f13.net forums - LED-backlit LCD displays?

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July 21, 2025, 04:44:47 PM

we're back, baby

With the avalanche of cheap Steam games, I've decided my crappy 2006-ish 22" lcd display needs replacement. Today I discovered the existence of affordable led-backlit displays that supposedly have godly image quality (thanks to extremely high contrast range), but I have this sneaking suspicion it's all just marketing speak.

Does anyone have experience with such things? This has been the object of my desire so far.

An LED-backlit TN panel is like putting lipstick on a pig. It's great if you doing color-sensitive work, the area TN panels are crappiest at with their 6-bit subpixels, as the LEDs gives you much more uniform brightness and color accuracy across the entire panel. And there's no "warm up" period like you have with CCFLs. Dynamic contrast ratios are also marketing fluff.

In other words I wouldn't pick a TN panel monitor over another just because one had LED-backlighting -- I'd look at other specs/features first. And I would ignore the dynamic contrast ratios figures. If all else is equal including price, sure go with the LED one.

Edit: as an aside, you used to be able to compare the difference between CCFL and LED-backlit monitors at your local Apple Store. The 24" iMac had a CCFL-backlit IPS panel while the LED Cinema Display has the same (or very similar) IPS panel but it's LED-backlit. If you set both monitors to a solid white backgrounds it was very easy to see the difference in brightness uniformity between the two types of backlighting. Unfortunately they don't make the 24" iMac anymore and the 27" iMac has an LED-backlit display.

Oh, you're in for a fun treat. Shopping for a new monitor these days is like trying to find logic on MMORPG.com.

What size are you looking to upgrade to? 24"? I myself just ordered a Samsung T240HD due to popularity on even the most anal of forums ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824001280&Tpk=Samsung%20T240HD ); though I can't recommend it because I don't even have it yet.

24" is the biggest that will fit on my desk, so that's what I'm going for. I'm getting so confused here. Now I found out about local dimming, but I've yet to find a desktop monitor capable of it, only gigantic TVs. Maybe I should just go tour some of the local computer shops to try things out and not worry about specs.

Local dimming is just another form of dynamic contrast ratio neither of which you want turned on when using the monitor as your computer desktop.

The way these monitors can advertise ridiculous high contrast ratios is basically by lying. What these monitors do when this feature is turned on is if they detect a frame that's mostly dark they turn down the backlighting allowing the LCD to get closer to total black and at the same time they boost the contrast so you don't lose all the details in the dark areas. If the frame has any "highlights" in it, however, those areas will be "overexposed". Then to measure this "dynamic" contrast ratio they measure the darkest black in one of these frames compared to the brightest white in *a different* frame and ta da that's the dynamic contrast ratio even though in any single frame the contrast ratio will never be better than around 1500:1 in an LCD (at the moment).

I have a T260HD as a second monitor, it's a perfectly reasonable TN panel, and a good tv. But you have to disable the dnie (contrast fuckery)

Quote from: Nightblade on January 02, 2010, 11:41:16 AM

Oddly enough I just ordered the exact same monitor, also from Newegg.