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The 20" LCD Shootout: Dell versus Apple

 by Kristopher Kubicki on April 27, 2005 12:05 AM EST
70 Comments | Add A Comment
70 Comments

Internals

After benchmarking both monitors, we opened them up to get a more in-depth look at the individual apparatuses. Doing this will certainly void your warranty, and most likely irrevocably damage an Apple Cinema display. The acrylic bezels on the sides of the Apple Cinema displays seem extremely fragile, and we actually put a hairline crack in our bezel during the course of the evaluation.

The internals of our Apple Cinema 20” display reveal nothing particularly interesting. Since the Apple relies only on digital inputs, the digital signal processor (DSP) for our display is relatively small. The majority of the circuitry on the PCB inside the monitor is reserved for the USB and Firewire pass-through, with some small logic in place for the touch pad. Likewise, since the Apple display relies entirely in digital signals via digital inputs, input controls are fairly limited.

The Apple M9177LL obtains power from a funny looking white power brick; so the DC circuitry inside (right) the display is also compact. You can also catch a glimpse at the USB inputs along the bottom left of the monitor in this picture.


Click to enlarge.

Below, you can see that Dell slightly updated the internals of their 2005FPW since their UltraSharp 2001FP. Removing the back panel reveals the very large inverter PCB (left) and the DSP controller board (right). The Genesis gm1501 that acts as the heart of the 2005FPW is clearly visible, and since it is an all inclusive solution, there is no need for other DSPs. Since Dell opts to include the inverter inside the LCD housing, Dell has slightly different design goals than Apple.


Click to enlarge.

Even though the chip on our PCB claims that it’s a gm1501, we could not find any documentation on the Genesis website other than the cryptic IC Summary that claims the gm1501 is only capable of SXGA resolutions. For those more interested, you may wish to check out the detailed summary on the nearly identical gm1601, which appears to only differ by signal type.


Click to enlarge.


LG.Philips LCD LM201W01

We mentioned it already a few times, but the Apple Cinema 20” and Dell 2005FPW revolve around the same LG.Philips LCD LM201W01 panel. Boasting a 7ms Tr and 9ms Tf response time with 12ms gray-to-gray average response times, the LM201W01 is definitely a quick panel when compared to PVA and MVA displays. We dug around a little bit and actually found this Product Specification document that details some of the exact measured specifications from LG.Philips, although it is about a year old by now.


Apple 20” Cinema Display
Click to enlarge.


Dell UltraSharp 2005FPW
Click to enlarge.


Cable Management, Pivot, Stand User Interface
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  • sandys - Wednesday, April 27, 2005 - link

    Oh yeah and as for panel manufacturer it can only be Samsung, not seen anyone else doing one. probably the ltm240w1

    http://www.samsung.com/Products/TFTLCD/common/prod...

    pure guesswork of course :p

  • Gatak - Wednesday, April 27, 2005 - link

    #36, It is about contrast. The eyes are strained if you have a bright light in just a part of the field of view. The strain comes from having to both adjust for the bright light _and_ at the same time allow enough light to come from the darker areas. In other words it is difficult for the eyes to properly acclimate to the lighting situation.

  • sandys - Wednesday, April 27, 2005 - link

    Hi JNo,

    The 2405 can be bought in the UK, for some reason it is not showing on Dells site but you can still phone them and buy it so answers to questions

    a) yes it supports 1:1 pixel mapping
    b) it can be bought but price varies depending on offer at the time, I bought two and got one half price plus 20% off bring each to £540 which was a bargain, others have got around 600-693 for a single unit.
    c) yes it can.


    The 2405 also has component and I run my PS2 and xbox off of it, unfortunately we get stiffed a bit in the UK and box Sony and MS remove the useful progressive resolutions in place of interlaced so the only way to get a quality output on Xbox is to mod it and switch it to NTSC and for the PS2 buy US games or live with 576i :(

    look here www.hdtvarcade.com

    Cheers

  • xsilver - Wednesday, April 27, 2005 - link

    #31
    obviously to "fix" a dark room you just turn on the light... but I wanted to know more about the principles behind it.... what makes the monitor so different when its used in a dark room?
    why is it so bad to turn down the brightness?
    why does it hurt your eyes? (cause it doesnt hurt mine)

  • Zak - Wednesday, April 27, 2005 - link

    Doom3 and Trainz configs can also be edited to support 1680x1050.

    Zak

  • ir0nw0lf - Wednesday, April 27, 2005 - link

    Don't forget that World of Warcraft natively supports 1680x1050!!

  • bob661 - Wednesday, April 27, 2005 - link

    #21
    I won't buy a LCD either, yet. I do have a Viewsonic VP201b (supposedly the same panel as the Dell 2001FP) and it was VERY good playing UT2004 and Doom 3. I'll wait for two more generations of LCD AND then I'll some more for those to come down into the $300 range for a 19 or 20".

  • DestruyaUR - Wednesday, April 27, 2005 - link

    Will these new 23 and 30" samples you speak of have HDCP circuitry so they could actually be used as TVs?

  • Gatak - Wednesday, April 27, 2005 - link

    #9: Easy to fix. Increase ambient light in the room. It is usually never good to work in a dark room. The "White" on the screen should also be the same color temperature as the ambient light.

  • TinyTeeth - Wednesday, April 27, 2005 - link

    Great review, but you really should use a better camera... :X
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