ASUS PG191 19" Gaming LCD w/built in 2.1 Sound System

ASUS PG191 - dream display for gamers



ETA: Late August
Product Info & Specs

For those in the Kansas City or St. Louis area, you can expect to see this model at our UMR [Rolla] Fall 2006 Exotic Technology Showcase.

Enjoy.

 

weak. useless imo.

 

Hmmm. I guess if you are a gamer and you HAVE to have an LCD, this would be the one, but only because of the fast response time. How many gamers do you know use an LCD, and how many of them use 2.1 sound, let alone bundled speakers?

I supposed some people would appreciate this... but I'm just not one of them. And I doubt there are that many.

 

Don't discount it too quickly. For the casual gamer this thing'd be a godsend. And for notebook users especially it might be a very welcome upgrade.

More than that, while they may be a little off on their target market, I can think of a number of people that can use it. It's got a webcam, decent speakers, a solid panel, and an attractive design all bundled into one comfortable build.

As for gamers using LCDs and 2.1 sound, I run a Samsung SyncMaster 215TW LCD and use Logitech Z4s for my audio. While I tend to be fairly casual, I haven't seen anything with this screen or the speakers that would dissuade me from recommending them to hardcore gamers.

 

I game on a Samsung with 4ms response... I can't tell the difference between it and a CRT. 2ms is phenomenal!! LCD's have easily caught up to if not surpassed CRT's for gaming applications.

The Webcam is whatever and any true gamer (at least FPS gamer) uses a good set of headphones! A built in Microphone would have been a nice feature...

It may be a waste of money, but it's a good waste of money!

 

I doubt any of those statements you made are true. My mother owns a 4ms Samsung that she just bought.. The response time doesnt affect first person shooter games very much, but once you get to a RPG/3third person strategy game, or flight simulator, my eyes literally turn red and begin to drip in tears. The ghosting on it is, VERY visible for a person going from a CRT directly into gaming on LCD's.

And this is a SAMSUNG...supposedly good brand, 4ms, supposed to be very impressive response, but it's not.

Another negative aspect on LCDs is, you have static resolution. You can't change it the way you want. If you have 1280x1024, thats it. You can't play games in lower resolutions if you get lag at high res.

In my opinion, there is a reason why a CRT takes 10 times the space and weights 5 times the weight of an LCD: it's packed with quality and features.

 

c9tech, on a ontopic note, this monitor won't sell.

Like another person said, who has the money to buy a LCD with speakers in it. Most gamers blow all their money on parts and spend 150$ on a sh!tty CRT.

As for speakers, 2.1 is out. The new standard is 5.1 for gamers.

 

been a hardcore gamer for ever, and I use an LCD, Hyundai L90D+ 19' which was the first LCD to come out to be respected by gamers. It is a little dark, and blacks are truly black all the time, but I've found out just a few mins of tweaking the screen for games is time well spent, and I wouldn't go back to my crt. Half Life 1 / Mods of it (Quake1 engine) I do have more trouble with than newer games, but then I just use custom color profiles in my video card

PS I live in STL, when is this Showcase going down?

 

my sentiments exactly.. its not too noticeable on FPS, but on many other types of games, its still noticeable. When playing 2-D games, even monitors with low refresh rates can't compare to a CRT.

 

thats totally false.

 

Ok, a little information on gaming LCDs from a gamer.

Difference Between CRT and LCD:
Ok, as we all know, the big importance for LCD's is response time (grey to grey).

For professional gamers, the general rule of thumb has always been the higher the refresh rate the better. Unfortunately, this rule is old and out-dated. In the days of the CRT yes, this was the rule. The reason refresh rate was so important for CRTs is because you're staring at a large bulb (yes I understand that it's not really a bulb, but a matrix of pixels excited by a beam, the beam being controlled by magnets), blinking at roughly 60 Hz. The higher the refresh rate, the faster that bulb would blink, thus a smoother "feel" to the look of the game (independant of actual frames-per-second).

Now, here's where response time and LCDs come into play. An LCD is a liquid crystal matrix, suspended over a backlight. Now, a backlight is usually a lightsource diffused through a white membrane I.E. no "blinking". What does that tell us? That means that the "quickness" of your picture is no longer dependant on how many blinks per second, but how fast your liquid crystal matrix can "change" it's colors.

Ghosting:
Ghosting used to be the bane of LCD gaming, the cause being pixels changing color too slow (response time), giving you your next image super-imposed on your previous image (ghosting).

If I remember correctly (please correct me if i'm wrong) the human eye (average) can detect ghosting for LCDs with a response time of ~15-16ms or more.

Professional Gaming and LCDs:
In the past few years, gaming as come a long way on the LCD. If you're a competition gamer like myself, then chances are you have been to a few LAN events. I dont know about you, but I would rather carry a LCD from my car and back instead of a CRT.

If you dont believe that LCDs are ready for professional gaming, then have a look at cpl. The CPL is arguably the pinnacle of professional gaming around the world. For their world tour, they are using low response time LCDs on their tournament machines.

Summary:
In my personal opinion, I would LOVE to own a LCD like the ASUS PG191. Being a hardcore gamer (CPL veteran, local LAN attendee, and online competitor) I see no reason as to why a gaming LCD is a bad idea. The technology has matured.

P.S.
First post here on notebookreview, I'm the newest addition to the C9 family.

 

You guys could a learn a thing or ten from this guy.
Nice 1st post AJ...

 

if you were at a lan party, wouldnt it be sensible to be using a headset? why would you want speakers on your monitor and a webcam to boot? i only see this monitor useful for the casual gamer and or one who has limited desk space. for the hardcore gamers, i would think they'd have a surround sound setup and a widescreen lcd, correct me if im wrong.

 

No, you have a valid point. Infact I use a sennheiser headset for competative play, but that doesnt mean I use a headset all the time. Yeah a good pair of headphones can be comfortable, but it starts to get annoying after a while. Those built in speakers would be just fine for all the other hours of the day when I'm not competing.

 

If you don't want to carry a CRT, you might as well just bring a laptop with you to LAN parties. You could probably get a pretty decent gaming laptop for the price of this monitor and the gaming desktop to go with it.

Now I'm sure you're going to compain that a laptop will "ghost" and all that other crap. Well if that's the case, bring a CRT and a desktop with you. Or a CRT hooked up to a laptop.


The only people I see buying this lcd are the kind of people who buy a 24" dell lcd. The kind of people with a lot of money on their hands who don't know what to do with it. Or those who have cramped living quarters and physicaly cannot fit a CRT on their desk.

Oh, and for all of you, I still feel that a CRT playing a game at 120HZ is MUCH smoother than an LCD at 60 HZ even with incredibly fast response times. I'm not so picky as to refuse to game on an LCD... I have two gaming laptops(one outdated) which I use pretty often, and don't mind gaming on them. BUT I will always take a CRT over an LCD.

 

Although the monitor is sweet as an integrated solution, personally I prefer a more robust sound solution and widescreen. I'm not sure how many "gamers" are going to still want to go with a regular ratio display, but Asus has assured us there will be a larger, widescreen verion in the PG series, just like the PW201...... It's cool and if you guys could see it in person, you'd certianly be impressed design wise, even more so than in pictures... but the sub isn't all the powerfull and since it's part of the display, it really can't be too powerful or it would shake and distort the screen.....

I look at this screen in the same way I look at the other Asus screens - basically for average office use...... however this gives you a little more punch for more range in music and light gaming....... It's nice, but impressing me as much as the PW201....

 

You know, everyone's sitting here barking about "well hardcore gamers blah blah blah" and "well, I think blah blah blah" and frankly this has gotten a little bit out of hand.

I take serious exception to this, and frankly find it out and out rude. The only reason I haven't purchased a 24" LCD is because of the price. Did it occur to you that people might use their computers for more than just glorified PlayStations?

I bought a 21" LCD as an external for my notebook because I enjoy gaming but also because I do multimedia work and I need the desktop space.

I think the fact that there's a debate going on at all in this thread is proof enough that there's a market for this LCD, and maybe people need to stop bagging on the product. Just because an LCD hurts YOUR eyes doesn't mean it hurts everyone else's, and just because ghosting is bad FOR YOU doesn't mean it's bad for everyone else.

 

Not necessarily.. if you go to the Sony Stores, you will see they have monitors just like this that they've been selling for a couple of years now and its attracting alot of people.. why? because its theres no wires, no extra components no nothing.. everything is in the monitor and its just easier for people, so that all u have on ur desk is the monitor, and your keyboard/mouse.. no wires other than those too

and yes I know alot of people who have bought these so there is a market and people WILL buy it.. i think its pretty cool although I prefer the Sony ones.. they just look so cool

 

How so? Changing a 1280x1024 resolution to 1024x768 will use software enlarged pixels which make you look like you have AntiAliasing/Aniatrophic Filtering set in the negative direction. You'll have zig-zagged lines all over the screen when playing games. It's just not cute.

 

do you own a large lcd? ever play a game on it? doesn't sound like it. yes setting the resolution down in games will have software englarged pixels, but that in no way will give you "zig-zagged lines all over the screen".

 

Do you know what Antialising and AnisotropicFiltering is? It doesn't sound it like.

Well, enlarging pixels software based leads to negative AA/AF. Which is zig zags. Take a look at the Z96J video that Eddie posted when he's running 3dmark05 @ 1280x800.

Native res is 1650x1050, and turning it down to 1280x800 made some horrible "zig-zags" in the benchmark. They're very distracting when playing games. It doesn't sound like YOU owned an LCD.. Or if you do, you must be clueless when it comes to gaming, cuz you don't sound like you know what you're talking about.

 

you are clueless. so you dont own one, and you're using a laptop lcd to bring into comparisson with desktop lcds. i own a 20.1 inch widescreen and i game on it. i dont have a powerful graphics card and i can't possibly game on 1680x1050. so are you telling me i am playing with zig zag lines?

 

Did it occur to anyone that this is a notebook forums not a hiway billboard?

 

well sorry, but like you, users who spread fud and misinformtion is frustrating to me, as it may turn unknowing users away from certain products. it is perfectly acceptable to play at lower res on an lcd. degradation in graphics will be there, yes of course, but in no way will it be so severe that it will affect gaming. you would be hard pressed to find issues.

so those in that market for a monitor with speakers and and webcam built in also who game occasiaonlly, please go check this monitor out. for those who are looking for larger screens and worry about game quality... don't worry.

 

my answer: you're either blind or you're playing 2d games.

 

ya i'm playing duke nukem II and commander keen.

 

I've been running Quake 4 at 1280x800 to maximize my framerate, on my 21" 1680x1050 widescreen, and I've found it looks perfectly fine.

Older LCDs have had horrible dithering, but modern ones all do a pretty outstanding job with it. Note that you can also use your video card instead of the monitor to dither the reduced resolution, which may improve the quality of the picture.

At this point I honestly think you're just biased and pushing an agenda that, quite frankly, doesn't jive with common knowledge anymore and demonstrates to me a lack of understanding of the technology and limited experience with it.

I request a moderator close this thread, as this has really gotten out of hand and the second half of this is just arguing with very little useful information being posted.

 

Mystery... I don't even want to start with you, but calling me a liar got me going!!! First of all, I don't lie!! Second, a 4ms response time is about as good as it gets... Third, "a CRT takes 10 times the space and weights 5 times the weight of an LCD" because it's old school, just like the opinionated info you're spouting. You might want to include IMO in all your future posts!

Read what c9heretic has to say, he sounds both educated and experienced in this matter.

 

Since AJ [c9heretic] pretty much broke it all down into bare elements, there's not much more to say.
"Ghosting" is a thing of the past, unless you're buying some cheap or old LCD technology [which is not what an ASUS monitor is].
I will say that any LCD with a true 8ms [even some 16ms] response time will have no ghosting...

It would appear as if a lot of people never actually used an A grade panel [which is what ASUS uses for their LCD's] before, or they just listen to what their "friends" tell them and can't do a little research on their own.