Looking for a budget monitor

Question

I want a budget FullHD monitor. The primary use is for office stuff (reading, email, ssh connections, etc.)

I want it to have a HDMI input and some audio output in case i end using it as monitor i can reuse it for a basic multimedia use (watching movies).

A main concern is "eye care" since i will spend too much time in front of it.

I'm looking for the following two options, both from LG, both are on the same price range but have different specs:

1st option (LG-22MT48DF) - http://www.lg.com/uk/monitors/lg-22MT48DF-PZ

Pros:

(TV and Monitor): which means more multimedia options
IPS: better image quality
Fliker safe
Eye comfort mode

Cons: 

Response time: 14ms
Contrast: 1000:1

2nd Option (LG-24M38H) - http://www.lg.com/in/monitors/lg-24M38H

Pros:

Response Time: 5ms
Contrast: 5000000:1
A little bigger
Fliker safe
Eye comfort mode
Little bigger

Cons:

Less multimedia options 
TN display (less quality from different view angles)

EDIT: A New Competitor comes into play!

3rd Option (ASUS VP228H)

Pros:

Response Time: 1ms GTG
Contrast: 100,000,000:1
Flicker Free
Blue Light Filter
Built in speakers

Cons:

Thicker
LCD not LED

I'm considering to go for the first option for the extra multimedia capacity. However, i'm concerned about Response time: 14ms and Contrast: 1000:1

I know that both are Flicker Safe and have Eye Comfort Mode but, What would be the best option to not hurt my eyes?

Is there any other recommendation on budget FullHD HDMI monitor?

EDIT:

I'm now seriously considering the Asus Option.

Answer 1

tl;dr

• Use only LCD panels from manufacturers being certified as using truly flicker-free technology.
• Ignore manufacturer claims and ignore labels on boxes, as they may be false.

Examples of such truly flicker-free monitors at a budget price with full-HD resolution:

• BenQ GW2270HM 22-Inch 1080 LED Monitor, 5ms, 8-bit Display, HDMI.
  Available today for USD $ 109.00.
• BenQ GW2270 21.5" 1080p LED Monitor,Low Blue Light Mode, True 8-bit Color Performance, VESA Mountable, D-Sub DVI-D. Available today for USD $ 89.00. While this monitor uses a DVI input rather than the HDMI you requested, you can use a HDMI-DVI cable such as this USD $ 5.99 one (HDMI is a superset of DVI).

LCD monitors may or may not flicker

Many, if not most, LCD flat-panel monitors produce flicker.

Older LCD monitors used fluorescent tubes. Whether driven by magnetic or electronic ballasts, all fluorescents flicker, by their nature. Avoid this entirely.

Modern LCD monitors use LEDs are used as backlighting. Ideally, these would perform with no flicker at all. But real-life is not always ideal.

Pulse-width modulation → flicker

Unfortunately, must manufacturers save a tiny amount of cost by using a technique known as PWM (pulse-width modulation) to providing dimming. This technique omits the circuitry that ratchets down the amount of electricity to naturally dim the LEDs. Instead, these manufacturers rapidly turn the LEDs off-and-on, off-and-on, off-and-on. If the LEDs spend half their time off and half the time on, then the brightness appears to be halved, for example. Unfortunately, the user is now staring into what is effectively a disco-like strobe light (not good).

While the conscious mind may not notice this flashing, many of us are indeed sensitive to this flicker. This results in headache, migraine, and so on. Personally, I suspect everyone is impacted even if perceived subliminally as “stress” or “tired eyes” without recognizing the cause.

The solution is to avoid any display using PWM. Unfortunately, there are unscrupulous vendors who label their product as "flicker-free" despite using PWM. There is no regulation or industry control over the term "flicker-free".

Flicker-free certification

So the only sure solution is to use a monitor that is certified as being truly flicker-free.

BenQ

One vendor that does not use PWM and is certified as flicker-free is BenQ. They offer a wide-range of monitors from budget-value to business-office to photographer-color-accurate to gamer. All their monitors are flicker-free. I use a 32" 4K BenQ monitor, but they offer budget-priced full-HD (1080) monitors as well.

They are certified by a German & US company, TUV Rheinland.

Eye-comfort = low-blue-light

"Eye-comfort" usually refers to the monitor offering a mode where blue-light is suppressed. Certain wavelengths of blue light are thought to mess with our circadian sleep cycle, and therefore avoided in the evening. This blue-light issue is unrelated to flicker.

For example, Apple offers this mode on Mac computers and on iOS devices, calling the feature Night Shift. This feature works only on the built-in screens. So if you want the same effect on your external monitor, you must buy a monitor with this capability built-in. You will need to manually enable/disable the low-blue-light mode on the external monetary by pressing its physical control buttons.

Beware: Colors are altered. Since shades of blue are suppressed, of course the colors are no longer true. Within a very few minutes, your eyes/brain adjust. So generally you will be unaware of the color changes if just casually browsing the web or typing email. But you cannot do high-quality photo-editing or video-editing with this mode enabled if you need accurate color portrayal. And you should not shopping for any products with just the right shade of some color while this low-blue-light mode is active.

Again, this low-blue-light feature has nothing to do with flicker. Two separate, orthogonal issues.

A quick check shows that most all the recent models of BenQ monitors recommended above offer this mode. They provide this page and this white paper explaining these issues.

The same TUV company provides certification for low-blue-light, just as they do for flicker-free.

Answer 2

Of the two you're looking at, I recommend the LG-22MT48DF. It has audio output where the LG-24M38H doesn't, and the better color and viewing angle of the IPS display will greatly improve your movie-watching experience.

None of the uses you mention requires a fast response time. Movies generally are played at 24 frames per second or 30 FPS, so any response time faster than about 30 ms is sufficient. Office use is even less demanding of fast response time.

Contrast ratio is essentially meaningless. It's a measure of the ratio between the darkest color the monitor can produce and the brightest -- but what really matters for appearance is the "black point": how dark that dark color is. IPS panels generally have a brighter black point than TN panels, but I haven't found it to make a difference in practice: they're both fairly bad. Monitor manufacturers get high contrast ratios by boosting the bright end of things to eye-searingly bright levels. Once you've turned the brightness down from its marketing level to something comfortable, the real contrast ratio is much lower.

As far as I can tell, "flicker safe" is a meaningless marketing term. LCD panels are inherently flicker free.

Blue-reduction settings such as "Eye Comfort Mode" are nice to have after dark (I use a software version called "redshift"), but during the day, you'll probably want to turn it off so the monitor's colors better match daylight. There's nothing inherently harmful about blue light, it's just that blue light after dark causes problems with your sleep patterns.

Answer 3

For eye care, I would go with option 2. Because it has better response time and contrast. For fast action, like sports and action/sci fy movies, you do not want to deal with lag. When watching video, I am mostly concerned with these. For extra inputs, you can simply get an HDMI splitter or go to an aux port.

Just my opinion. Love to hear what others say.