As the technology of flat screen monitors gets faster and cheaper all the time, and the space on my desk being constantly eaten away by this rather bulky 15" CRT, I decided to get myself a new monitor.

The monitor that I chose was a Hanns-G 191D 19" widescreen TFT Monitor, available from Microdirect, and coming in at £129.24 Inc vat, it wasn’t too heavy on the bank balance either. Not only has it a rather budget price tag, it also has a really good spec.

• Screen Size: 19" W
• Colour: Black
• Resolution: 1440x900
• Aspect Ratio: 16:10
• Contrast Ratio: 700:1
• Brightness: 300 cd/m2
• Pixel Pitch : 0.283 (H) x 0.238 (V) mm
• Response Time: 5ms
• Viewing Angle 150o / 135o (h/V)
• Display Colours: 16.2m
• MTBF: 50k hours
• Convenience: Tilt stand and VESA compliant wall mounting points
• Built in speakers: 1Wx2
• DVI-D input: 1R D-Sub 15 pin input: 1R
• Weight : 4.68 kg

• Warranty card
• Installation CD
• Quick start guide
• Monitor
• Base Stand
• VGA Cable
• 3.5mm to 3.5mm stereo speaker cable
  

It would have been nice to get a DVI cable in the box, but the VGA cable does the job. As you can see, it takes up almost no room at all compared to my old 15" CRT monitor, and looks a lot better too. I wasn’t particularly impressed with the 2 small speakers that come built in, however I’m not using these so it doesn’t make a lot of difference. I decided to give this display it a run for its money, testing it on a variety of different applications.

The first test I decided to do was with Battlefield 2142, a fast paced action game where you need to be on-the-ball and aware of your surroundings at all times. Instantly as soon as the game loads up it is apparent that this monitor was an extremely good investment. One of the first things that I noticed was that my face was about 80cm away from the screen, as apposed to about 30cm with the CRT, because of the size difference.

While the field of view is no different to a normal monitor, (as the game does not support widescreen) the game itself looks awesome, and is a lot more fun, as you have to look a lot more round the screen to see the various hazards that face you. Overall the benefits of this display in game are visual and aesthetic, having no negative points at all.

Next, more applications and games.