19" LCD Monitors: The Spring 2006 Collection

Design

The shell hasn't changed since the days of the FP71V+, which we tested a year and a half ago! To say it's showing its age would be an understatement. Still it's a good way to keep prices down. The plastics are just as unattractive as ever. The only notable change is that the blue pilot diode doesn't blind viewers during movie screenings. We appreciate the effort.

Ergonomics

Again, this is not a very ergonomic monitor. There's only a tilt adjustment with a fairly limited range. The OSD is nondescript.

Connectivity And Equipment

The unit has a built-in transformer and a dual VGA/DVI connector. There are two built-in speakers, but as usual they're just there for form.

BenQ FP91V+: High Color

The BenQ FP91V+'s color rendering was very close to the NEC 90GX2's. It showed the chronic difficulty LCD monitors have with dark colors.

Here again, the filter makes a significant contribution to the final result. To the eye, the image is agreeable, with nicely saturated colors, but the rendering isn't faithful to reality.

The filter is effective, but you can't fool the calibrator. To the eye, the contrast looked higher, but the actual black level was too high. The brightness was also excessive.

The best calibration results were at 81% brightness, which more or less corresponds to the maximum contrast we recorded.

The monitor's color gamut was a little off standard. As you can see, the range of colors is richer in the greens, whereas the reds are short of the standard.