In Practice
We had no problems with office applications once we lowered the brightness enough to avoid snow blindness. Text was clear in VGA and in DVI.
Gaming obviously wasn't as good as with an L90D+, but let's be fair - performance was good enough to satisfy the great majority of gamers. Latency was somewhat perceptible, but you'd really have to look closely or be fresh from playing on a CRT monitor to really notice it. In a way it's like the thin black lines on Trinitron tubes - generally you don't pay them any mind, but when somebody points them out to you they're all you see.
We appreciated the quality of the interpolation on the L1780U, and we had hoped to find the same performance on the L1980U. Unfortunately we didn't. The L1980U is a little better than the competition, but that's all. You'll have to play in native resolution.
For video, the L1980U did fairly well. First of all, it has wider viewing angles than products that use 8ms Samsung panels. Then, video noise was at an acceptable level. LG has avoided the current fashion of glare filters. This technology, in my opinion, is debatable given the annoyance it causes when screening movies.
Conclusion
The L1980U is a good monitor for several reasons. It's responsive, though not among the very fastest. It has better viewing angles than its 8ms competitors, which is worthwhile if you're not looking for speed at any cost. And it has a design and finish that are beyond reproach. The only problem is the price. At $620 on average, it's in a class with the NEC 1970GX.
