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NEC EA261WM

Tom Edwards — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 14:45:22 -0500

Our initial impression of NEC’s widescreen 26-inch EA261WM LCD monitor was overwhelmingly positive, primarily due to the thought put into its ergonomics. What puzzles us most about monitor design is why—even with obscenely expensive panels—user comfort is so often overlooked. If you’re planning on shelling out a load of cash for a monitor, something as simple as height adjustment (rather than the default homebrew solution of piles of books) seems like an obvious feature. The EA261WM includes not only height adjustment but pivot, tilt, and swivel adjustments as well, making it easy to share information on your screen with coworkers or even switch to a portrait configuration, should the need arise.

The EA261WM is also one of only 26 monitors to achieve EPEAT’s gold rating, the highest standard for environmental friendliness. To further emphasize its green attributes, the monitor includes an ECO mode, which lowers power consumption, and a carbon-footprint reader tells you just how much you’re doing to save the planet by lowering the brightness on your monitor.

While we’re all for good industrial design and eco-consciousness, we’re not interested in gaining these attributes at the cost of performance, and we continued to be impressed by the EA261WM after we loaded up a collection of high-res images. During our high-def side-by-side image comparisons, we were happy with the panel’s ability to display deeply saturated colors which, while rich, never slipped in to the realm of cartoonish. But while we found the monitor’s color depth top-notch, the EA261WM had serious issues differentiating grayscales at the dark end of the spectrum. We observed a strong loss of detail in both black-and-white and color photos. In portraits, people’s hair lacked detail, looking like a single-colored mass, where other displays showed off more texture and slight changes in color. Similarly, the tree line in a sunset landscape looked like a solid mass rather than the individual tress that appeared on other monitors.

This same issue presented itself in our movie test—some particularly dark scenes in V for Vendetta came across as a mass of black, rather than a range of black and grays. Utilizing the monitor’s video mode helped with this issue by increasing the contrast ratio; however, the preset also ratcheted up the brightness so much as to make some night scenes look as if they were taking place in the daytime.

Our DisplayMate (www.displaymate.com) tests backed up what we saw in our real-world benchmarks. The EA261WM performed admirably at the white end of the suite’s grayscale test, showing good distinctions between colors almost to the end of the scale; however, at the dark end of the spectrum, the monitor failed to shine, showing little differentiation through eight steps in the test.

With its wealth of ergonomic adjustments, we could see the EA261WM being a hit in the workplace, particularly if you need to share what’s on your screen with people close to you; however, while the panel’s rich colors impressed us, we found its trouble with darker shades to be an issue, making it a poor choice for people working with photos or video.

BenQ E2400HD

Tom Edwards — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 12:30:33 -0500

BenQ promises that its E2400HD LCD monitor will provide “a brand-new standard for personal digital audiovisual entertainment….” And while we’ve grown weary of marketing hyperbole, at first glance, this 24-inch panel has the specs to back up this statement. The E2400HD sports a 1080p HDMI interface and utilizes a 16:9 aspect ratio (rather than the more common ratio of 16:10 for widescreen panels), two features that should improve the movie-watching experience. OK, perhaps “brand-new standard” is a bit overboard, but as we unboxed it, we did think that a 1080p 24-inch monitor for less than $400 was certainly intriguing—even if it sports a 6-bit panel.

A 16:9 aspect ratio should, theoretically, provide a better image when viewing high-def widescreen movies because a 16:10 monitor has to either stretch an image by 10 percent or add black bars to the top and bottom of the image to compensate for the additional space. In our tests with multiple DVD movies, however, those ubiquitous horizontal black bars appear during playback. While TV shows and many movies (typically romantic comedies) are filmed in a native 16:9 aspect ratio, many films are matted using a wide 2.35:1 aspect ratio where you’ll still see black bars. Therefore, while the BenQ is capable of displaying a movie in its original widescreen glory, many DVDs will still not be able to utilize all of the screen’s space.

Regardless, this is still a solid panel for watching high-def movies—when the monitor’s Movie mode is used. In standard mode, V for Vendetta suffered from a washed-out palette. The panel couldn’t differentiate the movie’s many dark hues and the bright white seemed to take on a gray cast; however, Movie mode upped the contrast significantly, showing off both ends of the color spectrum. Gaming was also solid; the colors in Far Cry were vivid and we didn’t observe any stuttering or ghosting during gameplay.

Our DisplayMate tests (www.displaymate.com) backed up what we observed in our real-world tests. We were able to differentiate colors at both ends of the spectrum in the grayscale tests, and the E2400HD showed no color-tracking or banding issues when we ran DisplayMate’s scripts.

However, the same Senseye technology that improved our movie-watching experience was much less successful when we viewed high-def photos. With the Photo mode on, pictures took on a cold, blue hue. Standard mode seemed to present a truer presentation of the images colors, but lacked a certain vividness.

Whether the 16:9 aspect ratio will make any noticeable difference really depends on what type of content you’ll be watching; still, with a street price hovering around $350, the E2400HD is a good value. But even at this midrange price, we expect more from the stand, which allows only minor tilt adjustments; if we were to use this monitor as our primary movie-watching or gaming panel, we’d prefer to also have height adjustment and swivel included as well.

LaCie 730

Tom Edwards — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 14:20:55 -0600

We had the LaCie 730 delivered to the Lab as a possible contender for our upgrading feature (page 25)—at $5,000 and change it’s certainly a comfortable fit at the high end of the price spectrum. Of course, it wasn’t just the price that intrigued us. The LaCie 730 includes a number of features that set it apart from other monitors we’ve reviewed—as well as one oversight that keeps it from attaining our highest praise.

While most monitors that come to the Lab sport 6- or 8-bit panels, the 730 has a 14-bit panel, which should greatly increase the color depth of this monitor. Additionally, the 730 includes an LED backlight rather than the more typical cold-cathode fluorescent backlight. An LED backlight should produce a truer black than a CCF because unlike the CCF, LEDs can switch on and off while a CCF is always on (for this same reason, an LED backlight should also reduce the amount of light seepage at the edges of a monitor). However, the first LED backlight monitor we reviewed, ViewSonic’s VLED221wm (May 2008), was able to create the darkest black we had ever seen but couldn’t differentiate the darkest grays in our grayscale test.

LaCie’s 730 had no such issues, displaying clear separation between shades at both the light and dark ends of the spectrum in our grayscale test. In our DisplayMate tests, the 730’s white and light grays weren’t as bright as those displayed by our current high-end Best of the Best champion, Gateway’s XHD3000 (reviewed December 2007), but when we put the monitors side by side for our digital photo comparison, there was no contest: The 730 produced the most vibrant, rich colors we’ve ever seen in our monitor tests. We noticed, in particular, that the 730 did a much better job of differentiating between shades of orange and red. In fact, this 14-bit monitor sports a 123 percent color gamut, well beyond the 72 percent standard for most LCDs.

Through our synthetic and real-world tests, the LaCie 730 seemed to be best in class, showing rich colors in photos and no evidence of banding or color-tracking errors; however, as we moved to our Blu-ray test, we discovered the monitor’s one true weakness: It lacks HDCP. While software fixes such as AnyDVD (www.slysoft.com) can alleviate this problem, the LaCie 730 cannot natively handle commercial high-def video. The lack of input options is also a small knock against the 730; the monitor includes DVI and USB, but neither HDMI nor DisplayPort.

If the boss-man purchased this monitor for your workplace, you’d be thrilled, but if you want a multipurpose monitor for photo and video editing as well as high-def movie watching, you’ll likely want to look elsewhere. If you’re willing to step down a bit in size, LaCie’s 24-inch 724 has the same 123 percent color gamut, supports HDCP, and will cost you just $2,650.

Westinghouse L2610NM

David Murphy — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 11:00:00 -0500

Taking a cue from ViewSonic’s playbook, Westinghouse’s L2610NM produces a crappy image out of the box. We haven’t seen a display ship with such a whited-out picture in a long time.

And unlike ViewSonic’s VX2240w, adjusting the L2610NM’s brightness and contrast settings does little to help matters.

Word to the wise: A monitor’s brightness isn’t like whipped cream.
Overloading the display’s luminosity won’t make the picture any sweeter.

Switching through the display’s color temperatures requires a large contrast adjustment, as moving from one mode to another tends to wash out a huge section of the display’s lighter grayscales.

The color saturation on the 1920x1200 display suffers from its overly bright settings. It trades richness and vibrancy for a brightness that can overpower the natural look you’d expect images, and even your desktop, to have. Colors look white, blacks look gray—everything looks far more washed out than we’d ever want. Depending on which color temperature we picked, the monitor’s grayscales were imbued with various tints of color. We were unable to find a true black-to-white gradient even once.

We’d normally list the connections this display carries right here, but it’s irrelevant; we don’t want you connecting anything to this 26-inch spotlight.

Hannspree HF289HJB

David Murphy — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:00:00 -0500

Size is important, but so is quality. Hannspree’s 27.5-inch HF289HJB fits the former just fine, but its average performance makes us yearn for a better-quality picture to fill the massive screen.

No banding? No color-tracking issues? The HF289HJB avoids these problematic picture issues entirely.

We had to crank the brightness on this 1920x1200 display to the maximum level to achieve the best results in DisplayMate’s series of grayscale tests. Even after this adjustment, the display reproduced less detail in its darker values than any other monitor in this feature. The HF289HJB isn’t as bad on the lighter side of the spectrum, but it’s not good enough to compensate for the limited range of dark values.

The HF289HJB had more trouble producing lighter colors against a white background than other monitors we’ve tested. This resulted in skin tones that looked washed out in our real-world testing situations. On the gaming front, our Call of Duty 4 run-through lost a bit of its visual flair. The shades of green in the image suffered the most, and black scenes as a whole appeared slightly tinted with blue.

If we had our way, we would have made a few changes to this monitor. For starters, the display doesn’t come with any presets. None. We tweak our displays, but not everyone enjoys fiddling with the nuances of brightness, contrast, and color.

We’d also fix the HF289HJB’s strange audio setup. The single included speaker sends out its mono sound from the back of the display. This creates a strange auditory effect that could easily be improved by replacing it with two front-facing speakers.

You can adjust the height and angle of this mammoth monitor, but not pivot it or change it to portrait mode. But that’s OK: There are far more changes this panel needs than increased ergonomic options for it to be a king of the huge displays. We’d rather spend the cash on a better-performing, smaller panel.

Dell 2408WFP

David Murphy — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 11:00:00 -0500

Dell’s 2408WFP is the latest in the company’s line of 24-inch panels, following on the heels of the much-beloved Dell 2407WFP (reviewed September 2006). Unfortunately for Dell, improving upon its predecessor isn’t enough to push the 2408WFP above other tested displays.

Do not try to distinguish the 2408WFP from the 2407WFP. For all intents, they are the identical twins of Dell’s display world.

The Dell’s grayscale performance in DisplayMate was great, matching the range of Samsung’s 245T on the light end, although it didn’t quite match the 245T’s abilities at the darker end of the spectrum. These subtle differences became more apparent in our real-world testing, as both our gaming and movie benchmarks looked a bit darker on the 2408WFP than what we’re used to seeing. And we also had less detail in our high-res still images compared to what the 245T was able to produce.

Although it comes with a number of presets, none were able to alleviate the loss of detail we experienced without creating other issues at the same time. The unnatural, over-the-top brightness added by the display’s multimedia and gaming presets is simply unacceptable. Similarly, the 2408WFP’s 110-percent color gamut lends images far more color saturation than we’re comfortable with. Even the grayscales themselves are tinted by a mild green hue.

The 2408WFP comes with a number of connectors: HDMI, DVI, VGA, and component video, as well as a built-in USB hub and 9-in-2 media card reader. Dell also throws in a DisplayPort connector for the few people who run DP-capable videocards.

We applaud Dell’s 2408WFP for its efforts. While its saturation comes off a bit strong, we’d use this monitor on our desk without reservation—unless someone was offering us Samsung’s 245T too.

Acer P244w

David Murphy — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 14:00:00 -0500

Acer’s native-1080p display wins points for hitting the widescreen 16:9 formfactor, but the P244w treats its colors with the same unpleasantness it treats its grayscales. The monitor’s color saturation suffers from a reduced range on both the top and bottom ends of the spectrum: Colors lose their vibrancy as they get darker and become washed out as they get lighter.

The P244w offers acceptable detail in its grayscales in our synthetic tests but still displays less detail in an image than other monitors we’ve tested in our real-world routines. And we didn’t enjoy how dark scenes in our real-world movie tests always looked tinted by a bit of unnatural brightness—we much prefer a richer, deeper black.

When the P244w is on, you’re treated to bleeding backlight on the screen’s top and bottom edges during darker scenes.

Start saving your phone books: You can’t adjust the height of this display. And we dislike how the display’s presets don’t appear to vary the image quality very much at all. The P244w’s list of connections—DVI, VGA, and HDMI—lacks the component option that higher-quality displays often come with. We’d prefer a monitor that has more: picture quality, connections, ergonomic options—anything.

Gateway FHD2401

David Murphy — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:00:00 -0500

The Gateway FHD2401 hits a ball or two out of the park, but we’re not terribly impressed by this 24-inch panel’s overall performance.

The FHD2401’s mighty speaker bar wins the sound portion of our display testing, no question.

The display’s grayscale performance favors the darker side of the spectrum. The FHD2401 is able to distinguish among shades of gray against a black background, but a below-average showing in lighter grayscales hurts overall performance.

Worse, banding and color-tracking discrepancies permeated the darker end of the grayscale when the monitor was tasked with producing 256 different shades.

The 1920x1200 display touts a 92-percent color gamut, which made for rich coloration in our real-world suite of tests. But the display’s visuals aren’t the best we’ve seen—in our movie, game, and image-quality tests, the images were lacking minor details on both ends of the grayscale spectrum compared to the best panels we’ve tested.

The FHD2401 offers support for HDMI, VGA, and DVI inputs, but no component input. You can’t adjust the monitor’s height either, a sloppy omission for a monitor in this size class.