Monitor came well packed and free from dust, ready to be placed immediately upon the desk. One thing I notice straight away is how long it is. The monitor does stretch a good 45cm+ towards the back, but this can be quite the norm with todays large screen CRTs.
The monitor takes roughly 4-5 seconds to warm up after a cold start, so sometimes I miss the BIOS info when I switch the PC on first thing in the morning. But once up and running, switching resolutions/refresh is as quick as it comes with little or no downtime.
I have used this monitor primarily for gaming with a little office work on the side as it is my home PC, not work PC. Gaming wise this monitor is more than ample to satisfy your visual needs. I usually run games at 1280x1024 85Hz, as that feels comfortable for me. 1024x768 can be ran at 100Hz.
However, the WindowsXP drivers that were supplied with the monitor restricted 1280x1024 to 75Hz max, but a tick of the "display unsupported modes" option in display properties allowed me to select others and I found 85Hz works fine, and has done for 12 months.
At 1600x1200, I can find myself squinting at the tiny text, but that maybe my faultering eyes, hehe. There are slight curving at the edges, which took me 5 mins to reduce to "almost" straight. Its not perfect, but is only noticeable when I am conscously staring at them. In general use I dont notice at all.
Text is clear and unsmudged, still and moving graphics are easy to see. The in-built menu is easy to navigate and has a whole ton of options, one of the big pluses of the monitor is its configurability.
The power button has a small light in the middle showing green for on and working, and orange for suspend. Note that it is a true suspend to save power not a fake blank screen. The monitor detects the cable connections and will visually report the failure if the cable is unplugged,.
Overall a very good monitor I recommend to all future buyers. Yes there is cheaper, but value for money cannot be beaten with the Philips 109S40. A monitor I am proud to take with me to gaming LANs.
- Steve Allison
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