A CRT monitor shows a picture by continuously redrawing the entire screen many times a second. How quickly it does this, is set by the refresh rate setting in your graphics card driver options. 60Hz corresponds to 60 refreshes a second, and at that setting you can see the flicker as the screen redraws itself which causes headaches and eye strain in a very short time. A higher refresh rate of 85Hz looks much better, but can still cause eye strain after a few hours of use. An LCD monitor is more comfortable to use all day, since each pixel of the screen is controlled by its own transistor, and stays lit up until it gets a signal to change it. Only what is changed is updated. This means there is no flicker and a sharper image, which is considerably better for your eyes. You will definitely notice a difference if you upgrade from an older CRT monitor.

The liquid crystal inside an LCD monitor takes a certain amount of time to change from transparent to opaque. This delay is very noticeable on older LCD monitors where ghosting can occur as the screen is updated. This delay is referred to as the response time, and is a very important specification to look up when you are shopping for an LCD screen. A lower response time is always better. Response time is almost immaterial for office work, but is very important to gaming. To give yourself a good idea of how much of a problem this is, divide 1000 by the LCD's response time, to give the equivalent refresh rate in Hertz. 20ms works out as equivalent to 50Hz, and 16ms as 63Hz.

How well you get on with an LCD monitor is dependant on your gaming style and preferred games. For a twitch gamer, the response rate can be a slight handicap, but for the accurate marksman, the perfect geometry and sharpness of an LCD gives a strong advantage. The clarity of the screen will give you an advantage in any game where you need to spot small movements very quickly.

Considering most people running at high resolutions on CRTs will not be looking at refresh rates above around 75Hz, the difference in delay is almost a thing of the past. With 8ms panels just starting to hit the market, this would give us the equivalent of 125Hz. Unfortunately, almost all TFT displays support a maximum of 75Hz. This would mean any gamer would ultimately be limited to 75fps. The difference between 8ms and 12ms would be for all intents and purposes negligible.

Viewing angle

Limited viewing angle has long been a reason to avoid LCD monitors. Because the light that reaches your eyes must pass through so many filters and layers, viewing the screen at a sharp angle causes the colours to distort, because you end up looking at each pixel through the edges of the one next to it. This has always been a problem with the previous generations of LCD screens, but the latest models have almost totally eliminated the problem by making the sandwich of filters and liquid crystal so thin that they appear the same at any angle.

All of the screens we tested here are viewable and clear at any angle that a CRT monitor would be. Monitor manufacturers don't publish any easily comparable figures on viewing angles, but as a general rule, a monitor with a high contrast ratio and low response time will also have a wide viewing angle.

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