Screens Shiny and New Top the Chart

But some oldies are goodies: Tried-and-true standard-screen models hit the right price point and win Best Buy honors.

A screen star and an aspiring speedster: NEC's MultiSync LCD1970GX (left) and ViewSonic's VX924.

If you don't have a 19-inch LCD on your desk yet, just you wait. Most 19-inch LCDs have dropped in price so radically that they now cost roughly what a 17-inch model did a year ago. Many of these monitors--even the bargain ones--produce image quality that will please all but the most particular user. And new 19-inch units offer such tantalizing features as sharper and more colorful displays, faster screens, fancier designs, and easier control adjustments. But for many buyers, determining which of these attractions are really helpful and which are merely hype can be a daunting task.

This month we tested seven new 19-inch LCD monitors. Two--the NEC MultiSync LCD1970GX and the ViewSonic VX924--reached our ranked chart (see "Screens Shiny and New Top the Chart"), largely owing to their excellence in displaying sharp, legible text and accurate, detailed graphics. Although some other new models had similar specifications and features, few impressed our judges with their text or graphics image quality as much as those that made our chart did--and none of the also-rans offered the right mix of performance and features.

Acer's AL1932d, CTX Technology's P972, Hyundai's ImageQuest L91D, Planar's PX1910M, and Samsung's SyncMaster 193+ underwent our testing, but they did not score high enough to enter the Top 10.

(Read article "LCD Monitors: Bigger, Better, More.")