First post, by wd_retro
It's all quite clear as mud from searching through posts filled with technical details and caveats and "if you use this specific upscaler that may or may not ever turn up on Ebay..." and so on, so I'm looking for a more simplified distillation: in the Year of Our Lord 2023, what are the good LCD (and preferably, but not necessarily, LED) monitors for good old VGA MS-DOS gaming?
As promised, a useful definition of "Good" for my (and I suspect many DOS gamers') purposes:
1. Able to run 320x200 (720x400) mode software at the correct 70hz WITHOUT DROPPING FRAMES. This is criteria #1 and the most important hard must-have. Anything that frameskips @70hz is useless and can go get chucked out the window as far as I'm concerned.
2. Able to do the above at the correct 4:3 aspect ratio, preferably through setting / forcing a 4:3 in the monitor's own OSD, but also totally fine if it's through an easily available and reasonably priced upscaler (eg. Extron RGB 300 series) if needed. 4:3 displaying correctly is also a hard must-have. As above - can't do it? Then it's not an option; toss it out the window for all I care.
3. Actually available. Monitors that are unobtainium aren't very useful and it's frustrating to be recommended an option that isn't a realistic option. I mention this because it keeps happening; someone mentions a monitor that seems promising and it turns out to be something made way back in the 2010s for a short window and now, somehow, there are exactly zero of them available anywhere on earth.
4. Native resolution that hits exact 1:1 multiples for scaling the usual retro resolutions. 1920x1200, for example, would be ideal.
5. IPS panel, ideally. Anything is fine as long as it actually looks good, though.
6. Preferably LED, but again, if it works it works.
7. Black sidebars / letterboxing / whatever screenspace gets left black are absolutely not an issue for me, just as long as this thing does DOS (and Windows 3.1 I guess) right.
8. 24-27" is a great size. Smaller or larger aren't really issues and I'm more than happy to sacrifice ideal size for zero frameskips and no aspect distortion, but somewhere in this window is a plus.
I don't know if there's a consolidated list in a Google doc somewhere condensing these capabilities down, and I just haven't found it. If so, great. If not, I'm really looking for recommendations based on experiences from people who have actually tested some newer monitors for these DOS-friendly features first-hand. I don't want to go chasing CRTs, I don't have the space (and I already have a 17" Trinitron anyway, it looks great but I do NOT need more of 'em). I just want a nice LCD monitor that doesn't force any compromises in frameskipping or incorrect stretched out aspect ratios. I will buy an Extron RGB 300 (HDMI or DVI, whatever) / equivalently priced upscaler if needed to make a specific monitor work, not a problem.
Just looking for some help with specific "I recommend this one because it hits these points" advice, because I've spent hours reading through past threads without getting a clear enough picture to choose anything in particular with confidence that it won't be a huge disappointment, and I'm getting tired out from endless searching.
