11 out of 11 people found this review helpful.
Beautiful big screen
Date of Review: May 23, 2006
The Bottom Line: Great display quality, easy to use. Useful pivot feature. Software works but could be better thought out.
I got this monitor as a gift and I am extremely pleased so far.
Industrial Design:
The monitor has very clean and simple attractive looks. The up/down adjustment is smooth (though I wish it would go just a bit lower, though when you try to pivot when it's low the corners will bump your desk). Pivoting is also smooth, but does not auto-sense (you have to go to a menu or press a hotkey to rotate the on-screen display). Power supply is integrated into the monitor so there is no separate power brick (yay!)
Controls:
I haven't tried any of the controls - I didn't have to, the monitor's auto-setup worked perfectly the first time, locking on to my analog graphics card output of 1600x1200 (native resolution for this monitor). My old Sharp LCD monitor couldn't do that and required me to do multiple auto-adjusts until it got it right. As I said earlier, it would be nice if there was an auto-sense for the pivot control, but I hardly ever use the monitor in portrait mode so this is not a big deal.
Display Quality:
No dead or stuck pixels. Bright, vivid, accurate colors. I haven't done any kind of objective testing, but color rendition obviously a lot better than my old Sharp LCD monitor. My only quibble is that the viewing angle seems a bit narrow, though it is only noticeable if you stand well to either side of the monitor - not a situation that is going to happen in my normal computer use.
Software:
Typical situation here - great hardware but software leaves a bit to be desired in the usability department. You have to install everything, and that gives you roughly 3 separate startup items and 3 icons in the system tray (next to the clock). The pivot software adds a huge splash screen, and adds pivot options to display context menus, with no way to turn them off. Why they didn't integrate all monitor functions into a single program and give options to disable unnecessary functions is beyond me. I also ended up only using the pivot software and removed the others from Startup because they didn't seem to actually do anything (to be fair, I am sure they are useful for people who need them, but I just do web surfing and software development so I am not going to freak if my color balance is not perfect).
What's in the box:
Monitor, power cord, analog video cable, digital video cable, CD, manuals.
