If you travel to make sales or training presentations, you already know the value of monitor rentals. For small group presentations or meetings, LCD monitors are often ideal. You can hook your laptop up to the monitor and conduct your presentation with relative ease. Monitor rentals ensure that you get a high–quality monitor, and that you get it delivered to your destination. (Traveling with such an expensive and bulky piece of equipment is out of the question.)
As an added bonus, each time you rent an LCD monitor, you get a chance to evaluate it for contrast, clarity and overall image quality. These little tests will serve you well when it comes time to replace your own monitor - you will know which ones offer the best quality for the price.
What To Look For in an LCD Monitor
Although CRT monitors (the bulky, boxy ones of years past) offer better color and contrast overall, they have given way to LCD monitors which have several benefits of their own. The CNET monitor buying guide summarizes these benefits nicely: brighter screens, crisper text, and no flicker to cause eye strain (a problem that plagues CRT monitors). A one–time complaint about LCD monitors was their inferior display of video, but that has changed in recent years as response times have improved.
People wanting an LCD monitor for home use (games and movies) will likely be wooed by larger sizes and higher resolutions. For businesspeople, the key specs to consider are, according to CNET:
-
A large display to accommodate more information – In a workplace environment, the ability to view multiple applications at once is desirable. As someone who works with a small screen, I can tell you that Alt-Tabbing between applications is a major nuisance.
-
Adjustability – Being able to tilt the monitor to adjust it for different lighting conditions and work angles is a definite bonus. The really nice ones enable you to switch between portrait and landscape orientations. This last feature will cost more, so be sure you really need it.
-
High brightness rating – Office lighting can be a nightmare. A high brightness rating helps immensely.
The Specs on an LCD Monitor
Here is a brief summary of the specs you will see when shopping for monitors:
-
Contrast Ratio – A rating that tells you the depth of the images you'll see. Manufacturers have been known to exaggerate this number, so be sure to read reviews before buying.
-
Luminance or Brightness – Measured in nits or candelas per square meter, this number tells you how much light a monitor can produce. According to CNET, a measure of between 200 and 250 nits is sufficient for work.
-
Response Rate – Lower response rates mean less "ghosting" or image distortion in a moving image. This measure is generally more important to home users than business users, but if your presentations use video, you might want to factor this rate into your buying decision. Keep in mind that the listed response rate is the best possible. In day–to–day use, the response rate might not be as good.
-
Resolution – The native resolution is the key number to look at here. That is the resolution at which the monitor performs best.
For other details on buying monitors, check online buying guides, like CNET´s. If you have a partnership with a monitor rentals agent, ask them too. They have the real–world experience to give you an accurate assessment of a monitor's quality.
