LCD Viewable Area

[Wiz4rd]

How does the viewable are compare to crt's? My 21 inch crt has a viewable are of 19.9 inches I believe.

I want a lcd but I want to make sure I have atleast 18 inches of viewable area.

[The Spyder]

My 18.1inch dell has... 18.1inch viewable.... my soon 15inch has 15inch....

[phoenix111384]

you get what you buy. 17" lcd monitors are 17" viewable, same is applied for all. 18" monitors are a bit pricey, but if you have the money, go ahead. you'd get better performance/price ratio with the 17" monitors though.

[shortyes]

Actually Dell has a 18" LCD for 450 dollars and a 19" for 560 shipped + tax if you live in one of the 4 states Dell has a presence in. LCD's are different than CRT. What you buy is what you get aka a 19" crt is 18" viewable but a 19" LCD is 19" viewable and so forth.

[stoopid]

Hey, does that mean my 17" is really 17 inches??? I'm a little stoopid, didn't catch it after the first 2 responses... :rolleyes:

[TimWest]

I have those 18" Dells at work.....they are nice

If you can afford it $450 is a great price!!!

[Graphic67]

If you use any resolution over 1280x1024 on your 21" crt and you want to use those same high resolutions on an LCD you will need a 20" LCD. I have not seen an LCD under 20" which supports 1600x1200 resolution.

CRT measurements are of the entire tube, not just what you can see.
LCD measurements are of the display area.

To help compare diagonal measures to area, here is a handy table (for 4x3 aspect ratio displays):

Diagonal (in) ==> screen area (in^2)

15 ==> 108
17 ==> 139
18 ==> 156
19 ==> 173
20 ==> 192
21 ==> 212
22 ==> 232
23 ==> 254

[TheMatrixHasYou]

It depends on what you're using it for. If you're gaming, you're much better off getting a 17" monitor w/ a 16ms response time, otherwise you'll experience ghosting. I haven't seen any LCDs over 17" that have that response time.