TN, S-IPS, H-IPS, PVA; How should I know?

[baverdi]

I live in the Chicago land area and would like to see a monitor that is not a TN screen. I have tried Tiger Direct, Frys, Sony, Best Buy, and none of them even seem to know what I am talking about. Where can I see a workstation or graphic design display. I work at a pizza place, love to game and watch HDmovies, so everyone is like, "Why do you need a high-end monitor?" I do not know what they look like. I would jut like to see one. I hear some say that IPS is bad for games and some say IPS is perfect for games, some say you need 2ms for games and others say anything lower than 8ms your eye will never see. What will my eye see?

Any response is of course appriciated, but I would like to hear from people that have experienced gaming on many different monitor screen types, people who use both an IPS and a TN screens and why, or just people who have made the switch.

But especially paople who could find me a store or building that would have atleast IPS screens on display. Even better, IPS and TN screens for easy comparison.

Feel free to comment.

Is this a good list of all the IPS panels for sale?

http://www.pchardwarehelp.com/guides/s-ips-lcd-list.php

 

[jaguarskx]

Click the following for info about panel technology:

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/specs.htm

That list is pretty good. I own two monitor in that list, the NEC LCD2690WUXi (now discontinued) and the Planar Px2611w.

It is unlikely any store will carry IPS monitors because they are expensive compared to TN panels monitors. They will sell slower than TN panel monitors, so it's not worth keeping in the warehouse. The only store I know which does carry IPS panel monitors is B&H Photo here in NYC. So if you come here for a visit then you can just stop by the store & check 'em out.

What you "see" will depend on how your brain processes the images your eyes send to it. Some people can immediately tell the difference between the two panel techs, others can't. Similar to how some people can tell the difference of sound quality between a pair of $700 JBL speakers and a pair of $5,000 B&W 803 speakers, and some people can't.

I bought my IPS monitors because i can appreciate the colors and wide viewing angles which means less colors distortion the further away from the center of the screen. The NEC LCD2690WUXi has an input lag of 32ms (2 frames; due to internal image processing), the Planar PX2611w has input lag of less than 8ms (0.5 frames). TN panels generally have less input lag than the NEC, and probably on average a little more than the Planar PX2611w. Most gamers buy TN panel monitors because 1) cheap, 2) low input lag.

Response times generally affects how often you may see ghosting. The higher the response time, the greater the chances are. Having said that, all monitors will show ghosting at some point in time. For most people, 8ms is good enough, while hardcore gamers wants something as low as possible. Both my NEC and Planar have 5ms response times; pretty fast for non-TN panel monitors and I can make out a little bit of ghosting in those rare circumstances.

As a comparison, I bought an Asus VK246H for my HTPC just to monitor some processes from time to time. Since it gets rarely used I didn't want to spend much on another LCD monitor. See following of my long review of the Asus VK246H.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/54250-3-asus-vk246h-review-final-update

Of the three monitors that I own which one do I use for gaming and watching movies all the time? The NEC LCD2690WUXi.