Monitor buying tips

[Sunite]

Monitor buying tips


Every PC user spends atleast 5 hours looking at the monitor every day. If the picture is not clear enough then there is a high possibility that the eyes get damaged. There are many different sizes of monitors available ranging from 15" to 17" or even higher. The sharpness of the image in a monitor is dependent on the Graphics card. Nevertheless the quality of the monitors play an important role. Here are some of the tips that you should know before buying a monitor.


There are two types of monitors namely CRT and LCD. The monitor that looks like a small TV is a CRT monitor. In TV as well as CRT monitors there is a Cathode Ray Tube. An LCD monitor is smaller in width and consumes less power.

The 15",17" or 19" TVs represent the diagonal length of the screen. Therefore if you buy a 15" inch screen , the actual length is just 13 1/2 or 14 inches only.

CRT monitor is heavier than LCD monitor. LCD monitor is very lightweight.

The distance between two adjacent pixels in a monitor is called 'dot pitch'. This is measured in millimeters (mm). Smaller the dot pitch the clearer the picture quality. Usually there are monitors with dot pitch varying between 0.20 mm to 0.27mm. Some manufacturers use diagonal dot pitch while most of them use horizontal dotpitch. The diagonal dot pitch is always longer than the horizontal dot pitch

Resolution of a monitor has to be considered with care. Most of the monitors have resolution of 800x600 and 1024x768. The more expensive monitors have 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 resolutions. When the resolution is higher the images and text will appear smaller. But you can see more text and bigger pictures in the monitor with high resolution.

Another thing to note is the 'Refresh rate'. This rate is usually 73 Hz, 75 Hz, 85 Hz. Refresh rate of 85 Hz means the picture on the monitor is refreshed 85 times within a second.

The brightness and contrast can be adjusted using buttons. Some monitors come with the software to adjust these settings.