LED stands for Light Emitting Diode.(like the lights in case fans)
It's basically requires very little electricity to light up their fore being very efficient. New monitors and TV's are going to LED's over LCD's (Liquid Crystal Display) for a better picture quality.
Knowing where you live and where you would shop would help to narrow down what's available to you.
I have had Viewsonics. LG and at present a 24in HP TFT LCD which I like a lot. The suggestion to look at them side by side is a great way to decide.
Another thing is to read on Newegg or say Tigerdirect at the reviews on the particular monitor your thinking of purchasing.
Please remember some people don't know what they're talking about when reading these reviews, also check what they have listed as their ability level.
Just a couple more things before buying a LCD check the warranty on the LCD but also check and see what they list as an acceptable amount of dead pixels on a screen. Some manufacturers won't replace a LCD if it only has a few dead Pixels. Which I find absurd since I expect them all to work properly.
If you plan on gaming on it make sure you get the fastest ms response. You'll see anywhere from 2ms to 5ms which is acceptable for most casual gamers this is how fast a pixel will change color. Gamers claim that a LCD is not fast enough to prevent the Ghosting effect where you'll see a second image, personally I've never seen this even with a 5ms response LCD.
You will want to take into consideration a matte screen or a glossy screen(TFT) as well.
Brightens, backlight and contrast ratio are also important.
So this is why seeing them side by side is the best way to buy a LCD and comparing specs and warranties.
Fabe
I'd like to add a
little fact: LED in this topic refers to the backlighting system. In prior designs, LCD monitors use CCFL lamp to light up the LCD panel (without it, you won't be able to "see" the picture on a LCD screen).
LED backlit displays still need a LCD panel to show images.
Now, as technology advances - there are several alternatives to replace CCFL. CCFL by design needs time to achieve optimum brightness (from a cold start), not to mention it will change color and it'll dimm off as it aged, (some quite severe).
LED on the other hand will light up instantly, reach maximum brightness in an instant and as it age, it's brightness deteriorates a lot more gracefully than CCFL. Not to mention you can build a more aesthetically pleasing design using LED backlight (well, it depends on one's taste and the design of the backlight system).
There are 2 types of LED backlighting system:
First: Edge backlight. TVs (or computer monitors) today that are very thin in profile uses edge backlight. The plus side of this design is that it's very power efficient, since you need a fraction of LED diodes compared to the normal design, the minus side is that... it's just that, you just replacing the CCFL backlight with LED diodes... It's same old design using new components, which is... well... stupid (I'll get to why it's stupid on the next paragraph). Current LED backlight today will produce a "cooler" images (it's more blueish) than CCFL. It's harder to calibrate, and if you have one of the cluster die, you'll get a weird "shadow" on your display...
Second: Normal LED backlight with local dimming. This design is the "correct" way of doing LED backlight. The LED diodes are to be put at the back of the LCD panel in clusters as it were when CCFL was used. The plus side is, you get MORE brightness. Several designs (look for top of the line TVs that has "LED with local dimming" to see what I mean) have the capability to turn sections of the backlight completely OFF, thus you can get the perfect Black using LCD displays. The minus side is obviously more energy needed to power all of those LED diodes, and the physique of the display it self won't differ much compared to old LCD monitors (read: thick monitors). But by using this design, you can get gargantuan contrast ratio (close to plasma display's contrast ratio) that will put "Dynamic contrast" to shame (btw, "Dynamic contrast" is stupid...). Some manufacturers claims they have 1.000.000:1 contrast ratio by using this design. I don't really know how to test these claims, but
looking at displays that's using this design... It's a true beauty...
zzz2496
