Like almost every other year, there were a few technological innovations to speak of in this space, but monitors brands mainly tried to outdo each other on price. Larger screen sizes were being offered for the same prices while HD resolutions became the norm. We saw a slightly larger variety in terms of the panels available in the market. Instead of the plain old TN panel, we did have a few monitors with VA and IPS panels. Apart from screen sizes getting larger, the monitors became slimmer too thanks to the new range of LED backlit LCD monitors from the likes of AOC and LG
In our last Icons of Trust featuring Monitors as a category, the top three slots went to Samsung, Dell and LG respectively. While the most trusted brand still remains Samsung, this year we see a switcheroo between Dell and LG, with the other Korean conglomerate now moving one place above Dell. Samsung scored a trust rating of 83.04 (on hundred) while the second and third places were far behind with LG at LG 69.12 followed by Dell at 64.79.
Key findings:
- Samsung stood first in all the six parameters that made up the overall trust index and was generally far ahead. In fact the only category that LG came close was Availability, where the perception was that desired models of LG monitors are slightly more easily available than Samsung. Dell came close to Samsung in After Sales service with a score of 66 per cent in that question as compared to Samsung with 72 per cent.
- In terms of ownership, Samsung commanded 41.18 per cent of our surveyed market, while both Dell and LG had 26.47 per cent each. Surprising since Dell monitors are perceived to be (and generally are) more expensive than LG.
- This was one of those rare categories where none of the brands ended up a negative score. That is, not too many people had anything too negative to say about the brands in question. Another surprising placement in rankings was with NEC. To those who know about the brand its products are known to be high quality. But as our survey showed us not many people had heard of the brand and hence got a low score on Awareness and hence a drop in the overall ranking for the trust index.
- BenQ which at one point used to be behind both AOC and Acer has trumped these two brands. Incidentally, both AOC and Acer got nearly the same score on our trust index. But the brands are equally trusted.
