Comparison Of 15" LCD Monitors - Part I

Neovo F-15

Occasionally, you come across a hidden jewel when you start testing little-known brands. In principle, the Neovo F-15 doesn't appear to be pre-destined to a life of glory and fame. However, it's worth taking a closer look, even though some of its features might put some people off.

To be blunt, a maximum display capability of 262,144 colors isn't exactly a sign of high quality. For the past year, displays with such a low color depth capability have been rather rare. Having said that, we were pleasantly surprised to discover that it was impossible to tell that the F-15 was so limited in its display capabilities - it was one of the best monitors for color displays that we tested. In fact, we consider it to be on par with the Iiyama 3816U, one of the best monitors in this area. Its LG panel allows the F-15 to display a wide, well-nuanced array of colors. Its RGB subpixels render all the hues from 2 to 254 flawlessly. Only those hues at the very end of the spectrum are less than perfect - an easily pardoned shortcoming.

Yet another highlight of the F-15 is its OSD menu, which is very comprehensive and allows you to fine-tune all its parameters. You'd be hard-pressed to find many monitors that give you the choice between text and graphics mode, allow you to adjust the backlight or offer a white balance. There is some icing missing from this cake, though - we would have appreciated a more intuitive navigation mode and a faster auto-adjustment of phase and clock.

But what really hurts this contender is the response time. Although it is supposed to be 45 ms, the F-15 is the worst in the entire comparison in response times. Naturally, gaming is still possible, but even small movements wreak visual havoc. In short, the F-15 is the only display we can't even recommend for strategy games - the slightest mouse movement on a map severely blurs the entire screen.

Although less important, the viewing angle isn't what you would call ideal, either.

In conclusion, this monitor is really only an attractive option if you find it substantially cheaper than any of the competition. Otherwise, there are much more balanced monitors with a price tag close to the F-15's $420.