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Originally Posted by DoolittleRaider
Thanks to all for the excellent comments/advice. I am getting educated.
My variation on the original question now is: What are the pros and cons of 1920X1080 versus 1980X1200. I know the trend in monitors is towards 1920X1080. Why? Again, I am primarily inteterested in flight simulations (COD, ROF, A10, and others), plus some First Person Shooters like the other COD (Call of Duty:MW series).
FYI, at this point in the discussion I am definitely turning towards a 24" monitor, TN rather than IPS because even the "economy IPS" monitors are at least twice the price of TN monitors, and I think I'd want the faster 2MS response time over the IPS 8MS response. I also note that the recommended IPS monitor (Dell U2412M) has dynamic ratio of 2,000,000:1 versus the TN monitor's 30,000,000:1 ratio....that must mean something, right?
Any further advice will be appreciated. Thanks again.
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Like i said before (and yakaddict did so as well), if you do some reading up on how most of these specs are measured you'll see that they are not definitive, far from it.
The dynamic ratio is the ratio of full-blast white to pitch-dark black. It's supposed to be a measure of how good the monitor is at color variation but it's easy to manipulate to the manufacturer's favor due to the way the specs are defined: get a monitor with bad black colours, pump up it's white to the level it's burning holes in the customer's retinas and voila, according to specs your monitor has an incredible contrast ratio, but in reality it's a monitor that displays washed out black colours and annoyingly bright whites
Also, make sure you know if the response times are black to white or gray to gray (g2g). On the same monitor, a g2g response time is slower than the black to white one, guess which one most panels quote in their specifications, another marketing trick
However, a black to white response time is the least useful metric between the two. Imagine that the liquid crystals are shutters that manipulate how much light from the monitor's backlight lamp reaches the user and then think about the usual amount of colour variation you need a monitor to display during everyday use. It's not that often we get alternating frames of totally dark to totally bright colours, right? In fact, most of the time our monitors have to display variations between a middle range of colours and brightness values. In other words, g2g response time is what weighs more in how "fast" your monitor is during everyday use, unless you are running epilepsy-inducing screensavers
A 8ms gray to gray response time is nothing to scoff at, a 2ms black to white response time however while impressive on paper tells you nothing about how the monitor performs in everyday use.
Another thing against TN panels is that most (if not all of them, i just don't know if it has been improved in the meantime) are incapable of true 32-bit colour depth. They can only do 24-bit colour and to create the illusion of 32-bit colour they swap pixels between different colours to come up with the ones they are missing.
The main reason to go for a TN panel is cost and yet, some of the so-called "gaming monitors" with TN panels are almost as expensive as IPS ones. If you really want to go for a TN panel for cost reasons my suggestion would be to get one with no "fancy" features like 120Hz refresh rates to really play up their advantage of lower cost: if a TN panel is approaching IPS prices, either get the IPS or a cheaper TN one.
Finally, keep in mind that different manufacturers may use the same panels in many of their models and if you are willing to shop around you can find the same panel (aka same image quality) at cheaper prices, due to differences in ergonomics (stand, etc) and connectors/plugs supplied by each manufacturer.
For example, my Dell 2209WA uses an IPS panel made by LG. A couple of months after i bought it, LG released a model of their own using the exact same panel that was cheaper. How? Well, my Dell simply had a better stand and a bezel with an integrated USB hub, while the LG had a cheaper one.
In that sense you could try to find similar panels between Dell, LG and Hazro monitors and see what you are willing to give up to get a better price. One model might have more connectors or even a USB hub and be more expensive, the other one might lack a couple of input jacks and be cheaper, another one might be similar to the previous but have a 1 year warranty instead of a 3 year one, etc.
Take a look at the ones suggested by Tvrdi for a start. As long as input lag is low and g2g response time is 8ms or less you have nothing to fear in terms of ghosting.