Sometimes Bigger is Smaller - Widescreen Monitors
Widescreen monitors are becoming more and more popular these days. With HDTV on the verge of taking over, it is not surprising that we are starting to see this technology in the computer realm. But, I did want to point out a pitfall that a lot of people may not be aware of when it comes to widescreen monitors.
Regular computer monitors work on a 4:3 width to height ratio. This means that if your monitor is 16 inches wide, it will be 12 inches high. You would have about 192 square inches of viewing area on the monitor.
Widescreen monitors have a 16:10 aspect ratio. So, a 16 inch wide monitor will be 10 inches high. This will provide you with 160 square inches of viewing area.
Monitors are sold based on the distance from the top left corner of the monitor to the bottom right corner of the monitor. But, because of trigonometry, a 19 inch regular monitor will not have the same viewing area as a 19 inch widescreen monitor. A 19 inch 4:3 aspect ratio monitor is 15.2 inches wide by 11.4 inches wide giving you a viewing area of 173.3 inches. But, a 19 inch widescreen monitor is 16.1 inches wide by 10.1 inches wide producing a viewing area of 162.2 inches.
In the end, a widescreen monitor will have approximately 6% less viewing space than a regular size monitor of the same diagonal measurement. My rule of thumb is to buy one inch bigger. If you had your eye on a 19 inch regular size monitor, then I would buy a 20 inch widescreen.
The only other thing to make sure of is that your video card supports the widescreen format. Otherwise, you will end up with stretched images and icons.
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10 Responses to “Sometimes Bigger is Smaller - Widescreen Monitors”
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901am Says:
November 30th, 1999 at 12:00 amA 19 inch 4:3 aspect ratio monitor is 15.2 inches wide by 11.4 inches wide giving you a viewing area of 173.3 inches. But, a 19 inch widescreen monitor is 16.1 inches wide by 10.1 inches wide producing a viewing area of 162.2 inches. This according to a post over at Daily Cup of Tech, along with a graph and stuff. I agree with the post. Buy one inch extra compared to a regular 4:3 monitor so that your actual space really increases. [Read more →] » 3 Comments
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Alex Says:
March 20th, 2007 at 9:08 amExcellent point.
I have a simple question: I went ahead helping to buy a new PC for my friend and we looked at both regular and wide screen 19″ monitors. When I went on the web, all sites were displayed with a regular aspect ratio. So what you end up with is that on the wide screen monitor there will be two wide sidebars and the actual image still has 4:3 aspect ratio and the size is adjusted to fit the smaller monitor heigth and is smaller. Is this true? That means that for web browsing regular montors are much better. On the other hand, for other applications, like Word or Excel, where you have to use a horizontal scroll bar, the wide screen is better.
Thanks, gurus! -
Tim Fehlman Says:
March 20th, 2007 at 9:19 amHow monitors deal with screen resolutions that do not match varies depending on the make and model. Some will produce the side bars as you indicate. Others will distort the picture so that it will have a stretched look to it.
Tim
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Greg Groth Says:
March 20th, 2007 at 11:08 amAlex, try moving your TaskBar to the left instead of the bottom of the screen.
I find it slightly annoying that people are not setting up their sites to expand past the regular old 4:3. It is part of the page design min and max. I think people will discover it when enough web users complain.
Tim,
You can see the min max problem he is talking about if you expand your settings to 1280×1024. Unmaximize the webpage. Now expand and retract one side of the browser. Try it with your site and then try it with www.annoyances.org. You should see exactly what Alex is talking about. -
Jared Says:
March 20th, 2007 at 12:24 pmDon’t forget - monitors may have a physical aspect ratio of 4:3, but resolution counts for something too, and it’s important to remember 1280×1024 is NOT a 4:3 ratio
4/3 = 1.333333
1280/1024 = 1.25
1600×1200 or 1024/768 = 1.3333
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Mark Says:
March 20th, 2007 at 1:30 pmA number of LCD’s these days are actually a 5:4 ratio (if their native resolution is 1280×1024). Also, I’d sooner recommend buying up to three inches bigger if height of viewable screen matters to you. A 20 inch widescreen 16:9 lcd is about the same viewable height as a 17 inch 5:4 regular lcd.
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James Says:
March 20th, 2007 at 2:10 pm6% less viewing area isn’t really much, is it? It’s about the width of a double-height taskbar or so, which compared to the extra width gained is worth the trade-off.
As someone who writes software, the extra width is excellent - I can now have all those sidebars open that modern programming environments have, without losing space to write my code. It’s the same in a word processor.
Just make sure you set your screen refresh rate at the correct frequency (which on screens I’ve used is 60Hz). If you’re switch from a CRT to an LCD and didn’t bother setting your PC to plain old VGA it might accept an 85Hz refresh rate of your CRT, but the image will look… strange, giving the illusion your eyes are trying to focus at different places and everything will be a little bit blurred.
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Brent Says:
March 20th, 2007 at 4:32 pmGood point. Resolution is the most important thing to me. When I recently decided to replace my old 19″ monitor I was very Dissapointed when I could not find anything to match the 1600×1200 resolution I was running.
I finally did find a suitably priced 24″ that runs 1920×1200, and I am happy.
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Jared Says:
March 22nd, 2007 at 8:30 amJust make sure you set your screen refresh rate at the correct frequency (which on screens I’ve used is 60Hz).
I’ve always heard when using LCDs you want to set the refresh rate to the lowest possible.
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Peter Says:
March 22nd, 2007 at 10:49 amOf course, this only applies if your are talking about moving from a 4:3 LCD to a widescreen. If you are replacing a CRT, subtract about 2″ from the diagonal measurement before doing the area calcs. A 19″ crt has really only 17.1″ when measuring the display area. So you actually gain quite a bit of screen area when moving to a widescreen lcd.
