Zero Dead Pixel Websites?

[AragornJDL]

So I'm in the market for an LCD monitor, and I'm pretty concerned about shelling out all this cash for a monitor with dead pixels. I'm almost certainly going to be buying online, so there's no way to try before I buy. I know some websites allegedly have a 'zero dead pixel' return policy. PCNation had one, but they seem to have done away with it last week, it is no longer listed on their website.

Does anyone know of other websites that such a policy? On a related issue, are certain panel manufacturers known to have better or worse rates of dead pixels?

Just so you know, I'm pretty much sold on the Samsung 172x unless somebody convinces me otherwise in the next day or two.

Thanks,
AragornJDL

 

[onesaint]

Be weary of what you buy. Check this out… http://forumz.tomshardware.com/ce/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=18136#18136

Its all there Samsung is tricking its customers into buying 16ms. Monitors.


GA-7NNXP, XP3000+ Barton
1 gig corsair pc2700, 2 Maxtor 80GB SATA 150
1 Seagate 160 gig ATA 133,
Asus GeForce4 TI4800, Samsung 172X
D. VINE 4 Chassis (moded)

 

[asgallant]

UpgradeSource.com has a zero dead pixel policy, although it is not labled as such on their website.

 

[Aciv]

I don't think you have to worry about the quoted response time, e.g. 12ms or 16ms. Actual response time might vary but the whole confusion about this panel started when Samsung was first to distribute this panel last fall, when the stated specs for the panel were 16ms. However, when they sent 25 ms panels to reviewers at the time (I'm guessing they mistakenly sent the engineering samples, as those would basically be the monitor with toned downed features) it received poor reviews across the board, obviously.

So they pulled all the 172Xs at the time to "rework" the panel and shipped the 12ms panels as of about this February. Thus, resellers that may have not been in the know probably still listed it as a 16ms part, and the conspiracy theories regaurding whether people were getting the 16ms or 12ms version were born. Rest assured that any panels you were to get now would be of the 12ms variety.

The bigger problem I saw from those posts was the existence of defective pixels. While there were only 1 or 2 pixels per post mentioning them, some people would be annoyed with just that many, so keep that in mind. It's too bad that the national stores (i.e. CompUSA, Best Buy, etc.) don't carry this particular model for whatever reason, since I would definitely pay a little bit extra just to be able to open the box and test it out before I left.