X-bit labs

Closer Look at 17” LCD Monitors Features. Part II (page 8)

Category: Other

by Oleg Artamonov

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

LG Flatron L1720B

I think this is one the cutest models in our today’s roundup. LG Electronics chose to develop completely new case design, which seems to be a total success. The black framing doesn’t strain your eyes. It seems like the screen is hanging in midair. A thin silver frame goes around the edge of the case, outlining the rim of the thing. The case itself is silver-colored, and the base is a shiny metal circle. The large power button protrudes down in the bottom, the blue LED highlights it in a circle (highlighting becomes amber, when the monitor is turned off).

As many other beautiful things, this monitor lacks functionality. The base only allows adjusting the screen’s tilt. Notwithstanding the “B” in the name, this model comes with one analog input only.

The screen menu follows LG’s standards. There is the LightView mode consisting of six brightness and contrast presets (Day: Text, Movie, Photo and Night: Text, Movie, Photo). The Movie mode is the brightest, the Text mode has the lowest level of brightness, but I have already mentioned it in the discussion of L1710S. LightView is implemented identically in the two monitors. There’s a hitch in the menu controls. The buttons marked as “Brightness” open up a menu of brightness and contrast controls where you change the contrast ratio and not the screen brightness.

By default, the brightness and contrast controls are set at their maximum. 40% brightness and 75% contrast produce a screen brightness of 100nit. The screen brightness is regulated by modulation of the backlight lamp power with a frequency of 250Hz.

As by the previous models from LG, we are offered three color temperatures: user-defined, “6500” (corresponds to 6470K for white and 7340K for gray) and “9300K”. The last one is strange. When you choose it, the screen gets daringly pink with a color temperature of 6520K/6690K (white/gray). The pink tone of the screen is beautiful, but you can’t really work with it.

The viewing angles are typical for a fast matrix (and the Flatron L1720B does have a fast 16msec matrix): yellowish when viewed from aside, losing contrast when viewed from above, and the top getting dark when viewed from below. When working in a text processor, you won’t notice any luminosity misbalance along the vertical axis, but when the background is 50% gray, you always see that the top is darker than the bottom. So if you want to purchase this monitor for work, consider whether you will feel comfortable with such viewing angles.

Besides the strange pink screen I saw with the 9300K setting, the monitor has too much of green and too high contrast at 6500K temperature: you can see it in the graphs that the color curves go much higher than necessary on light tones.

At 100nit brightness, we, of course, don’t have any contrast-related problems:

The response time was indeed only 15msec on black-white transitions and at the maximum brightness. But just like the previous LG models, this one performs black-gray transitions in about 25-30msec.

Alas, the contrast ratio was only 150:1 at most, it was three times lower than they had promised! Yes, the maximum brightness is really above the declared level, but the level of black is about 2nit in this case. In other words, you can’t get a true black color with Flatron L1720B: it will only be something like dark-gray.

So, the distinguishing feature of LG Flatron L1720B from the other fast-matrix models from the same company is its design. It shares the common problems like insufficient viewing angles and low contrast ratio. Therefore I can’t call it a perfect option, since even cheaper models from the same LG offer better contrast ratio. The strange setup of 9300K color temperature doesn’t add anything positive at all. Still, you can use this monitor at home for playing games and roaming the Internet. Its definitely pleasing design suits nicely for this home use.