I need your opinion concerning this screen : ProLite E2480HS (see more info about it here).
Someone proposed us this screen in occasion, at 100 euro. It has 1 year old, has only be used several month, and should be in great condition (and we get a free HDMI cable). It seems to be usually sold new at 160 euros on the web.

Me and my girlfriend want to buy a screen but we don't know anything about hardware. We have two 6 years old laptops (who do their best but one of them is dying) and no tv. The screen will be mainly used during several months to watch movies and sometimes play videogames. We have very low budget, and we think we will try to buy a computer after christmas (we hope to find good deals with sales) : if we find one, the screen will at this moment certainly be mainly used with it by my girlfriend, who is mainly drawing/coloring with photoshop in "semi-professionnal" way and so who needs neat image and not ugly colors.

We are not looking for a perfect screen, we know that "not bright" screen have usually less "pretty" colors and that's not really a problem, as long as the screen is correct (and isn't bright : we're looking for a mat screen to avoid light reflects) and last enough years.

So the question is : at this price, is it worth to buy ? Or should we better buy a new screen ? (we can have a budget of around 160euros, may be a little more).
Sorry for the long post for such a short question ^^"

Edit : term "bright" wasn't the good one, I meant "glossy".

That screen uses a TN display, which are quite common in cheaper screens. unfortunately the color precision of those screens is often quite awful (the viewing angle as well). They're fine for everyday tasks - internet, gaming, watching movies etc but if your gf is serious about graphics/drawing it won't be sufficient for that.

"IPS" (in plane switching) displays usually have far better colours. I think acer for example has some lower priced ones (under 200 at least?) but your budget is quite tight. Id still rather wait than buy a display that won't help in the long run.

"Bright" is very relative btw, most displays you see in store are on very bright/very colourful settings. This helps getting the customer to notice them but its nowhere near accurate color reproduction. My screen for example isn't very bright compared to others anyway (spec-wise) but i still only use it as 35 percent brightness...

Yes, she is not employed by someone for now, but she is pretty serious about it. But until now, she dealt with her laptop screen : I'll try to find the ref of it to show you. May be this new screen would be "good enough" to be better than what she already have, for an affordable price ? And so, we would buy a better one later.

Thanks for this very useful tip ! I agree, we would like to buy something good quality and who will last but... yeah, we can't really do big expenses, even for this, which is an important thing for her :/ But we can go around 200 euros I think, as long as it's really worth it and that the screen lasts.

I was meaning "glossy", not "bright" :P Sorry for the mistake in the words ! She doesn't like glossy screens (and I must say that I agree with her) : colors are usually a lot more "insipid" (= less colo saturation) with matte screen, but there are way less inconvenients. Concerning brightness, we two are usually setting our screens at nearly the lowest rate. High brightness are really eyes-tiring when you stay a long time on computer !

May be we should wait for sales ? I don't know prices ranges at all.
And thanks so much for helping :)

Edit : tryed to look for what is her actual screen : can't find anything. It seems to be a generic 15.6" DELL laptop screen.

If she wants to do anything artistic then she needs an IPS screens. TN screens really fuck up colors.
Is the Dell UltraSharp U2312HM available around there for a reasonable price?
One cheaper option might be this, but it's glossy, so it might not suit you.

If you occasionally play games and will mostly be watching shows and you want to go on a super-budget, then I would recommend picking up a Samsung TV. Find an LED model that you like that's in your price range and pick it up. They have an expected life of 20-30 years and will get done what you need done. It won't be fancy. It won't be spectacular. But it'll be good enough, be cheap, and last a long time.

That's what we did.

Can't find the U2312HM. Your cheaper option looks interesting, I'll keep this ref' in mind, even if it's glossy : we really prefer matte screens, but if there isn't a better choice... Interesting advice, but we actually aren't very encline to buy a tv for several reasons :P But I'll keep it in mind if we don't take this occasion ;) Very interesting site and informations. I read some good things about some samsung screens... And DELL screens. I'll preciously keep this ref' too, like the others :)

Thank you all very much for helping us, and for your advises !
You teached me some very useful things ;)

It was planned for us to meet the seller of the screen tomorrow, so we will see if it's interesting : we hope to see the screen in action.
If we aren't fully convinced by what we see (concerning colors especially), we'll ask if a better price is possible. Should we pay attention to something in particular ?
And if it doesn't look good... We'll wait for sales time !
In all case, what you say confirms me that we must spend almost 200 euros for having a good screen. So if we take this one, we'll certainly try to buy a new screen later, when it'll be possible, if we really need to. I must say that the price of 100 euros is very interesting for us at the moment especially if it's "not that bad for the price".
We'll see tomorrow ! Thanks again pals :)

I prefer IPS panels myself, too, but for this price it should be a good choice. If you can see it in action, make sure to get a picture that looks golden or has other metallic colours. Usually on weaker TN panels they look more yellowish or greyish instead of metallic. And check if it has any dead pixels.

Don't buy anything with TN panel, there's a high probability that you'll be really sorry afterwards.
Yes, they are that bad (imo).

Another good source of information for LCD monitors is <span class="bold">TFTCentral</span>.  You'll find useful reviews, articles and resources.

Very interesting and useful. Thank you a lot ! :) We took the decision with your advice in head ;) Thanks for it !

Nice ! We'll certainly look here to have more information for our next screen !


So, we finally saw the screen in action, the seller was very friendly and has let us manipulate the settings, and we finally bought it. Your advices helped us a lot (we knew a lot more what to pay attention to).
The screen is far from perfect : the colors aren't "beautiful" and we will have to try to modify some settings (I find the whites tending a very little to the yellow, but it must be due to a setting that I'll have to find), but it will be enough for this price.
We already played some Spelunky HD and watched an episode of a serie : it's doing the job pretty well.
On the downsides, we noticed one dead pixel after the purchase (of course. Even if we tried to pay attention of this with the seller) but well.. That kind of things happen, and we think we'll use it for watching movies and playing so it shouldn't be really bothering.
We thought about all of this with all that you said, and we'll certainly try to buy a "good" (and affordable) screen one day in the future. The one we just purchased will certainly be our movies/gaming/temporary screen.

If some people find this screen and hesitate : don't buy it at full price, there are better options at the full price as shown of this thread.

Thanks again for your help and advices all of you, we really appreciated it :)
(and now, we can watch movies on a 24" screen instead of a 17" screen ! Hurray !)

Here are two websites that might interest you.  The first one will help you adjust the brightness, contrast, clock/phase, sharpness, and gamma settings of your monitor.  The second one is useful to quickly identify dead pixels (including subpixels).  Most LCD manufacturers have a 30-day return policy for dead pixels, so it's a handy tool for your next LCD.

 ▪  <span class="bold">The Lagom LCD monitor test pages</span>
 ▪  <span class="bold">Guillaume Dargaud's Dead Pixels Test</span>
 

Way out of budget but a led screen like this is ultimate #goals. The colors are sharp and vivid and the big screen adds to the experience. I have one at home and once I start playing, I'm immersed for a long while.