17" LCD Part I: Six Sexy Panels

Improvements Expected This Year: Response Time

The question of whether you go ahead and buy now or delay your purchase is even more burning, since the real leap forward happened last year just before the summer. In the year 2000, monitors ran mostly at 50 ms and had fairly poor contrast (200:1). The 2001/2002 classic LCD screen is based on a response time of 30 ms, a contrast of 300:1 and brightness of 250 cd/m. The improvement can be roughly translated into the following simple calculation:

Response time of 50 ms = 1/ 0.050 = 20 images displayed on the screen per second.

Response time of 30 ms = 1/ 0.030 = 33 images displayed on the screen per second.

Reminder number one: the eye perceives motion to be continuous starting at 25 images a second.

Reminder number two: each manufacturer uses its own method for calculating response time, and these figures are given only as an indication. Yet they illustrate that real progress has been made in the space of only one year.

In 2002 and 2003, screens are going to be even better, of course. We had a preview of this at the CeBIT. This summer, for example, ViewSonic will be launching its first 20 ms response time monitors. The response times of the VG700 and VX2000 will be 16 ms and 11.6 ms, respectively.

If the above method of calculation is used, the result would be:

Response time of 16 ms = 1/ 0.016 = 62.5 images displayed on the screen per second.

Response time of 11.6 ms = 1/ 0.0116 = 86.2 images displayed on the screen per second.

If the figures given by ViewSonic are correct, we ought to have the same ease of use with games on an LCD as we get on a CRT.