Author's product rating: 
| Advantages: |
Very light, very good picture quality, speakers on a monitor which actually sound good |
| Disadvantages: |
The OSD is a bit buggy, the choice of resolutions is quite poor, expensive |
| Recommend to potential buyers: |
yes |
Having owned this monitor for a couple of years, it has overall ben quite impressive to use it. The picture quality is very good, and when a TV or games console is connected to it the picture quality does not suffer. I have however found quite a few annoyances with this monitor.
The main problem is the OSD - when you want to switch between PC, TV, AV1 etc. on the monitor, the text from the OSD often stays in the corner saying "PC" or "TV". This can be quite distracting. The main OSD works well as a whole though, and has all the default options for adjusting contrast, brightness, the screen size etc. The other problem related to the screen is that the auto adjust can sometimes not work as well, and cause problems with screen positioning, which is a problem when paying this price.
The TV-in and Video-in plugs for this monitor work very well. On the back of the monitor there is an aerial in for the TV, RCA and composite or s-video in for AV1, and YCbCr with RCA for AV2. The picture quality for these is just as good as a TV, and one of the useful features is Picture in Picture (PIP) which allows you to watch TV or the AV output in a corner of the screen while using the PC. The TV is also very easy to tune in - just plug in an aerial and you can use the OSD to auto scan.
For the main PC this monitor works well as well - the brightness and clarity is excellent, and photos and DVDs look very good on it. The maximum resolution supported is 1280x768, which seems slightly small to me, but this seems OK in practice. Also, the speakers on this Monitor work well as a set of 2.1 speakers, which is a rarity in most LCD monitors.
Another good feature of this monitor is that it comes with a controller which allows OSD navigation, the usual TV controls and a quick switch between 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratio, which can be quite useful.
The monitor itself is built very well and is quite light, and easy to tilt to your needs. It has a good build quality and looks very good sitting on a desk. I have had no problems with this for 2 years, so it is a very reliable monitor.
However, one of the main problems with this monitor is the price - you can pick up a good 19" widescreen for £130 now, so you are paying the extra money for good speakers, a TV tuner and remote control, and good design. Most of these can be purchased seperately for a computer anyway.
Overall I would recommend it to buyers working in this market, but be aware that there are better, cheaper alternatives out there.
