Stars are going to fly with our LCDs

Our ratings for screens (computer monitors) have changed this month. The criteria has got tougher

We announced before in our product survey for 24 inch screens that their ratings were more severe than for the 22 inch screens. This is no longer the case and we will be applying the same rules for all screens from now on.

The almost perfect screen is:

1. Very responsive (average ghosting of less than 1 colour image) and without excessive display delay.
2. Faithful default colours (dE< 3).
3. Very contrasted (contrast > 800:1 at 200 cd/m² = black < 0.25 cd/m²).
4. With open angles of vision that assure colour homogeneity.
5. With very good ergonomics, and in particular an intelligent base, a rotating socket, adjustable up and down...

Realistically speaking this perfect screen doesn’t exist, or costs too much. Those that come closest are proably the Fujitsu-Siemens SCENICVIEW P24W-5 ECO and the LaCie 324.

The new rules!

As of now, any screen hoping to get our 5 star rating, will lack at the very most one of these 5 essential criteria. Failure on two or more means 4 stars maximum – except if it compensates in some exceptional way in another area.

In concrete terms:

• A monitor such as the 5-star LG Flatron W2261V, with a TN panel (= lacking in criteria number 4) and a fixed base (= lacking in criteria number 5) will now lose one star.
• The Samsung SyncMaster 220MD - previously at 5 stars – has a TN panel, a fixed base and poor ghosting. Potentially, it could have lost 2 stars! However it claws itself back because of some outstanding options: its TNT tuner and video correction circuit are better than average. So it is only marked down to 4 stars.
• The LaCie 324 is: responsive, not quite faithful enough in terms of colours, has good contrast, a PVA panel, top level ergonomics and also an excellent video correction circuit. It will therefore keep its 5 stars.

For 22 inch screens, and this makes sense as their ratings criteria was less severe, the ratings revision is even more radical.