X-bit labs

Closer Look at 17” LCD Monitors Features. Part II (page 5)

Category: Other

by Oleg Artamonov

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

By default, the brightness and contrast sliders both stand on 100%; that’s a kind of tradition for monitors from LG. The device was most sensitive to the settings as I achieved a screen brightness of 100nit by only reducing the brightness setting to 50%, and the contrast one to 80%. The screen brightness is regulated by modulation of the backlight lamp with a frequency of about 200Hz.

There are only two color temperature values in the menu plus an opportunity to define it yourself. The “6500” menu entry really corresponds to 5770K for white and 7300K for gray, while the “9300” option means 7290K and 12000K, respectively. The graphs below show that the level of blue is too high in the middle of the range; that’s why the temperature of gray is so much higher than that of white.

It’s the same at 100nit screen brightness:

The monitor claims to kindle pixels up in 16msec. Well, this is actually the response time now specified for all monitors from LG, according to the manufacturer’s website. I say “now” because this information is prone to change: the manufacturer must be replacing older matrixes with newer ones, without changing the model number of the monitor. And really, the Flatron L1710S showed very low response time, only 14msec, although it doubles at 100nit brightness. On the other hand, the graph below suggests that this time is only true for black-white transitions, while it takes as long as 30msec to make a transition for a pixel in some cases. It’s similar to the behavior of the Iiyama model.

As for the brightness and contrast ratio, Flatron L1710S proved much similar to Iiyama ProLite E4315: the maximum brightness exceeded the declared 250nit, while the contrast ratio was about 200:1. Unfortunately, I don’t know what LCD module Iiyama E431S uses, but it seems to be absolutely identical to that of L1710S.

So Flatron L1710S is in fact an exact copy of Iiyama E431S in its characteristics, save for the digital input (the price difference between the two models is just enough to make up for that). And I can only repeat what I have just said about the solution from Iiyama: this monitor suits for playing dynamic games where response time is more important than viewing angles.