It may not seem like a long time, but just two years ago, if you were searching for a new PC for your home or business at a then budget price of £799.00 plus VAT you were restricted by the choice of PC-related components you could select as part of your specification process. Inevitably the most expensive components were the Hard disk drive, Memory and the Monitor. Hard disk prices have fallen dramatically as storage size has increased, while Memory prices per Mb/s have plummeted but remained unstable. Monitor prices on the other hand remained static for a while, and your only choice then was a 15" Monitor. Trying to surf the Internet, viewing sites that needed constant scrolling, working on a spreadsheet with multiple workbooks, all in a 800 x 600 resolution was not only time consuming but at the end of every working day, those poor blearily eyes, and pounding headaches told the real story. Relief was only round the corner to be precise one year later; enter the 17-inchers price's began to tumble and these beauties became an affordable proposition. History has a habit of repeating itself, and this year is no different, except we are now seeing the 17" replacing the 15" as an entry level solution, while the 19" slot's into the place vacated by the 17", at precisely the same price point. Not bad eh! As they say the 'eye's have it'!

Image quality remains as the prime consideration when selecting which monitor to buy, and is determined by the resolution, Dot (Mask) pitch, and refresh rates.
Resolution refers to the amount of an image you can see on a screen without scrolling. This in turn is measured in pixels, which are individual dots of light making up the picture. Virtually all monitors can show VGA resolution offering a picture that consists of 640 pixels horizontally and 480 pixels vertically. Whilst this is adequate for simple word processing tasks, it does fall short for users who work on complex spreadsheets, multiple windows, graphic based applications and an absolute nightmare for Internet surfing. To accommodate more viewing area on a screen, manufacturers developed a standard called "SuperVGA", with resolutions ranging from 800x600 up to 1600x1280 pixels. Most of today's monitors subject to screen size can show at least one SuperVGA resolution, with larger monitors capable of displaying higher resolutions.
Dot pitch is a unit of measurement indicating how closely dots of the same colour are spaced on the screen. A smaller dot pitch gives a sharper appearance, while a larger figure will result in a fuzzy picture. Normally all monitors up to 19" should at least have a dot pitch of 0.28 millimetres.
Refresh Rates is the number of times the screen image is redrawn, and a low rate means noticeable screen flicker that can lead to considerable eyestrain. We would recommend monitors that can support a minimum of 72Hz at a resolution of 800 x 600, but ideally 85Hz at a resolution of 1024 x 768 would be a preferred choice.

NOTE: For those of you wanting a comprehensive monitor guide, we have one located in our Buying Guide section.

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