Help Choosing a Balanced 24" WS Display

[adam61]

I recently decided I'd like a 24" WS display to replace my 2x20" Dell 2001FPs I have now. After doing hours and hours of research I'm still very undecided. It seems in the mid-price range there is a lot of give and take. I don't want insane input lag, but I don't do a lot of twitchy gaming. My budget is about $500, and through my research the Dell 2408wfp seems to be the leading candidate, but I'm no where near confident. Here's how my use breaks down

1) 50% World of Warcraft
2) 20% Random internet browing/YouTube/etc and some other games and FPSs would fit here
3) 20% Work From Home doing a lot of Excel and Word work
4) 10% Watch HD Movies and TV

I don't want the monitor to be lower quality color and depthwise than my 2001FPs are now (6 years later things should be BETTER right?) And it doesn't need to be perfect, but I need to have fun gaming with it (although input lag doesn't bother me at all on my current monitors), I want text to be easy to read and not difficult on the eyes when I pull an all nighter for work, and I want HD Movies to look good when I decide to catch a movie. What's my best bet here, or is this segment of the market just not great right now? Thanks so much for your help/

 

[jaguarskx]

To get a monitor of the same or better color quality, you will need to increase your budget a little bit ~$600. Your Dell 2001FPs use an 8-bit S-PVA LCD panels and unless on sale, 8-bit 24" LCD monitors costs around $600. Spending less will get you a 6-bit TN panel monitor. They are cheaper to manufacture and colors have improved over the years, but TN panels have viewing angle issues, and poor backlighting issues.

The Dell 2408WFP revision A01 has about 32ms of input lag, or 2FPS. Better than revision A00 (50ms), and I would guess it is faster than what you currently have.

The cheapest 24" 8-bit LCD monitor that I know of is the HP LP2475w @ $560 (it actually uses an IPS panel):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824176104

Go to Prad.de for some detailed reviews of LCD monitors, including the Dell 2408WFP and HP LP2475w:

http://www.prad.de/en/monitore/reviews.html