The Good, the Bad and the Beautiful: 17" LCDs Reviewed
Spatial Uniformity
The uniformity of the panel was average, and even a little above the average for the units we tested. The values stayed between 100% and 80%. It's the first positive point we can report on for this monitor, obviously aside from the price. The upper part of the panel was quite a bit brighter than the lower, however.
Latency: A Ray Of Hope
The QD1 panel is not especially known for its responsiveness, but it did a creditable job:
The QD1 was in fact the fastest of the 16 ms panels we tested for this article. It proved faster than the Hydis panel in transitions of limited amplitude, though it lost ground beyond 150 codes. For a panel that sells for $480 (320 euros), that's not too bad.
In Practice
It's very probable that the destiny of this monitor will be office applications. Its panel actually lent itself well to that use. But this affordable monitor can do other jobs.
If you're an occasional game player, the LCD72VM will let you play even the most recent games enjoyably without too much latency. The colors are not fantastic, however. That's particularly visible with FarCry.
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Video is not a strong point either, since the vertical luminance gradient is fairly disagreeable when displaying black bands.
Conclusion
Obviously you can't expect an entry-level monitor to perform like a Samsung 710T. This monitor sells at the bottom of the price curve, and its performances are in accordance with that fact - except for its responsiveness, which is a pleasant surprise. However it has to deal with direct and unfair competition from high-end monitors that came out at the beginning of the year and are still available on the market - with much better performance in terms of color rendering, reliability, etc. That being the case, we couldn't really recommend the NEC LCD72VM for the moment.