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The new desktop standard is the 17-inch monitor. It's sharper, streamlined, and about $500.
You wouldn't view the Grand Canyon through a keyhole, so why would you squint at a mammoth spreadsheet or a mile-long report on a 14- or 15-inch monitor? Today, 17-inch monitors are the desktop standard, and for good reason. They offer the ideal balance of screen size, physical size, and price. The average street price for a 17-inch display has fallen below $500--nearly a third less than the $740 average of a year ago. That's still double what a typical 15-inch monitor costs, but trading up makes your documents a whopping 30 percent bigger. By increasing the resolution from 800 by 600 to 1024 by 768 (the highest recommended resolution for 17-inchers), you can fit 64 percent more content onto your screen--all of which translates into less scrolling and squinting, less mousing around.
But how can you tell which 17-inch monitor is best? To help you make the right choice, we evaluated two dozen different models, assessing them in terms of image quality, price, support policies, controls, and other features.
After all was said and done, two monitors marched away with Best Buys: the IBM P72 and the Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 87TXM. At $589, the P72 is relatively expensive, but our jury awarded it top honors for its razor-sharp text and vibrant graphics; it was the only monitor in the roundup deemed excellent in both categories (see ("http://www.pcworld.com/current_issue/article/0,1212,7831,00.html") Top 10 Monitors). The P72's elegant on-screen controls are easy to navigate and master, allowing precise--and lockable--fine-tuning.
Mitsubishi's Diamond Pro 87TXM garnered our other Best Buy--again. It's been a top contender since debuting on our March 1997 Top 10 chart. The 87TXM didn't match the P72 in displaying fine details, but it earned scores of very good for both text and graphics, and it costs $50 less. It has more extensive controls than the P72 and, for users sensitive to screen flicker, a higher refresh rate.
After analyzing the results of our jury tests, we discovered that tube type is a significant variable. In our image tests, displays with Sony Trinitron or Mitsubishi Diamondtron tubes (which use vertical red, green, and blue phosphor stripes) overwhelmingly outperformed those with shadow mask tubes (aka...