The Sony Trinitron stuff is good. There are various versions Sony made for Dell and gateway so you can search those names too. Id say the larger the better unless you are trying to balance it on top of a horizontal desktop PC, in which case I'd recommend 15 inches.

Nec, Samsung, Mitsubishi also made good monitors. If you want to save a lot of money, see if you can find any good looking monitors locally. When these monitors are shipped it costs a lot due to the weight and their bulk, and there's a not insignificant risk that the plastic casing will crack or break, or monitor components might break, related to the shipping.

In general for DOS and low resolution gaming 14-17". For Windows and high resolution gaming 17-21".

I like Sony Trinitrons. But check any monitor in person as the tube can be worn out - check brightness and sharpness.

As other mentioned, Sony Trinitrons are pretty darn good. One thing to remember - the Trinitron technology patent expired in the late 90's, so plenty of other manufacturers made their own, just with a different name. If the name ends with "-tron", then its likely using that tech.

That being said, you'll be fine with any CRT monitor as long as the tube is still bright and can do 75+Hz. 60Hz and below will likely give you a headache before long.

From the CRT, I'd prefer something on a DiamondTron NF handset, 19 inches and up, with support for at least 1600x900@100hz (For desktop and later games). In the monitor settings, you can narrow and stretch any resolution as you like, regardless of vertical/horizontal, so I would not mess with small diagonals at all, but immediately take as large as possible from the available ones.

I would recommend 17" for most content that was made before 2000, and 19" and larger for more modern content. Anything that's 640x480 or lower will look better on a 17" in my opinion.

Also, I tend to avoid flat screen CRTs because of geometry and focus issues, and the picture doesn't look as immersive because of their thicker glass. Similar to a tablet with an unlaminated screen. It's not a hard rule but you should at least know about these problems.

As mentioned Sony Trinitron monitors are the best, often very sharp, vibrant colors and great brightness thanks to the aperture grille tube. Diamondtron tubes are the equivalent from Mitsubishi. But it doesn't have to be aperture grille, a good shadow mask tube can also look great and authentic for older content. Samsung monitors are top tier, know to have some of the sharpest, most vibrant picture and constantly scoring high in magazines. But don't just go by the brand of the monitor, there are a lot of brands that didn't actually produce their own monitors. It's more important who the original manufacturer is.

Things I personally look at:

- Dot / Grille pitch. 0.27mm is poor, 0.26mm okay, 0.24mm razor sharp. Often directly correlates with the tier of monitor (cheap to professional/high-end)
- Production country: Anything made in China / Taiwan is often bottom of the barrel, anything from Japan is high quality, Sony, Mitsubishi, NEC, Panasonic. Korea is most likely Samsung or LG. If it's an aperture grille monitor, you can also spot it by the screen shape (it doesn't curve towards the top and bottom).
- Screen coating / tint: The darker it is, the more expensive a monitor tends to be, and the better contrast it will have. But it will also wear out faster because it has to be brighter to shine through the coating.
- Horizontal scanning frequency, should be at least 96 KHz for a 19" and 80 KHz for a 17". But I would always willing to compromise on that if the picture quality is nice. You don't need to play everything at 100 Hz, especially older stuff.
- Scratches on the screen coating. Annoying because once you've spotted it, you can't unsee it, especially on more static pictures. It's also impossible to repair.
- If you have photos of the running monitor, look for geometry problems such as warping and poor linearity, also poor brightness/contrast, especially red. Grayish whites, poor highlights and weak red color = worn out tube. A sign that the brightness is good can sometimes be when bright areas have a little "bloom" around them, bleeding into adjacent areas. Run the same content on your own monitor to have a comparison for how it should look like.

And lastly, the best tool for getting a feel for what's good and what's not is browsing through reviews from old magazines. You can find a ton of them on archive.org. Search for a particular monitor model using the "search contents" checkbox, and it will show you magazines that reviewed it.

Thanks a lot for the many helpful replies Also a big thanks for the warning that it is better to shop locally and not online due the danger of the monitor getting damaged during the transport.

@asdf53 Thanks a lot for your detailed reply.

About the size I think 17 inch feels right for me. I am going to play games from 1997 to 2001 most of time. But I am also at the verge of restaurating one of my old xp rigs from 2005. So i might going to play some more modern games as well. In that regard a larger monitor might be the better choice...

To find a good brand monitor these days, you have to be patient. Don't make the mistake of buying the first monitor you see, chances are you'll regret it. Wait a few weeks / months and look at offers, compare their picture on the photos, read some reviews. It takes some time until you're able to judge what's worth getting and what isn't.

If it helps, I would avoid these brands: Medion, Lifetec, Scott, Belinea, AOC, and basically 90% of monitors that are made in China / Taiwan. Very high chance that these are crap. If it's an unknown brand, look at the back label to see if it's from Japan or Korea, then it could be an OEM Sony or Samsung. Siemens / Fujitsu monitors are often made by Samsung.

For gaming, a 17-inch CRT is pretty solid, but if you can go for something bigger, like a 19-inch, you'll get a more immersive experience. CRTs are awesome for retro gaming and low latency, but keep in mind they can be bulky, so make sure it’ll fit on your desk.

For models, check out the Sony Trinitron or the ViewSonic P227f. They’re known for their great image quality and reliability. You’ll also want something with a high refresh rate (like 85Hz or more) for smoother gameplay.

asdf53 wrote on 2025-05-02, 17:20:

To find a good brand monitor these days, you have to be patient. Don't make the mistake of buying the first monitor you see, chances are you'll regret it. Wait a few weeks / months and look at offers, compare their picture on the photos, read some reviews. It takes some time until you're able to judge what's worth getting and what isn't.

If it helps, I would avoid these brands: Medion, Lifetec, Scott, Belinea, AOC, and basically 90% of monitors that are made in China / Taiwan. Very high chance that these are crap. If it's an unknown brand, look at the back label to see if it's from Japan or Korea, then it could be an OEM Sony or Samsung. Siemens / Fujitsu monitors are often made by Samsung.

Thanks a lot for the warning about bad brand. I am also fully aware that getting the proper crt is is long time journy and it could take some time until I find a proper one. I do not mind to wait. I want a quality crt monitor after all to enjoy the games on my win98se retro rig. I also want to use the monitor to play some Dreamcast Games in VGA mode.

Enis wrote on 2025-05-02, 19:03:

For gaming, a 17-inch CRT is pretty solid, but if you can go for something bigger, like a 19-inch, you'll get a more immersive experience. CRTs are awesome for retro gaming and low latency, but keep in mind they can be bulky, so make sure it’ll fit on your desk.

For models, check out the Sony Trinitron or the ViewSonic P227f. They’re known for their great image quality and reliability. You’ll also want something with a high refresh rate (like 85Hz or more) for smoother gameplay.

Thanks a lot for the model recommendation and the warning about the bulky size. The desk is big and sturdy enough to hoste a 17 to 19 inch crt. heavy printer was sitting on it he past. So I know how big and sturdy it is.

Not all the AOC monitors were bad, the A+ series (17" 7A+ and 19" 9A+) had a Diamondtron flatscreen by Mitsubishi.

Scratches on the screen coating. Annoying because once you've spotted it, you can't unsee it, especially on more static pictures. It's also impossible to repair.

Yes, this is a real anoyance. A while ago I bought a Sony Triniton and - upon arival - noticed some strange patches on the screen. So I enthusiastically started to clean them off only to notice that I made it worse. This was not mentioned (or visible) in the product description but as written above - you cant unsee it. The only solution may be to completely scrub the coating off and use the screen without it. But while it may come off in some places it sticks in others.

Tbh, unless you live in some paradise with huge diversity of monitors available in good state for an acceptable price, it's not that useful to choose the 'best' first and the try to find it. Much better to look at what is available and choose the best match

Otherwise, same as already posted:
- DOS looks better on curved-front shadow-mask screens and too small a dot pitch actually makes things look too sharp/ugly
- Windows likes the most high-res sharp display you can find and flat tubes tend to look better. Aperture grille is the way to go here (Trinitron or variants). Do be aware that you will always see two faint horizontal lines on this type of screen. Some love it's authenticity, others can't stand it. Most important specs are dot pitch (.25 or smaller) and horizontal refresh (96kHz or better - this can do 1600x900@75HZ or anything lower at 85Hz).

I had a 2003 era 17" Iiyama Diamondtron for DOS, which was one of the best Carts of that size. But I hated how it looked with (S)VGA content. I gave it to my son and got an old Vobis Highscreen-branded 15" aquarium with .28 dot.pitch. Awful for desktop work but perfect for those old DOS games.

Note that if you want high-res high-refresh stuff on CRT, you also need to look at the quality of your graphics card's analog output. There's a reason Matrox cards were popular with those of us using big screens. A low-end card (regardless of the chip on it) will give a blurry washed-out image with divergence between the colours too in bad cases. As soon as you go over 800x600 with 1990s cards or 1024x768 in the 2000s this becomes a very important consideration.

Ydee wrote on 2025-05-03, 09:01:

Not all the AOC monitors were bad, the A+ series (17" 7A+ and 19" 9A+) had a Diamondtron flatscreen by Mitsubishi.

That's interesting, I remember seeing a series of premium or graphics monitors browsing their web site on archive.org, but didn't investigate further. I mainly remember them from the 90s as a cheap manufacturer. Our first family PC had an AOC monitor, the cheapest you could buy, and later, they were the OEM for extremely basic monitors sold at Aldi (and possibly Lidl) in Germany. Some of their monitors were so cheap that they didn't even have an anti-static coating or on-screen menu.

Long time ago... i have a nokia 446 or 447 (not sure about exact model) at my workplace, it uses trinitron tube and colors are amazing

asdf53 wrote on 2025-05-03, 15:46:

That's interesting, I remember seeing a series of premium or graphics monitors browsing their web site on archive.org, but didn't investigate further. I mainly remember them from the 90s as a cheap manufacturer. Our first family PC had an AOC monitor, the cheapest you could buy, and later, they were the OEM for extremely basic monitors sold at Aldi (and possibly Lidl) in Germany. Some of their monitors were so cheap that they didn't even have an anti-static coating or on-screen menu.

The AOC was mainly a budget brand, but they made this particular A+ model line with an original Diamondtron screen and relatively decent electronics (max 1600x1200@75Hz). The Klr and K+ series were still produced with a "flat" screen, but only the front glass was flat, otherwise the screen was a classic curved one from the manufacturer Chunghwa.

sorry for highjacking the thread op but I have question on that topic and so I can avoid making a new thread.

I also want a crt pc monitor for the perfect retro gaming experience for my voodoo 3 system. I have space enough to accommodate a 19 inch or even larger crt. Do you think it is smart decision to aim for the bigger ones in the first place if I get the chance?

So far I have not seen a larger than 19 inch crt near mear but I am not giving up.

I will check out a 19 inch VideoSeven monitor next week. Do you guys have heard about the brand?

predator_085 wrote on 2025-05-04, 09:37:

sorry for highjacking the thread op but I have question on that topic and so I can avoid making a new thread. […]
Show full quote

sorry for highjacking the thread op but I have question on that topic and so I can avoid making a new thread.

I also want a crt pc monitor for the perfect retro gaming experience for my voodoo 3 system. I have space enough to accommodate a 19 inch or even larger crt. Do you think it is smart decision to aim for the bigger ones in the first place if I get the chance?

So far I have not seen a larger than 19 inch crt near mear but I am not giving up.

I will check out a 19 inch VideoSeven monitor next week. Do you guys have heard about the brand?

I'd say that you don't really need to pay attention to brands. If a monitor is in a good working condition 20+ years after being built, then it should be good enough.

Main thing you should be looking at is if the screen still has any brightness left.

predator_085 wrote on 2025-05-04, 09:37:

sorry for highjacking the thread op but I have question on that topic and so I can avoid making a new thread. […]
Show full quote

sorry for highjacking the thread op but I have question on that topic and so I can avoid making a new thread.

I also want a crt pc monitor for the perfect retro gaming experience for my voodoo 3 system. I have space enough to accommodate a 19 inch or even larger crt. Do you think it is smart decision to aim for the bigger ones in the first place if I get the chance?

So far I have not seen a larger than 19 inch crt near mear but I am not giving up.

I will check out a 19 inch VideoSeven monitor next week. Do you guys have heard about the brand?

VideoSeven = Macrotron, a brand that sold Taiwanese / Chinese made monitors from various manufacturers, often higher-priced models for professional use. Many of them used good tubes from Sony, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Hitachi. But I have also read that the electronics of some of these monitors were not of the highest standard and would often fail sooner than the more expensive brands, in various ways. So - it could be a good monitor, but I wouldn't buy it without testing.

I'd use a 17" for a Vooodoo 3, it's still from the era where you had to make compromises and play on lower settings. Low-res graphics on a large screen doesn't look all that great. I would choose a 19" or larger for a better card where you can play on maximum settings, this is where having a big monitor makes sense.

dionb wrote on 2025-05-03, 10:51:

Tbh, unless you live in some paradise with huge diversity of monitors available in good state for an acceptable price, it's not that useful to choose the 'best' first and the try to find it. Much better to look at what is available and choose the best match

This is the most important and since OP is from Austria, 99% of these answers are pretty much useless.

Unless he wants to pay a large sum to order a "notable" CRT from somewhere, best option is just wait for some 17" to pop up locally.