Review: 20" LCD S-IPS Panels

Philips 200P4

Quite frankly, the 200P4 displays the best features of monitors and technologies around at the moment. The response time claimed is the fastest of all, 16ms, its angles of vision are wider and contrast level higher. This could be the monitor of our dreams, the one we will recommend warmly to you without hesitation, the one we will have trouble handing back to the manufacturer, etc.

Ergonomics

The 200P4 was launched in December and logically, it's based on a LG-Philips panel, which is already very popular. It had barely become available when it could be found on a Sharp monitor (LLT2015), a Dell (the 2001FP) and probably on the NEC (the 2080UX+) too.

Although this is the best panel, the ergonomics of the monitor are rather more ordinary. There is a dual DVI and D-Sub interface and the transformer is integrated into the stand but for the rest, Philips may have skimped a little to get down to the current price. The most irritating part is that the 200P4 can't be adjusted for height. Nor is there a USB hub, and no software similar to that of the Eizo to drive the OSD from the PC. Furthermore, you need to buy a VESA to be able to hang it on the wall. To sum up, looks and ergonomics are not its best features.

Philips 200P4: Colors

As with all flat-screen monitors, the default brightness is set too high, so you need to adjust it, as well as the contrast and red, green and blue to reach levels that are not so hard on the eyes. Regarding RGB values, in the absence of a pre-setting at 5000K in the OSD, we had to resort to manual settings. We simply set these values to the maximum, 100%. We then compensated by setting contrast and brightness to 48. All this resulted in a brightness of 114.22 cd/m² and a black dot at 0.40 cd/m². The proportion of both these brought the contrast ratio to 286:1.

Using the factory settings, brightness measures at 203.46 cd/m² for a black of 0.56 cd/m², giving us a contrast level closer to the one claimed, namely 363:1.