Compaq TFT 5000S

Author's product rating:   

Picture quality
Colour sensitivity
Design
Ease of use
Value For Money

Advantages:	good
Disadvantages:	none

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I recently wrote a review of the Apple G4 cube. If you read it, you'll know that I was raving about this monitor.

At 22 inches, it looks terrific even before it's been switched on. Maybe it's partly because I'm used to using a 15' monitor myself, but when I saw the Cinema Display's size and profile, it was like watching an episode of 'Tomorrow's World'.

The monitor has a top resolution of 1600 by 1024 pixels. At this size, you can easily fit an A3 sized document (or two pages of A4 side by side) into the middle of the screen with plenty of room for pallets, etc. around it. At the top resolution, you can still do word processing, etc. without the words being too small to read. Sadly, most games don't support such a high resolution, but if you set the resolution lower, you still get a respectable view.

While the resolution is fairly shocking to people like me, it's not that great compared with an average 22' monitor. What is amazing, however, is the incredible precision on the screen. The colours are more vibrant and if you're looking at photos or watching movies, it seems much more real than a normal monitor.

The quality compared with most LCD screens is just amazing. With many LCD screens, if you move your head slightly so that you're looking at the screen from an angle, the colours distort and the picture looks strange. Any of you who've used laptops will be especially used to this, though LCD screens designed for the desktop are barely any better.

The Cinema Display hardly suffers from this at all. By the time you're at enough of an angle to see much colour distortion, you're at the wrong angle to see anything much anyway. An interesting effect to show off the monitor to visitors is also to pick it up and shake it as they're using it. There's no distortion, no jump, nothing. The image stays perfect as the monitor moves.

The Cinema Display boasts a 'unique' ratio between height and width which is closer to widescreen. With the advent of Digital and other forms of TV, widescreen is a bit of a buzzword at the moment. To be honest, I can't see that much point in widening the screen. Games, serious applications, web sites and even Powerpoint presentations are all set up with the normal ratios in mind, so you'll sometimes end up with emptiness (or blackness if you're playing games) at the left and right of the screen.

One rather shocking feature of the Cinema Display (and, I believe, some of Apple's other monitors) is that it has a new way of connecting to your CPU. Rather than have one lead going to the CPU and one to the power, there's just one going to the CPU. The monitor gets all of its power via the CPU.

While it's nice to have one less wire cluttering up your workspace, it's immensely short-sighted of Apple not to offer a version that will work with other PC manufacturer's computers, or even with older Apple computers. As far as I know, the only computers you can hook these monitors up to are the G4 towers and the G4 Cube!

For once, the idea of buying a brand new computer just to use this monitor isn't that outrageous, as the computer would cost less. The monitor costs a whopping £3,000. This is particularly problematic as it leaves a huge hole in Apple's product line-up. You can get the 17' CRT for about £400, the 15' LCD (a scaled down version of this one) for about £800 or this for three grand.

To sum up: this monitor is absolutely wonderful. Using it is an absolute dream. Once I went back to my tiny 15' screen after a few hours of using the Cinema Display, I felt like I was using one of those dusty old computers they keep in libraries which have green text appearing on a black screen.

If money is no object, there is no doubt as to which is the best monitor available.