X-bit labs

Closer Look at 17” LCD Monitors Features. Part II (page 3)

Category: Other

by Oleg Artamonov

[ 12/26/2003 | 12:16 PM ]

The above-mentioned Economy Mode consists of two presets of screen brightness (the regular brightness control is blocked). It seems to be an analog of the MagicBright feature from Samsung and ECO from Sony, but is much harder to get to. The Economy Mode is hidden deep in the menu system, and you have to make as many as 6 presses on +/- and Menu buttons to activate it. So the purpose of this mode remains mysterious – it’s often faster to adjust the screen brightness using the standard control.

By default, the brightness and contrast controls are set to 90% and 50%, respectively, in “1”, “2”, “3” and “sRGB” modes, and on 100% and 50% in the user-defined mode. To make the screen shine with the brightness of 100nit (1 nit = 1 candela per square meter) I dropped both: brightness and contrast settings to 5%. So this monitor is very bright.

At its default settings (test mode 1), the monitor is good at reproducing colors, save for the level of green being too high in light tones:

At reduced brightness (100nit, test mode 2) we have the same situation with a too high green color:

The response time does comply with the specified 16msec at the maximum screen brightness, but the pixel rise time starts growing when I reduce it. Moreover, the graph below shows that the display can only reach the necessary 12msec pixel rise time on black-to-light-gray transitions. Otherwise it produces the ordinary 20-30msec response time.

The screen brightness is higher than the promised 250nit. But increasing the level of white, you also boost the level of black. It gets beyond 1nit, which is quite high, too. As a result, the monitor’s contrast ratio slightly exceeds 200:1, although it should be 450:1.

So the test results suggest that the ProLite E431S suits nicely for playing dynamic computer games as well as working in serious applications. But games come first: the relatively narrow viewing angles can become a serious defect at work. Anyway, this is a generic problem of all fast matrixes. Among the monitor’s advantages, I’d point out the good color reproduction. As for disadvantages, they are slipshod case manufacture (I still hope this is a problem of this given sample or a batch) and the lack of the DVI cable.