Solarism Flex-View LM-1730 17in LCD Monitor

Here at Bjorn3d we frequently get asked about LCD monitors and gaming. Do games look alright? What about "ghosting?" Should I even consider an LCD monitor if I play a lot of first person shooters? Until recently, the answers to all of those questions would have led the inquisitor to purchasing a CRT monitor because serious gamers couldn't really be happy with LCDs. More and more monitor manufacturers are designing LCD monitors with gamers in mind though, and that mainly means faster pixel response times.

The current magic number in LCD land is 16... a 16ms pixel response time is the highest (any higher is too slow) a gamer should consider in order to have virtually all ghosting eliminated. No doubt we will see even faster, such as 12ms, LCDs soon. For comparison, a regular CRT monitor has a response time of less than 1ms, so ghosting is never an issue with CRTs. Another issue gamers should consider is the native resolution of the LCD monitor. The native resolution is the resolution at which the LCD produces images and text most accurately or clearly. Let's take a 17" LCD with a native resolution of 1280x1024 as an example. Any time an application or game needs to run at a resolution different from 1280x1024, you will lose image clarity and may notice a fuzzier picture. For more on LCDs and gaming, check out Jim Witkowski's "A Gamers Guide to buying a LCD monitor" at Monitors Direct.

The main benefits of LCD monitors versus standard CRT monitors are fairly obvious and repeated time and time again -- smaller footprint, lighter (therefore easier to haul to a LAN party, a big plus in my books!), less glare, sleeker, sexier designs, etc. And the main disadvantage of LCDs almost always shortly follows -- they're quite expensive when compared to their CRT brethren.

Solarism is a fairly new company and many of you may be hearing the name for the first time. So, here's a bit about Solarism from their web site:

"Solarism Display Technology Incorporated was established in April 2001 and headquartered in San Jose, CA, the heart of the Silicon Valley. Solarism is a world-class manufacturer of multimedia TFT-LCD monitors with Advance Brightness Technology (ABT) and is creating a quality standard for tomorrow's LCD monitor. The company has over 30 years of expertise in optical color display and a comprehensive R&D team continuously improving the quality of LCD technology."

Features

• Flex-view: Enables adjustments of the base to fit your personal comfort level
• New No ghosting: Fast response time of 16ms to prevent the annoying "ghosting"
• New Wall mount: Convert desktop to wall mount display within seconds without removing the base. Strategically placed wall mount slots for easy installation.
• No eye fatigue: Prevent eyestrains and fatigue
• High Contrast: High contrast ratio of 450:1 (Typical contrast ratio 300:1)

Solarism Flex-View LM-1730 (click thumbnail for bigger pic)
The Flex-View feature allows many different adjustments

Specifications (from Solarism.com)

Package Contents

• TFT LCD Monitor
• Quick Installation Guide
• VGA Cable
• Power Adapter
• Power Cord

Solarism Flex-View LM-1730 Package (click thumbnail for bigger pic)
The LM-1730 and package contents