1600 X 1200 Lcd Monitors

LCD monitors have their days numbered as new technologies (such as OLED panels) begin to surface. Although LCDs will be around for another 10-20 years, the LC (liquid crystal)  part will soon be replaced completely.

This is the part of the panel that gives each pixel (and subpixel) a different brightness level in order to mix the right color using red, green and blue (RGB). The TFT (thin film transistor) technology will be used for many years to come in most flat panels, because it’s the best way to activate and deactivate pixels in both LCD and OLED technologies.

The future is OLED, because this type of panels don’t require liquid crystals to cover backlighting to generate the appropriate amount of light. OLEDs generate the right amount of light in the right shade of color right from the start, so no additional filter or backlighting is needed.

During manufacturing process they just insert organic material between the anode and cathode which will react by emitting light (radiation) when electric current passes through. AMOLED (active matrix organic light emitting diode) technology pushes the OLED technology to its limits by storing electric current in capacitors, so when a large group of pixels need to change color it doesn’t strain the power supply, less electricity is needed at a time.

Users won’t notice any significant change in the way new monitors will look. They will be thinner, and will have a sharper image, and of course they will probably come with different resolutions. Right now the two most popular resolutions are 1366 x 768 (aka. HD Ready) and 1920 x 1080 (aka. FullHD), but in the future monitors will most likely become wider, closer to (and beyond) the 2:1 aspect ratio.

1600 x 1200 LCD monitors will disappear because this resolution will be used only with a few industrial machines, where the displayed content will always remain closer to the 1:1 aspect ratio. As a matter of fact the 1280 x 1024 resolution will disappear too, although it was very popular for many years. At the moment I use such a 17” monitor, bought it used for only $50, but I will replace it with a 21.5” – 23” FullHD LED-backlit LCD as soon as possible.

Newegg.com has two LCD monitors for sale with 1600 x 1200 resolution from NEC. One for $859 and the other for $999. These are both based on fluorescent tube backlighting, so it’s clear that they will soon disappear if NEC won’t implement at least LED backlighting. 16ms response time is a little weird and it also lacks DHCP support (?!), although it has analog and digital inputs. Such monitors clearly don’t address average computer users that want to play a HD movie from time to time.

It has the “Certified for Windows VISTA” logo, but specs are very poor. It needs 60Watts, which is too much for roughly the same number of pixels as a FullHD monitor has: 1600 x 1200 = 1,920,000 pixels and 1920 x 1080 = 2,073,600 pixels.

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