Bought iiyama Prolite E511 Monitor- MY REVIEW

INTRODUCTION

After much deliberation i bought a Iiyama Prolite E511 20.1inch TFT Monitor for £669 from dabs.com. I have been looking for a suitable TFT monitor for several months and have done considerable research i.e. read all the reviews, comments etc. to determine which TFT monitor are suitable for playing games.

However, as many of you know, there are not many reviews of TFT monitors. I am therefore writing this review because i have noticed that, while many people tend to buy TFT monitors, few people tend to write a review about it to help others make an informed choice.

IMPORTANT: Please NOTE!!! This review is just my opinion on this monitor. Your view/opinon may be different! Dont buy this monitor after reading this review and then say its rubbish, or doesnt do this, or this game plays terribly. We all have our own opinions and something that is not important to me maybe important to you. You should therefore use this review as a guide only.

You can view the monitor here http://www.dabs.com/uk/Search2/Pro [...] phrase=tft monitor prolite


WHY BUY?

Generally favourable reviews

http://www.trustedreviews.com/arti [...] 42&head=19
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/d [...] ew-04.html

16ms response time. 20 inches in size!

SPEC/RIG ITS RUNNING ON

Athlon XP2000+
512 DDR266 RAM
80GB ATA100 IBM Harddrive
128MB Geforce 4 TI 4400
Running monitor in analogue mode at 1024x768.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

The monitor is massive! 20 inches is very big. It looks nice although it is not very flexible. You cant swivel or adjust the stand. It also does not come with a DVI cable, probably to keep costs down. However none of these flaws concerned me as it is at the perfect height on my desk anyway and i dont want to swivel it. I have also read that Analogue mode is best for gaming. First relief, no dead pixels! I have read plenty of horror stories about them.


COLOURS

The colours on this monitor are very impressive, in fact, beautiful. They really stand out. Surprisingly, they are much better then on my old Samsung SyncMaster CRT monitor. I loaded up the Far Cry demo and the splash screen with its green trees looks amazing. Top marks.

VIEWING ANGLES

Again, very impressive. I looked at the screen from a near 90 degree angle and was still able to read the text on the screen. The screen does look a little faded but thats all and only when viewing from an extreme angle.

MOVIES

Excellent, Perfect fluid sequences. No blurring or ghosting detected.


GAMES!

Now the big one. I am an avid gamer and terrified of "ghosting", "smearing" and all the other horror stories i have heard.

I loaded up Counter Strike. First impression, lovely. The colours are so clear it really is amazing. The picture is sharp and it is really awesome playing on a big monitor. I did some running around, turned around quickly etc. and had no problems at all. I did not notice any ghosting or any other problems even when spinning around violently.

Now to try something a little more testing. I cranked up Call of Duty. This game is awesome. Again the monitor excelled. It looks terrific on this big monitor. I went through some of the battle scenes and experienced no problems. It is so much better playing on a 20inch monitor as opposed to a 17inch monitor.

Finally i cranked up a demo of Far Cry and again it was perfectly fine, no problems.

What does perfectly fine, no problems mean? It means that i did not find any problems that you would not find on a CRT monitor. No ghosting, smearing found so far.


PROBLEM FOUND!

After a few days I have now started to notice one problem. There seems to be a line which appears and disappears quickly which looks like flickering. I have noticed this when watching movies now as well. It looks like a refresh problem as i had something like this on my old CRT monitor although it was less noticable. However, this isnt a problem which happens when something very quick is happening on the screen. It happens even if someone is just walking across the screen. I was watching the movie Snatch and someone was talking in an animated way, moving his head back and forth and this was enough to cause some occasional lines flickering aroun his head. I have also noticed this problem in Counter Strike but not on Call of Duty or Far Cry. I dont know whats causing it but it is noticable. I tried increasing the refresh rate on my graphics card software but it made no difference. None of the reviews above mention anything like this. I think this requires further investigation.

WEBSURFING/OFFICE APPLICATIONS

Works fine as you can imagine. Its good if you sit some distance from your monitor as webpages and text look nice and big on this monitor. You might find it unconfortable if you sit really close to your monitor as you would need to move your head and eyes some distance to read something spanning across a 20 inch screen.


CONCLUSION

Iiyama have a repution for producing high quality monitors and this is no different.This monitor is no better then a standard monitor in terms of quality except for better colours. Then again, what TFT monitor is? We all know that TFT monitors have some way to go before they outperform standard CRTs. More importantly, the Iiyama doesnt appear to be that worse off than a CRT monitor.

The big plus for this monitor is its screen size. Its awesome playing games on a 20inch monitor. Its like playing on a television but with sharper images. Games like Counter Strike, Far Cry and Call of Duty all work well enough without any major problems. I dont know how it will play on more demanding games like Unreal Tournament 2004 but i would guess it would be fine.

Should you buy this monitor or TFT monitors in general? That depends. If you need to save some desk space or want something that uses less power and is easier on the eyes then yes you should. However, there is little point in buying a TFT monitor just for the sake of having one. You may be better off waiting for better TFT screens to come out later this year.


Pros

TFT Monitor takes up much less space
£660 for a high quality 20inch TFT monitor is quite good value
Playing games on a 20inch monitor is awesome!
Games tested (Far Cry, Counter Strike & Call of Duty) all play fine with no ghosting noticed
Colours are better then on my old CRT monitor


Cons

£660 is alot of money just for a monitor
No swivel, height adjustment on the monitor
20inch monitors are not perhaps as good for websurfing as a smaller monitor
Do you need a 20inch monitor? Wont a cheaper 17-19inch monitor do?
Slight flickering noticed even when there is little action on screen - possibly my computer or settings maybe at fault as none of the reviews have mentioned anything like this.


Hope this review helps. Please feel free to ask any questions and i will do my best to answer them. Good luck finding the right TFT monitor for you!