Here's an off-the-cuff review, don't expect anything in-depth or professional. Plus, I don't have a decent digital camera to post pics, other owners on TE have done or can do that.
Update: ShakenSoul has posted pics and comments in post #10 below. Also check his post in the show-off section at http://www.techenclave.com/show-off/yeh-dil-maange-more-106886.html
So here goes:
Initial Impression:
First off, this is replacing a 3 year old 17" LG LCD, and the size of this monster has blown me away
hyeah: I intentionally controlled the urge to upgrade to a 19 or 22 incher, eyeing and waiting almost a year to get this model!
Unboxing:
When I got my hands on the package it was surprisingly lightweight and for a while I was thinking I got an empty box! The LCD is very light for it's size.
I gingerly unpacked the thing, clipped on the stand and hooked it up to my PC and took down the brightness/contrast to 50% each, colour RGB I left at 100% each. My eyes almost popped outta their sockets coz the screen looks so huge and wide to me.
Testing 1, 2, 3:
My first and foremost concern with nearly 2.2 megapixels on this thing: I spent a few minutes looking for dead/stuck pixels by running the default WinXP screensaver (mostly black background) and also loading up a full-screen all-white image, don't see any right now :hap2:
Update: I've had this LCD powered on now for the whole day without any screensaver/DPMS power-off enabled and I don't see any heat issues if I place my hands over the vents at the back.
Screen fill modes:
Next, I quickly tested the various screen fill modes, "1:1", "4:3", "16:9" and the default "Fill". I prefer to keep it at the 1:1 setting for now in case I need lower resolutions.
Video/Graphics:
Then, I fired up MPlayer and loaded up, what else, "Elephants Dream" And it is OMFG OMFG GORGEOUS FULL HD GOODNESS! :bleh:
My poor old P4 2.4 can't seem to handle the other 1080p clips I have like the Beowulf and Indiana Jones 4 trailers, heh. So I am waiting to upgrade my desktop before I can try any games at WUXGA (1920x1200) resolution. But I expect games (and certainly videos) will look super on this LCD.
Update: I just booted into Ubuntu and ran the GLGears and Planetary Gears fast-ish moving screensavers and the edges of the gears appeared (casual visual inspection) sharp and ghosting-free to me.
Update: Downloaded the trial versions of PassMark MonitorTest and DisplayMate and ran their tests, all look okay to me. There was this horizontal sliding/moving squares test in PassMark where the vertical edges of the squares were uneve (tearing?) but I believe this is due to my graphics card and the lack of double/triple buffering.
Caution:
Now, before you all go rushing out to buy one of these for yourselves, let me caution you on a few potential let-downs, even though these don't bother me:
This is a TN panel, and you can clearly see the colour/brightness shifts if you move your head around, although it's very minor, IMHO. Being a TN panel makes it much more affordable compared to the IPS/PVA panels which are mostly popular with the likes of picky/choosy graphic designers and the sort that need better (near-CRT) colour/image quality.
The upper half of the screen is a bit dimmer than the lower half and I have to keep the screen near vertical (and kinda "looking down" at it a bit) to minimise that.
Update: Looks like I get best results if I place my face about 1.5 feet in front and center of the screen, but there's no hard and fast need for me to do it.
Backlight bleed:
Also, there is a little backlight bleed all over the screen, but I'm right now sitting at 1am with dim CFL lighting in my room, so I don't expect it to be a problem during the daytime.
Note that these issues are noticeable mostly while just browsing or working on documents and stuff like that, but like I wrote above, watching videos (and I expect games too) the display is very good IMHO.
Update: The backlight bleed is barely noticeable at all during the daytime. I have also set the RGB levels to 100 each, brightness to 10 and contrast to 45 to make viewing a Word doc seem similar to looking at a real printed paper doc
Suggestion:
If you're accustomed to an IPS or PVA panel (Dell UltraSharp kinda model) then I would suggest you stay away from this and get the UltraSharp 2408 PVA panel or something like that if you want Full HD yourself
Summary:
I personally already like this monitor a lot, especially since I've been staring at a 17" TN panel for the last 3 yrs Now my office 17 incher will look really puny on Monday I'm sure.
FULL HD GOODNESS FTW!
Update: Here is a review where the BenQ G2400W just beats out a Dell E248WFP See The Amazing HD Gaming Monitor Shootout! . Both LCDs can be gotten from the "Hot Deals" section in this forum!
Update: ShakenSoul has posted pics and comments in post #10 below. Also check his post in the show-off section at http://www.techenclave.com/show-off/yeh-dil-maange-more-106886.html
So here goes:
Initial Impression:
First off, this is replacing a 3 year old 17" LG LCD, and the size of this monster has blown me away
hyeah: I intentionally controlled the urge to upgrade to a 19 or 22 incher, eyeing and waiting almost a year to get this model!Unboxing:
When I got my hands on the package it was surprisingly lightweight and for a while I was thinking I got an empty box! The LCD is very light for it's size.
I gingerly unpacked the thing, clipped on the stand and hooked it up to my PC and took down the brightness/contrast to 50% each, colour RGB I left at 100% each. My eyes almost popped outta their sockets coz the screen looks so huge and wide to me.
Testing 1, 2, 3:
My first and foremost concern with nearly 2.2 megapixels on this thing: I spent a few minutes looking for dead/stuck pixels by running the default WinXP screensaver (mostly black background) and also loading up a full-screen all-white image, don't see any right now :hap2:
Update: I've had this LCD powered on now for the whole day without any screensaver/DPMS power-off enabled and I don't see any heat issues if I place my hands over the vents at the back.
Screen fill modes:
Next, I quickly tested the various screen fill modes, "1:1", "4:3", "16:9" and the default "Fill". I prefer to keep it at the 1:1 setting for now in case I need lower resolutions.
Video/Graphics:
Then, I fired up MPlayer and loaded up, what else, "Elephants Dream"
And it is OMFG OMFG GORGEOUS FULL HD GOODNESS! :bleh: My poor old P4 2.4 can't seem to handle the other 1080p clips I have like the Beowulf and Indiana Jones 4 trailers, heh. So I am waiting to upgrade my desktop before I can try any games at WUXGA (1920x1200) resolution. But I expect games (and certainly videos) will look super on this LCD.
Update: I just booted into Ubuntu and ran the GLGears and Planetary Gears fast-ish moving screensavers and the edges of the gears appeared (casual visual inspection) sharp and ghosting-free to me.
Update: Downloaded the trial versions of PassMark MonitorTest and DisplayMate and ran their tests, all look okay to me. There was this horizontal sliding/moving squares test in PassMark where the vertical edges of the squares were uneve (tearing?) but I believe this is due to my graphics card and the lack of double/triple buffering.
Caution:
Now, before you all go rushing out to buy one of these for yourselves, let me caution you on a few potential let-downs, even though these don't bother me:
This is a TN panel, and you can clearly see the colour/brightness shifts if you move your head around, although it's very minor, IMHO. Being a TN panel makes it much more affordable compared to the IPS/PVA panels which are mostly popular with the likes of picky/choosy graphic designers and the sort that need better (near-CRT) colour/image quality.
The upper half of the screen is a bit dimmer than the lower half and I have to keep the screen near vertical (and kinda "looking down" at it a bit) to minimise that.
Update: Looks like I get best results if I place my face about 1.5 feet in front and center of the screen, but there's no hard and fast need for me to do it.
Backlight bleed:
Also, there is a little backlight bleed all over the screen, but I'm right now sitting at 1am with dim CFL lighting in my room, so I don't expect it to be a problem during the daytime.
Note that these issues are noticeable mostly while just browsing or working on documents and stuff like that, but like I wrote above, watching videos (and I expect games too) the display is very good IMHO.
Update: The backlight bleed is barely noticeable at all during the daytime. I have also set the RGB levels to 100 each, brightness to 10 and contrast to 45 to make viewing a Word doc seem similar to looking at a real printed paper doc
Suggestion:
If you're accustomed to an IPS or PVA panel (Dell UltraSharp kinda model) then I would suggest you stay away from this and get the UltraSharp 2408 PVA panel or something like that if you want Full HD yourself
Summary:
I personally already like this monitor a lot, especially since I've been staring at a 17" TN panel for the last 3 yrs
Now my office 17 incher will look really puny on Monday I'm sure.FULL HD GOODNESS FTW!
Update: Here is a review where the BenQ G2400W just beats out a Dell E248WFP
See The Amazing HD Gaming Monitor Shootout! . Both LCDs can be gotten from the "Hot Deals" section in this forum!
