x1200 there'd be awful stretching.

Thank God for "TrueHD".

You wouldn't get stretching habizzle, you'd get black borders.

In which case I plan on storming Dell Towers and demand my 120 pixels back. (I recentlt bought the 24" Dell. Same as Balloon Sod).

Actually it's 120x1920 pixels.

*shakes fist*

Also, I used to own an HP monitor, Taff. It was 20", but they do 24" ones too. Looked beautiful and it was really good too (where as I don't rate their laptops), so you might want to check them out. Only reason I bought the Dell is it was on offer for about £140.

Cheers for the advice guys (well, apart from Silver who didn't really help and tried in vain to derail the topic).

The only thing stopping me from getting the Dell was the sound issue. If that's fixed, I think I'll go for that. One question about that though, there is an audio out jack isn't there? Also, any recommended retailers would be great as it doesn't seem to be available at the Dell shop for some reason.

Balloon Sod wrote:They fixed the fault where sound would go off if there were silence for 5 seconds, taking 15 to reboot. There's nothing of the sort, anymore.

As I say, good stuff. Does your monitor have a specific version number? Also, where did you buy it?

I wasn't trying to derail the topic :fp:

You're pathetic.

Just go for the higher pixels if you can. The BenQ monitor is fantastic. As are the Dell ones surprisingly. Just try not to buy into the 1080p stuff. If it's 1920x1200, then go for that.

You certainly weren't helpinh. The majority of your post is taking a swipe at people, not helping with my enquiry. As it happens, I've done a bit of searching around and it seems that the majority of places actually recommend 16:9 for a monitor being used for joint PC and console usage as it avoids stretching or black borders.

Saying all that, the BenQ's price is still very tempting.

Yeah, what with the HDMI in, the Dell has an audio output.

If it didn't, getting sound from whatever was in via HDMI would be a serious issue, so before I bought it I had a look over the documentation.

If you scroll down to the Bottom View you can see all the inputs and outputs with a key.

As for where to buy it, I'm afraid I can't be much help there. Basically they had a very good deal on it last Bank Holiday and HotUKDeals had a field day.

Dell give you a 3 year warranty so it may be worth waiting until it's back in stock, although I did hear that the reason they were giving such a large discount was they were clearing stock as they're bringing out their new range. I don't know how true that is or how long they're going to take, but they're actually meant to be cheaper than this current range.

Cheers Stagger. Looks like the best place to get it is ebay, with the pcbuyit online store doing the A01 version (the one without the sound problem) £200 delivered.

Tafdolphin wrote:You certainly weren't helpinh. The majority of your post is taking a swipe at people, not helping with my enquiry. As it happens, I've done a bit of searching around and it seems that the majority of places actually recommend 16:9 for a monitor being used for joint PC and console usage as it avoids stretching or black borders.

Saying all that, the BenQ's price is still very tempting.

It wasn't a snipe at anyone here in this thread. You chose to take it as some sort of insult.

The majority of places are just trying to sell you anything.

If you'd actually thought about what I'd posted you'd have realised that all a 1080p screen does is cut off the thin black borders by getting rid of those pixels. You may as well go for 1920x1200, and not worry about the thin borders, as a 16:10 resolution is supported on many pc games compared to older games supporting 1080p. I've got a 1080p screen, with my old games I have to find custom patches to display a correct resolution and some games offer 1080p resolution by cutting off the pixels a 1920x1200 res would show. This results in the top of characters heads and the bottom of their modes being cut off, especially in cutscenes. The extra real estate will also benefit you on the PC if you're going to edit images.

I appreciate that sort of info, thank Silver.

As it is, I can't find any 16:9 monitors to match the Dell's price (the BenQ is also 16:9 unless I'm mistaken). It looks like a fairly solid monitor for the price and my PC is too old to be getting anywhere near enough the max resolution to worry about that (its main usage will be for the 360).

Thanks all!

The BenQ and the Dells are what AVforums go nuts over. You won't go wrong with them, but a year or so back they were offering 1920x1200 resolution monitors. If they're 1920x1080 then most likely they're phasing out the 1920x1200 monitors in that range.

PostRe: Best ~£200 24" HDMI monitor? by **Trinity** » Sun Sep 13, 2009 5:57 pm

I got a IIyama E2407HDS for about £140. Well worth a look. I sold my 22" incher to someone on here (FE?). Great monitor.

As a post-script to this, I got my Dell s2409w on Friday. It's great, much much bigger than I expected and the screen looks fantastic. My Xbox through HDMI looks amaze.

I have however, noticed some sound defects. Although nothing as serious as the "no sound for 15 secs" one, but ever now and then they'll be a momentary raise in vloume followed by a half0second or so dimming. It also clicks now and again.

Still, a good monitor for £200.

I just got mine out of the box yesterday. I've tried my 360 (ODST looks wonderful), PS3 and currently have my MacBook in it.

All look gorgeous. The Mac and 360 are both via VGA which is a bit annoying but I'll get a DVI adapter for the mac so I don't have to meddle with cables.

Sadly my macbook doesn't seem to have the grunt to drive this monitor as smoothly as it should - scrolling large pages and switching between spaces is a bit juddery at times, but luckily my movies play fine - crucial as the 360/PS3 can't play .mkv files.

All in all I'm thrilled, considering it was only £140.

Harry Bizzle wrote:Sadly my macbook doesn't seem to have the grunt to drive this monitor as smoothly as it should - scrolling large pages and switching between spaces is a bit juddery at times, but luckily my movies play fine - crucial as the 360/PS3 can't play .mkv files.

Yeah, I was a bit worried when the first thing I plugged the monitor into was my girlfriend's laptop via VGA. Whilst watching a DVD there was some terrible screen-tear; literally whenever the camera moved people's heads would split in half with the top moving out of sync with the bottom. Of course, all this disappeared when connected to my PC and Xbox. I really can't understate how amazing the picture is through HDMI, Gears 2 looks mind-blowingly good to the point where I'm actually spotting details I missed first time through (which was on a 42" Samsung 1080p TV).

Couple more incidents with the sound problem last night though. It scared the gooseberry fool out of me while watching Alan Patridge; the audience laughter came in really really loud for half a second almost once an episode. No such issues with the games yet though and I'm planning on buying one of these http://tinyurl.com/yjfpcae following this http://tinyurl.com/kr2kz and running the sound through my PC's 5.1.

PostRe: Best ~£200 24" HDMI monitor? by **shas'la** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 4:32 pm

Trinity wrote:I got a IIyama E2407HDS for about £140. Well worth a look. I sold my 22" incher to someone on here (FE?). Great monitor.

can you give any more details about why you like it so much?

Best ~£200 24" HDMI monitor?

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