Monitors - LCD vs CRT

Hello all again, not sure if anyone can help here but here goes -

i need to buy a new monitor and am umming and aahing between a 20inch lcd and a 19 inch crt.

basically as photographers i would be keen to know what experience people have had with lcds. I am currently using a laptop screen whihc is proving very unreliable as there is a difference in tone and contrast between the top of the screen and the bottom.... i dont want to buy and lcd and find this is the same.

I do know that crt still gives the best in tersm of colour performance although the new lcd's arent far off especially the new very expensive ones - but i dont have a £1000 budget for this.

the lcd i am looking at is the NEC 2070, so any actaul experience of that would be cool.

thanks everyone

I thought the istD was quite noisy at ISO 800 until I got a decent CRT monitor and realised quite how rubbish my laptop screen was. I'm using a Lacie badged Mitsubishi diamondtron 19 inch (they change the product code every few months, but it's been the same monitor for a couple of years now) which was about £150. The difference between a CRT and a laptop screen is enormous in terms of colour reproduction. The more expensive TFT displays are better, but still not up to a CRT.

The only downside, size and weight aside, is that CRTs are inevitably less sharp. I find it's very handy to have the CRT hooked up to the laptop so I can use both screens at the same time.

Steve

http://www.siblingmedia.com/
http://www.siblog.co.uk/

Here's my findings:

Cheap LCDs do have angle problems. I have some fairly nice Dell Ultrasharp TFTs which have no angle issues whatsoever. Calibrated with a Spyder they have served me very well.

Laptop LCDs can be okay if Spydered. I recently had loads of problems trying to calibrate a Toshiba M200 Tablet PC. If you use a Spyder, run the latest version of OptiCal (downloadable from the website). Additionally, my NVidia GoGeforce in the M200 was doubly applying the profile which messed everything up. Had to go to the monitor properties, to Advanced, and removed (yes removed!) the profile from the colour management tab. Photoshop is now fine and dandy

Now I only use LCDs. If you go for one, check out the contrast ratio (e.g. 500:1 etc), and the angle of view.

If you haven't got a Spyder, then www.Praxisoft.com have WiziWYG which does a half decent visual calibration of LCD monitors (and it's free too )

Hope that helps,
Matt

You get what you pay for,,,,

A graphics quality LCD can cost as much as a small car. Maybe even not so small.

The above mentioned Mitsubishi CRT (LaCie makes an excellent version, the Electron Blue IV) is perhaps the most cost-effective way to get a real graphics monitor, I suggest you use a hardware calibration device with it (Monaco Optix, Spyder, etc).

And forget a laptop screen. Calibrating with a hardwre device can help, but for real critical work you'll need a CRT or a really high end LCD like the Apple Cinema Display.