Dell P1130 21 inch CRT Monitor

Between work, family and home, i've had at least 12 years experience with various 21" and 22" calibrated CRT monitors and the P1130 ranks right up there in the top 15% in my opinion. I'm not a repairman or anything but i've always had much interest in these larger tube monitors.

The P1130 has noticeably better color quality than the P1110, P1100, Sony G500, which also tend to develop a brightness problem where the screen is too bright and blacks become a washed out shade of gray. The Dell P1130 has also been known to develop this same brightness problem but it seems to be very rare with this specific model, i've only heard of one or two instances personally. The Dell P1230 is pretty close in quality to the P1130 from what little i've seen, haven't had more than 6 months experience with it though... I'm not as sure about the Hewlett Packard branded P1130 but reviews seem to suggest the dell version is better, can't speak from experience though.

The P1130 is definitely better than most NEC's including the FE1250+ and slightly better than the NEC 2141SB, i liked the 2141SB a lot but many of them developed blurry corners after some aging, had over 20 of them at my old job, 5 of them went permanently blurry in the corners after a year or so. Not as sure about the NEC FE2111 but the ones i've seen recently seem really nice, didn't spend much time with them and i'm not sure if they age well either.

The Mitsubishi 2070 and Lacie III blue 22" are at least as good, if not better than the P1130 but they often cost more, and i am not sure how well the Mitsu 2070 ages over time but from what i read they are probably ok. The Lacie and 2070 seem to have an edge in graphics and colors and user-settings choices, but text quality is about the same as the P1130. The Lacie and 2070 also offer somewhat greater control over geometry settings, but their menu is also more difficult to navigate in my opinion, a slight tradeoff for some perhaps.

IMHO the P1130 is also better than the Viewsonic P220F simply because the P220F doesn't seem to age very well, many of them lose their text sharpness after a year or so and there were many revisions of the P220F, so quality + components varied drastically. The Viewsonic "G" series is a lower end series so you're probably better off avoiding those. I have experience with other 21" CRT's but won't mention them since they were never too popular to begin with, some were good imho while others were garbage, or they're just too old now to even consider.

I've heard users describe the Dell P1130 as a "business class" monitor but my eyes tell me that it's just as strong at gaming and graphics as well, especially after a proper calibration but they're pretty darn good out of the box also, which is rare actually. Text is sharp for a CRT, not the absolute best i've seen but right up there none-the-less. The sharpest text i've seen on a CRT were actually on high-end shadow mask tube monitors which are rare nowadays, and the better ones are probably too old by now (Hitachi tubes).

If you are debating on what type of CRT monitor to buy, you can easily place the Dell P1130 on your top 3 list, especially since they tend to age well and have a strong combo of good graphics, text and decent geometry. If you decide to buy it then you are probably making the right decision.

Thank you for reading, hopefully i've given some insight.