2405FPW 24-inch Wide Aspect Flat Panel LCD - Text Legibility for Person in 50s - Advice

I currently have an excellent 19" Sony LCD - 1280 X 1024. Office
Applications are fine since you can adjust the screen zoom. However the
Windows desktop is another story. I would say that I couldn't reduce the
screen resolution any more. Smaller characters will be just too small. I
realize there are options: changing the native resolution or screen font,
but these are very suboptimal and I won't compromise in this manner.

A few months ago I bought a Gateway 21" wide aspect LCD 1600X1200. I
couldn't get used to the loss of several inches of screen height. Moroever
the desktop font was smaller than what I have now. I tolerated it, but I
ended up sending the monitor back because it was too confining vertically.

The Dell 2405PW is 24" diagonally and 12.7" inches in screen height which,
in that dimension, is little larger than my 19" 4x3 conventional aspect
Sony . So the question is whether I will be able to tolerate the Windows
desktop, explorer windows etc. w/a 1920 X 1200 resolution on the Dell 2405PW
..

I would appreciate general comments, especially by those who have the 2405PW
.. The goal here is to increase my workspace and have a monitor for viewing
DVDs w/out going for a large screen TV set.

 

Hi, I'm glad you asked! I ordered the 20" wide screen, the 2005FPW,
and liked it so much that I returned it and got the 2405FPW and I love
it.

That, along with a dual monitor, has transformed my "computer
experience". Usually I have the 2405 on portrait mode so I can see a
whole web page or e-mail or a list of files, and the other monitor
supplements it.

It's very readable. I had a 600m laptop with the SXGA+ resolution and
that was hard to read (even though I wouldn't have chosen anything
else), but the 2405FPW is great.

Dell was fine letting me return the 2005FPW, so if the 2405FPW doesn't
work for you then it's as simple as returning it.

At first my secondary monitor was a 19" CRT, but when I helped a
friend place an order recently, I was able to piggy-back on his and
get a 2001FP monitor for around $300.

So, my main monitor is thte 2405, at 1200 x 1920 (portrait)
resolution, and my secondary monitor is the 2001FP at 1600 x 1200.

I have not used either monitor for viewing movies or playing games, so
I can't comment on that. For games I think an old CRT may be better
and have a faster refresh.

For anything requiring text though, both monitors are very bright,
sharp, and uniform. I don't use the downstream USB ports on both, or
the card reader on the 24", but those are other minor features.

I'm interested in hearing how well it works for viewing DVDs.

Journey

 

A couple of years ago, I decided to upgrade from a 19" CRT which I was
running at 1280x1024 monitor to a LCD.

At first I couldn't see any point in buying an LCD of the same size. If
you're going to upgrade, then why not get something bigger.

Then I learned about the native resolution for different sizes of LCD
screens. At that time, the native resolution of most 19" LCD, 1280x1024.

It seemed tho that as you moved to 20" LCD's all of a sudden the native
resolution jumped to 1600x1200. Looking at standard text at 1600x1200 was
simply to hard on my eyes. The text was too small for me.

I ended up buying a Dell 1901FP Ultrasharp in the end, and I've been
tickeled to death with it.

Jump ahead to 2 month ago, I decided it was time to upgrade the monitor
again.

I looked at the Dell 2000FPW, but realized that because it was a wide-screen
format, I would actually lose vertical height compared to my 1901FP.

The 2405FPW seemed to be a better fir for me, would game quite a bit of
width, and an inch or two in height. The price was OK because you can
usually find it with a coupon for around $800.

I was still concerned though, with the size of the text. The 1901FP ran at
1280x1024, and the bigger 2405FPW runs at 1920x1200 but is an inch or so
taller.

I thought about driving an hour or so to the nearest Dell store to see if I
could look at an actual 2405FPW to see what the text looked like. In the end
though, my impatient got the best of me and I just ordered the darn thing
sight unseen.

Ordered it on-line using my Dell Preferred acount and selected the 'next
business day' shipping. I think I ordered it around 3:30pm or so, and it was
actually delivered less than 24hr's later.

This monitor is great. The size of the text may be a slight fraction smaller
than the 1901 at 1280x1024, but I can read it just fine as is without having
to adjust any settings within Windows to compensate for the higher
resolution.

Everything I've thrown at it from normal Microsoft Office apps, to games
such as HL2, Quake4, Far Cry, Fear, etc all look great. Ive watched a few
DVD's as well and they look just fine as well, though that's not what I
bought the monitor for.

Buy it, you'll never look back.

 

Most reviews are not recommending the wide screens for desktops. There is
simply no software to take advantage of the dimensions of the wide screen.
The images are greatly stretched to accommodate the widescreen which results
in a poorer image. Avoid the widescreens for now.

 

This is totally ridiculous. All of my software takes advantage of the
wide screen, and I have a LOT of software. Imaging, video,
productivity -- the only thing I would be wary of is games. I don't
know where you get your information from, but it is totally wrong.

Journey

 

I agree. Only Internet Explorer is worthless on a widescreen, because the
image processes are a joke. Use Firefox and all is well.

 

I'd have to agree with the other post. I've had two wide screen laptops,
and have had no compatibility/display issues. Yeah, most software doesn't
specifically take advantage of the extra space, but that's the same issue
going from a 15" CRT to 19" CRT; you've got more screen real estate to work
with, and the software MAY not maximize the use of it. But that doesn't
mean you can't tile applications side by side, or whatever you like to do
with it.

If you've got some specific examples or actual reviews, I'd be curious to
read them... I realize that you say that wide screens are not recommended
for desktops, but I don't see that there would be much of a difference. The
only thing I can really think of is that the laptop display drivers are set
up for the right ratio, whereas the deskop drivers are configured for the
"old" ratios. This should simply be a matter of getting the right drivers
for the display adapter/monitor, however.

Clint

 

Horizontal resolution divided by viewable display width and vertical
resolution divided by viewable display height will give you a pixels
per length figure which could be compared for the two displays and
resolutions, giving you a sense of how much larger or smaller objects
will appear on one vs the other.

 

I will try my best to find the review I read on this. It was a few weeks
back, but I'll try and find it.

 

Thanks User N

Horizontal resolution divided by viewable display width = X
Vertical resolution divided by viewable display height = Y

What do you do w/X and Y to get pixels per length?

In fact the numbers are as follows:

Sony 19" diag - 15" W x 12" High 1280 x 1024
Dell 24" diag - 20.4" W x 12.7" High 1920 x 1200

What does this translate into per your comparison?

 

First of all I would agree that for alot of people, widescreens aren't the best
choice. As for stretched images, if one runs with the default 96 DPI setting
and at native resolution, there should be no image stretching/scaling. Things
should look fine (albeit too small for many users). Problems crop up when
people run a display resolution that has an aspect ratio that doesn't match
that of the panel, which not only brings non-native scaling but also an aspect
ratio missmatch (need to configure the panel to maintain the correct ratio).
You can also run into problems if you change the DPI setting. For example,
Windows may scale some icons and they'll lose quality. Some applications
will scale their toolbar icons/images and they'll lose quality. If IE is configured
to scale images (UseHR registry key), it does so with a speedy rather than
quality algorithm and the images won't look good. Windows Vista is designed
with high resolution displays and vector graphics in mind, and that should help.

 

For what its worth these number come out roughly as follows:

Sony 19" diag - 15" W x 12" High 1280 x 1024

Horizontal resolution divided by viewable display width = 85.3
Vertical resolution divided by viewable display height = 85.3

Dell 24" diag - 20.4" W x 12.7" High 1920 x 1200

Horizontal resolution divided by viewable display width = 94.1
Vertical resolution divided by viewable display height = 94.5

What does in mean to the naked eye?

 

The units are (system) pixels per inch (of LCD). So a line of 85.3 pixels
should be roughly an inch on the first display and (do the math) smaller
on the second.

 

NONSENSE!

As long the video card supports it so will every other modern application.

Buy the thing. I've got one as my primary and a 20" widescreen as the
secondary monitor. Both are color calibrated using the GretagMcBeth
EyeOne Display.

I'd never got back to anything else.

Bob

 

Your entire point could be made about any LCD. Running them at anything
but native resolution will yield lousy results.

Bob

 

Hi Bob, yes that's it in the nutshell. Every modern application
supports it as long as the video card is capable of achieving that
resolution.

Journey

 

Hi Kevin,

What you may have seen is an article that says that if it's a
lower-end video card, it won't have the capability of getting that
high of a resolution. Most video cards can support the 24" widescreen
(we'll see how my E1505 does with it's integrated video).

Dell now has the new 30" widescreen with 2560 x 1600 resolution. I
don't know how to do the video-card-math, but my guess (and that's all
it is) is that some integrated or lower-end video cards can't handle
that. It's the video card, not the application, that would have the
problems.

Anyway, hey -- your post generated a lot of discussion and a lot of
good info. came out of it as a result.

Journey

 

I used a formula posted online to recalucluate. That formula takes into
account the all aspect of both resolutions and the wide screen format.

Using that I determined the 24" Dell has a PPI of 94 and the 19" Sony LCD
has a PPI of 86. That seems like it would be significant to the eye. The PPI
of 94 is in fact almost the exact same as the newly released and highly
popular 21" Gateway display that is 1600 X 1024.

There may be other issues, such as whether the outstanding specs of the Dell
Monitor, contrast, brightness etc.offset the smaller size of the text and
icons. I know that looking at tiny text on my IPAQ PDA doesn't bother me at
all. Any other thoughts on this?

Calculate your diagonal pixel resolution. sqrt(horizRes^2+vertRes^2)

Example: sqrt(1280px^2+800px^2)=1,509.43698112906px

The next step is to divide all this by the screen size: diagRes/diagSize

 

This question is figured out by using the "pixel pitch" which is stated in
the specifications.

A 1907 has a pixel pitch , which is the diameter of each pixel, of 0.294 mm.
A 2407 has a pixel pitch of 0.270 mm.

So 0.294 minus 0.270 = 0.024.
0.024 divided by 0.294 = 8.16%
So the size of anything will be 8.16% smaller in both width and height on a
2407 compared to the size it was on a 1907.

 

Thanks, I didn't mean to start an disagreement. I've been looking at LCD
monitors for myself and there is so many to choose from. From what I've
read, the Viewsonic is a good choice, but I may look at the new Dell 19" ( I
think model # is 1907)