Stunning Image Quality

This one was unexpected. A friend loaned me an Apple 20-inch Cinema Display widescreen monitor to get my opinions regarding its image quality. After just one night with the monitor, I gave him my verdict: gorgeous. However, there’s more to it than that, so I hope you read on for the full story.

Fortunately, I had the monitor for six weeks and it was a fun experience. I used the Apple 20-inch monitor with my home-built Windows XP PC to write this review. I did not use it on a Macintosh computer.

FEATURES

I am not a big Apple Macintosh fan. I use them regularly at my work to run Quark Express and I can't wait to get back to my PC with Windows XP as the operating system. Regardless of my Mac apathy, Apple has the prettiest products in the computer industry. This 20-inch Cinema Display monitor has an understated and timeless appearance that will go with any decor, from tech-nerd grunge to Upper West Side sophisticated. Its brushed aluminum stand and bezel are beautiful, and the monitor fits right into its spot on my computer worktable; I hated to part with it.

The Apple 20-inch Cinema Monitor is a flat-panel LCD display that has an aspect ratio of 16:9, as opposed to the older and more typical 4:3 aspect ratio that TVs and monitors have used for decades. On its stand, the monitor measures 16.25-inches tall and 18.5-inches wide; the diagonal display measurement is 20.1 inches. Off the stand, the display assembly is 12.5-inches tall.

The stand attaches to the back of the monitor using a proprietary mount, although Apple sells a VESA adapter that permits attaching the monitor to an articulated stand or wallmount. Not counting the stand fitting, the monitor measures an astonishing 1.2-inches thick. That's about as thin as you are going to get in a flat-panel monitor of this size.

There are only two controls on the Apple 20-inch Cinema Display, both on the unit's lower-right edge. One is an on/off pushbutton and the other is the brightness control, which has a button each for up and down. That's it — there are no other controls. There are no adjustments for contrast, image size, image geometry, image location or any of the dozen other adjustments available on other monitors. Apparently, this Apple display can be controlled from the Apple operating system but I had few available controls from my PC.

The native resolution of the Apple 20-inch Cinema Display is a whopping 1,680 x 1,050 pixels, significantly higher than the 1,280 x 1,024 that I usually run. It has only one input and that is a DVI (Digital Visual Interface) connector on the end of a five-foot cable. (The cable runs into the back of the monitor and there are no actual connectors on the monitor itself.) There are VGA-to-DVI adapters but in my experience, pure DVI is the way to go. It is much crisper than VGA.

The Apple 20-inch Cinema Display also has built-in FireWire 400 and USB2 hubs, each with two receptacles. At the end of the same cable as the DVI connector are USB and FireWire connectors that plug into the computer. On the monitor, the USB and FireWire connectors are awkwardly placed on the lower rear; I had to look for a couple minutes before I found them.

One final thing: There is an external power supply in a small white box that also connects to a cable at the DVI-connector end of the cable. The overall result is that the monitor itself is sleek and artfully uncluttered, as beautiful and timeless-looking as a 1960s Ferrari.

IN USE

As I mentioned earlier, I used the Apple 20-inch Cinema Display on my home-built Windows XP computer, which happens to have a DVI output that can run at the display’s native resolution of 1,680 x 1,050 pixels. I plugged all the cables in — including the FireWire and USB2 cables — fired up the computer and quickly set the resolution. As I said, there is only one word to describe the appearance: gorgeous. Somehow, I will manage to find a few more words in a moment.

On the other hand, my computer did not at all like the USB hub in this Apple display. Windows XP immediately detected a USB hub and tried to set it up but was unable to do so correctly. I eventually got a message along the lines of, “The USB device could not be properly configured.” Within five minutes, power was cut off to all my USB ports (I have nine on this computer!) and several outboard accessories stopped working. I didn’t immediately suspect the Apple monitor but it proved to be the culprit. I ultimately had to disconnect the USB cable to the Apple monitor and leave it disconnected. I never did check the operation of the monitor’s two hubs. Apple advertises this computer as compatible with PCs but my USB problem makes me think that not all the bugs are worked out for PC use.

I set my computer to the "large fonts" option in its display properties and it’s a good thing; on "standard fonts," icons and menu displays would be uncomfortably tiny for my aging baby-boomer eyes. Even with "large fonts" selected, icons and menus were still a little smaller than I’d like. At this resolution, a 20-inch monitor is oddly not quite big enough when it comes to displaying icons and system fonts. I wish Windows XP offered a selection for a 40-percent increase in system font sizes.

I used this display for a variety of typical computer activities, including word processing, Web surfing, Photoshop work and a bit of basic gaming. With the exception that icons and system fonts are on the small side, the images were drop-dead gorgeous. There is a sweet spot in front of the Apple 20-inch Cinema Display that gives the brightest image, but it remains usably visible far off axis. Maybe it’s my eyes but I think this display is slightly brighter on the left than it is on the right.

As for its overall brightness, I wrote this next to a large window that floods the room with the afternoon sun. I had no trouble seeing the screen and writing this review on a sunny afternoon.

All other activities were a delight on this monitor. Text from the word processor snapped off the monitor with amazing crispness. Color and resolution looked wonderful when editing images in Photoshop and it was a pleasure to have this sharpness and sheer visual elbow room when surfing the Web.

My wife really enjoyed using the Apple 20-inch Cinema Display to put together three pictures into a panorama using Photoshop. Having the wide screen made it easier to spread the images out and still get the crispness of this high-resolution display. We visited the recent Christo art event, "The Gates," in New York City and she took images for two panoramas. Both came out well and were easier to assemble on this 16:9 high-resolution monitor than they would have been on my 1,280 x 1,024-pixel monitor with its 4:3 aspect ratio.

One thing we did looked particularly amazing on the Apple 20-inch Cinema Display. We downloaded a couple of magazines off the Internet from www.zinio.com and they were just stunning on this monitor. The two we downloaded (National Geographic and Popular Science) are chock full of visual information and the wide screen of the Apple monitor provided a wide-open space for spreading out the pages. Really, it was amazing and just might make people think that Web distribution is the future of magazine publishing. Even the ads looked good.

One thing that I unfortunately can not do on this computer is play DVDs. For some reason — probably a glitch in my display card's driver — I can't play DVDs. That's a dang shame because I think they’d look terrific on the Apple monitor.

The only problem that I had with the display's image quality is that the screen sometimes dimmed and glitched a bit when I adjusted the tilt on the monitor. It was not a big problem and it always snapped back to the highest brightness level in a moment.

SUMMARY

The image quality on the Apple 20-inch Cinema Display is the best I have ever seen for a computer display. It was beautiful in every way, with good brightness, excellent contrast, rich color saturation and razor-sharp resolution.

However, the monitor falls just short of perfection in a few ways. I did have some minor glitching as I mentioned above, and the USB hub failed to work. In fact, it dragged all the computer's USB ports down with it. Even if the hub did work, its location on the back of the monitor is so awkward as to be marginally useful at best. Finally, as much as I like the sleek and minimalist appearance of the Apple 20-inch Cinema Display, I really want the ability to control more than brightness.

I had the Apple 20-inch Cinema Display for six weeks and it quickly became a comfortable and attractive tool that improves my time at the computer. This is a beautiful display that is probably better suited for Macs than it is for PCs, although I wish I could have hung onto it for a while longer. It was really easy to get used to something that looks this good.