Films
We tried several movies on this monitor: Matrix, Dark City, Tigers and Dragons - but also, since it's in the air lately, the Star Wars classics.
Watching movies is actually a bit touch-and-go with this monitor. First of all, we had to fuss with the colors a little before calibration. They look too red, which had an immediate effect on flesh tones.
Then during screening, we noticed some difficulties in rendering certain tones. There is some "sparkle" on color masses, but this is not really a problem if you watch from a reasonable distance.
The price to pay for the 8ms latency time is a reduction in the angles of vision with the technology used. If you remember, the move from 16ms to 12ms latency time was already at the cost of a significant reduction in viewing angle. That seems to be the case with this monitor too: The manufacturer announces 140 degrees horizontally and 130 degrees vertically. Obviously it's noticeable when several people are watching a movie. On the other hand, a 17" monitor is intended mostly for individual use.
All we'll say about the built-in speakers is that all they're good for is generating high-pitched sounds; the bass is systematically filtered out. Why do manufacturers insist on putting speakers in monitors, since they're not at all suited to multimedia?
Now we come to the big black mark for this monitor where watching DVDs is concerned: The ever-present blue LED the majority of manufacturers have adopted as proof of modernity. The problem is that the on/off pilot, consisting of an ultra-bright blue LED, is located just under the screen and when you're watching a DVD in the dark, here's what you see:
It's frankly a pain and this is not a new problem. Other monitors, like the ViewSonic VX750 for example, have the same drawback. What's the point of them making a big effort on the design of a monitor if you have to hide the pilot with a piece of cardboard every time you want to watch a movie? Just to the right of the FP71E+ is the "on" pilot of another, more classic monitor. It's much more discreet. Of course, game players will be less bothered by this phenomenon since they play up close to the screen and their attention is concentrated on it. Nevertheless it's really a shame. Let's hope that ultra-bright LEDs will go out of fashion soon.
