RAY16

Distinguished
Nov 14, 2008
2
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18,510
I took a chance on this monitor. Received it today.

No dead or stuck pixels on the one I received (I ordered from Newegg), minor backlight bleeding around the edges but nothing worth crying about. It uses a 6-Bit TN panel with Hi-FRC. Color banding isn't noticeable under most circumstances, but it is there. It's most noticeable when there is a transition from a lighter color to a darker color (particularly noticeable with glowing effects on/in front of/fading into a black background), transitions from one light color to another is pretty smooth. Banding issues aside the color quality is good. Pretty rich and vibrant. The 5ms response time introduces some ghosting in fast motion situations, but I wouldn't say it's enough of an annoyance to hinder my enjoyment of a game. Ghosting is more noticeable in games than it is in movies from what I've seen so far, but not disgustingly bad in either.

The picture is nice and sharp. The case/bezel is glossy black and fairly attractive (but of course, it's a finger print magnet). The touch button controls work well enough, but can occasionally be unresponsive. The advertised contrast ratio is 20000:1, but I believe that's only accurate if you enable "ACM" in the monitors OSD (I haven't read anything about it, but I believe it's dynamic contrast management) and use the display under ideal lighting conditions. With that said, the black levels are pretty good on the monitor. Better than my old CRT, actually.

There's a touch button on the front of the bezel that lets you switch between inputs, so you can have a PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 hooked up at the same time (PC to DVI-D, 360 to VGA, PS3 to HDMI would probably be the best configuration) and switch between them without having to fiddle with wires. Since the native resolution of the monitor is 1920x1080 it's perfect for hooking a console up to, as well as displaying any other HD content that has been optimized for a 16:9 display.

The box was well padded and it came with one cable for each of the panels inputs, as well as an audio cable for the monitors two built-in 1W speakers (which are completely useless to 99.9% of users... ¬_¬) and a power cable. The display signal cables aren't of the highest quality, they're fairly thin and don't have heavy duty ferrite cores, but they're probably fine for most people.

Overall I'm happy with my purchase. The monitor won't satisfy videophiles due to the 6-Bit+Hi-FRC TN panel, but I think it'd be just fine for the vast majority of users.

Naturally, this is my personal opinion of the monitor based on roughly 1-day of usage so take what I've said for what you will. Hopefully It has been useful and informative.
 

mrmagoogt

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Sep 28, 2008
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18,510
Actually I was thinking in getting a 24 o 26 inch, but I also came upon this one and I´m considering to give it a try (the price looks really good), thanks for your info RAY16 and I hope someone else could add some more comments on this one. Is this resolution supported by new games out there?
 

RAY16

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Nov 14, 2008
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18,510
Most newer games I've tried support the resolution just fine. Support varies from game to game, of course. But with the usage of the Widescreen Gaming Forum you can get most games to work either perfectly or well enough to be playable most of the time.

Here are a few shots from games running at 1920x1080 on my computer:






CrysisWarheadShot.jpg