X-bit labs

20" LCD Monitors Roundup. Part V (page 16)

Category: Other

by Oleg Artamonov

[ 12/21/2007 | 10:53 PM ]

The monitor has 100% brightness and 90% contrast by default. To achieve a 100nit white I reduced them both to 40%. Both darks and lights are reproduced normally throughout the entire contrast adjustment range, from 0% to 100%.

Color gradients are reproduced perfectly, without banding.

The color gamut is the same as the 2032BW’s and differs but slightly from the sRGB standard: smaller in reds and blues but larger in greens.

The brightness uniformity on white is 5.2% on average with a maximum of 13.7%. On black, the average and maximum irregularity amounts to 8.4% and 19.8%, respectively. Interestingly, the distribution of brightness is similar in both cases: the middle of the screen and the areas at the top and bottom are brighter than the sides of the screen.

The gamma curves look acceptable at the default settings. They deflect but slightly from the theoretical curve.

The deflection remains the same at the reduced contrast, but the curves now go closer to each other.

As you could expect, the matrix is rather slow at an average response of 12.2 milliseconds GtG. This is 2.5 times slower than the response time of the SyncMaster 2032BW.

Alas, this monitor has a sloppy color temperature setup, too. Gray is colder than white by over 2000K even in the Normal mode. You can improve the situation somewhat by reducing the contrast setting in the monitor’s menu (and the color that is denoted as white in the table above will move beyond the displayed color range), switching the color temperature to Custom mode and reducing the level of blue to a reasonable value with the R-G-B sliders.

The monitor’s brightness is higher than average while the contrast ratio is quite good at 400:1. TN matrixes have been progressing little by little. Not long ago I would consider a contrast ratio of 300:1 as a good result for that manufacturing technology.

Like the previous monitor, the SyncMaster 2032MW features a few factory-set MagicBright modes that can be selected with a press of a single button (this button is offered by the remote control while the monitor itself doesn’t have it). These modes change the levels of brightness and contrast but do not affect color reproduction.

There is nothing for me to cavil at – every mode is configured properly for its intended application. There are three of them in total. That’s more than enough considering the availability of a user-defined mode (i.e. the manual settings): two modes for games and movies under different ambient lighting, one mode for viewing photographs and one more for working with text. The monitor has special MagicBright modes for the video inputs which do not overlap with the PC-related MagicBright.

Highs:

• Superb exterior design
• Handy set of predefined MagicBright modes
• Rich selection of video inputs, including an integrated TV-tuner
• Picture-in-Picture mode
• Handy remote control

Lows:

• Inaccurate color reproduction setup
• Rather irregular backlight
• Slow matrix
• Inconvenient controls on the monitor

Recommended usage:

• Text-based applications (documents, spreadsheets, Internet)
• Viewing video from different sources: players, CTV, TV, etc, also in the Picture-in-Picture mode
• Movies and games that don’t require a fast matrix