reviews TESTED. REVIEWED. VERDICTIZED
74 MA XIMUMPC JUNE 2006
I
t’s gotta be hard for an LCD monitor these
days. For one thing, the current market is
packed tighter than a Hooter’s at happy
hour, and thanks to the technology’s giant
strides, it’s harder than ever these days for
an LCD to stand out in a crowd. Not only has
every Tom, Dick, and Harry joined the fray,
but most boast LCDs of competitive quality.
This month we look at four new high-
performance LCDs from leading vendors.
All offer a 19-inch viewable screen, a
1280x1024 native resolution, and a pixel
response time in the single digits. But dis-
tinct personalities arise despite seemingly
similar specs.
—KATHERINE STEVENSONSAMSUNG 970P
Call the 970P “Mac Daddy,” because its shiny
and sleek white cabinet with brushed-metal
trim is way reminiscent of Apple’s products. A
double-hinged neck allows you to raise and
lower the screen’s height, but we found that
the neck wouldn’t remain fully upright, inevi-
tably folding under the weight of the screen.
Still, there’s approximately 4.5-inches of height
travel. You can tilt and rotate the screen, and
the neck swivels 90 degrees to either side. The
970P also sports a unique cabling system: A
connector dongle, with ports for a single DVI
cable and a bundled power brick, is separated
from the monitor by a 9-inch cable, meant to
keep all unsightly wires off your work surface
and out of sight. We’d prefer a longer cable
between the monitor and the dongle and an
integrated power brick—the way Apple builds
its displays.
Continuing with the clean aesthetic, themonitor bezel is totally austere—
Samsung relocated the power
button to the monitor’s base, and
replaced the standard onscreen
display buttons with a software
controller called Magic Tune, which
offers the usual assortment of pic-
ture adjustments, as well as a calibration rou-
tine, presets for certain types of applications,
and custom-profi le capabilities. While the soft-
ware is useful, we’d like to be able to change
the brightness or switch presets without having
to launch an application.
In the DisplayMate ( http://www.displaymate.com )
evaluation scripts, the 970P stood out as
offering the best screen uniformity of the LCDs
here, betraying nary a hint of backlight on a
completely dark screen. It also proved to have
the deepest black level and superb off-axis
viewing. In real-world use the 970P’s perfor-
mance was equally strong. Be it web surfi ng,
movies, or games, the colors appeared true
and screen quality was consistent.DELL 1907FP
Dell’s 1907FP sports a streamlined black and
silver aesthetic. The super-slim neck sports
a nifty built-in track that lets you adjust the
screen’s height with ease, by as much as six
inches. A Lazy-Susan-esque base offers 45
degrees of rotation to the left and right. The
onscreen display is familiar, offering brightness
adjustment and separate Red, Green, Blue
color sliders when using a DVI connection. In
addition to both DVI and analog inputs, the
1907FP includes four powered USB ports.
The 1907FP delivers solid performance,
although it does suffer a couple weaknesses.
On a completely dark screen, the backlight
was evident along the bottom edge. And in
DisplayMate we noticed that very light grays
were indistinguishable from white on the
extreme low end of the grayscale. The lat-ter point could translate to diminished detail
in images that contain a lot of light-colored
information, but in our evaluations of vari-
ous digital pictures, video, and games, we
didn’t notice a detrimental effect. Indeed,
the 1907FP was a reliable performer in all of
our tests, though we did detect subtle image
ghosting in one gaming test, but only where
high contrast—a black object against a light
sky—exaggerated the effect.NEC 90GX2
The fi rst thing you notice about NEC’s 90GX2
is its glossy screen. It stands in stark contrast
to the Samsung and Dell monitors, which are
both treated with anti-glare and anti-refl ective
coatings (as are the majority of LCD screens).
These coatings give displays a fl at, matte
fi nish that doesn’t refl ect light. The benefi t
of NEC’s so-called OptiClear technology is
that the screen’s high sheen intensifi es colors
and contrast, producing a much more bril-
liant, vivid picture. Of course, such a screen is
not suited to all environments. In our Lab, for
instance, the bright overhead fl uorescent lights
created distracting refl ections on the 90GX2’s
mirror-like surface, and even in lower-light situ-
ations, you might notice ambient refl ections in
large swaths of dark color.
But this isn’t likely to dampen most
home users’ appreciation of the screen’s
vibrancy. During our testing, the 90GX2
certainly stole the show in the entertainment
and desktop applications. Games in particu-
lar had extraordinary visual panache, and
the screen was free of any signs of ghosting
during fast-motion sequences.LCD Monitor Mixer
Four new 19-inch panels vie for your attention
As usual, Dell offers a feature-rich product at a bare-
bones price, with its 1970FP.Samsung’s 970P offers some innova-
tive features, but they could stand to be
more fleshed out.$340, http://www.dell.comDELL 1907FPBARGAIN
Good value, highly-adjust-
able stand, USB ports, reli-
able performance.
JARGON^8
Slight grayscale issues, some
backlight seepage, isolated
ghosting in games.$500, http://www.samsung.comSAMSUNG 970POSD
Strong performance and
ergonomic features.
OCD 8
Cabinet is a little fancy-pants
for our tastes, no OSD buttons.