Although there are monitor reviews to be found, have there been any recently judging the longevity of the display, for such things as color accuracy and brightness out of the box, as they fade over time, how long in hours before a certain level of fading occurs, ect? While this information is at least estimated by the manufacturers of TVs i don’t seem to see similar information available for monitors.
I ask because, sitting next to this new 24" LED display, my old 20" Viewsonic looks dim, yellow, and ugly. I don’t remember it looking quite so dull before, and it was when i bought it well regarded. Yet, will my new LED monitor yellow and fade in a similar fashion, and if/when it does, how long will it last? Such information doesn’t seem available…
The current LED tech is supposed to be no worse than 80% of its original brightness when it finally dies. At least that’s true for current LED light bulbs. I’d guess LED monitors are at least as good. The lifetime is also supposed to be at least a decade, if not two.
Are you saying that if I upgrade to a 24" Apple Cinema display with LED backlight and an H-IPS panel, I’d actually be saving money because I wouldn’t have to replace it as soon? Intriguing!
What is probably more likely is that you’ll upgrade your display before it dies. In 3-5 years there will be another new revelation (OLED?) and you’ll buy that.
Yeah, as everyone said (all) monitors do fade over time, some faster than others depending on tech, build quality, etc.
Another factor though is that monitor default brightnesses have slowly grown over time to the point where they are now arguably just way too bright for most environments in which they are used. YMMV depending upon ambient light, if you’re computing on the surface of the sun then the default brightness of modern LCD monitors is more appropriate.
Because of this brightness escalation you could pull out an unused older model well-regarded LCD from a few years ago and a brand new monitor and plug them in and the older monitor will look pretty dim and grungy to you in comparison even if it looks as good as the day it was built, especially if you spend some time working on the brighter monitor first and your eyes adjust to it.
These days LCD monitors ship so bright that if you do a lot of photo editing for photos that will be printed (or design work for print or other such things) you can actually have a hard time getting the monitor dark enough to even come close to matching what you’re going to get from a photo out of a printer even if the photo is viewed in good studio lighting. When I color calibrate one of my 24" monitors with a coloimeter, it isn’t enough to turn the brightness down to 0, the monitor is still too bright and I need to tweak the RGB sliders down a bit to get the right luminance for print matching.
Yeah, I’m not sure how or why that started, but it’s really odd. The last few monitors I’ve bought had to be tweaked way down in order to be viewed without feeling like I’m staring right at a car headlight. I guess it’s just another stat manufacturers can improve to be able to show how awesome their monitors are, but I can’t see many applications that would require my current LCD to be used at full or even close to full brightness.
Nothing mysterious about it-- it’s the monitor version of the loudness wars. The thinking is that when a whole bunch of monitors are set up at an in-store display, customers will naturally be drawn to the brightest ones.
I’ve had my Dell 2005FPW for at least three or four years now, and it’s still going strong. Color accuracy is still pretty damn good, and while the brightness has suffered a little, it’s still a great display.
