New monitor

[nawhead]

I bought my current monitor back in 1999 (a 19" Trinitron CRT). It has served me very well. Now it is dying.

I've been delaying buying a new monitor for months now. What I saw available just didn't inspire me to move. But now I see something.

The Dell 2209WA. A 22" IPS panel LCD with limited availability. Rabid threads have popped up all over the Internet praising this monitor in the last 3 months. It has instantly shot to the top of "best of" lists for 20-22" LCD buys. Some say it is the spear of a new wave of low priced IPS LCD's that will push out the TN LCD's widely used today (which never quite lived up to CRT image quality). I almost feel like part of history buying this now.

The price is right. The product is right. The timing is right.

I got mine at $220 total (w/ coupon code 1Z829VM32T983V for 10% off). The range people are paying for it are 190-260. This particular model might not be available for very long.

I feel pretty lucky.


[edit: The rabid threads: AnandTech,HardOCP,HardwareCanucks]
[edit: Pro-style review]

[chinz]

Wow, it's actually cool that you can get other panels than TN for that price. I bought mine (24" BenQ with TN) for $300 a few months back. You gotta remember however, we have a little uglier prices here. That Dell is gonna be more than $400 here.

The worst thing in everyday use about TN is that viewing angles are so poor, that the upper end looks totally different color than the lower end. When you are using photoshop for example, that really pisses you off.

I've been considering, getting some higher end Eizo LCD monitor for photo editing purposes, just because of that. They are just so awfully expensive (around 1k).

What I mean:
Single-page version

[dansiek]

Wow your first monitor must have been legendary to last a decade. Also my monitor is just like your Dell one in looks etc, and i have had no problems so far.

[nawhead]

I was considering the 22" or 24" BenQ also. I was very close to settling for a BenQ 2200HD (going from a Trinitron CRT [yes Dansiek, "legendary" is the right word] to TN, no matter how much bigger = mehhhh to me) but then I found the threads about the 2209WA.

Now, I think buying any TN panel would be pandering to sub-par technology that's been refined to be "good enough" for the common man.

But the 2209WA is different. The development of a low cost IPS panel is an acknowledgement that the TN panel is inferior, dead-end technology that shouldn't have taken over majority market share. TN should have only been a stepping stone while better panels like E-IPS were developed.

Now that time has come!

This web page gives a clear example of the viewing angle difference between a common TN panel and E-IPS used in the 2209WA. Change the 3rd dropdown menu to Viewing angles.
Face to Face : cameras, printers, ... - DigitalVersus

But don't worry if you can't get the 2209WA now. Rumor has it that more E-IPS panels are in production so we should be seeing a lot more of them in different sizes later this year.