Good value in a basic 17-inch LCD monitor
Written: Nov 25 '03 (Updated Nov 25 '03)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Ease of Use: |
 |
|
|
Pros: Inexpensive, bright and sharp, thin bezel
Cons: Light grays wash out
The Bottom Line: Comparable to the competition, but less expensive.
|
|
|
| Ames100's Full Review: BenQ FP731B LCD Passive Matrix Monitor |
The Benq (what a name!) FP731 is a basic 17-inch LCD monitor which is priced very attractively.
Distinguishing features:
- Thin bezel (little more than half an inch top and sides, an inch or so at the bottom)
- Available in black or beige (mine's black)
- Analog input only (standard 15-pin monitor cable attached)
- No speakers
- Tilt stand (no swivel)
- High brightness and contrast (450:1 contrast ratio, 250 nits brightness)
- 25 msec response time
Like most such panels, it has a row of buttons along the bottom of the panel for accessing the on-screen display menu. There's a one-touch auto-adjust button for fitting the current display size to the panel, and the usual Enter/Exit/Left/Right keys for using the menu.
The back of the panel is a little thicker than most (about 2.5 inches max thickness), but nothing that you'd notice or would be inconvenient unless you're mounting it on a wall. The weight seems comparable to other LCD panels - not as light as some, but a heck of a lot lighter than a CRT.
The maximum brightness and contrast do seem quite good compared to say, a laptop screen, but nothing exceptional compared to other current-generation LCD monitors I guess - they're all very good. There's very little drop-off to the sides, and the horizontal viewing angle is quite wide. Vertical viewing angle is another story of course, with brightness dropping off rapidly above and below horizontal. I compared a bunch of different brands side-by-side in the store, and while there were minor brightness and color variations, there wasn't a lot to choose between any of them in the appearance of the display.
Uniformity across the screen is typical, with some variation in backlight brightness towards the corners, but nothing that you would notice in normal use.
There were no visible pixel defects in this panel, but it's not a random mail-order unit - I checked it first in the store.
The display is overly contrasty compared to a CRT monitor, with highlights washed out and clipped, and subtle dark gray variations lost. No amount of fiddling with the contrast or brightness can fix this - it's one of the inherent limitations of LCD monitors in general compared to a CRT. Of more concern is the fact that light grays are lost on this panel with the default computer display settings. Standard Windows light gray menu bars and scroll bars appear white. Once again no amount of fiddling with the brightness or contrast can fix this. It can be fixed fairly easily if your display driver allows you to adjust the color/brightness curves to stretch the contrast at the high end of the intensity range. My ATI display driver does allow that, and I can make the display of light gray Windows elements on the panel look normal - but not every display driver might be able to do that, and inexperienced computer users might not locate the adjustment function easily in the driver.
The response time at 25msec is better than the first generation of LCD monitors, but not quite as good as the best current-generation models with 16msec response time. Nevertheless that equals a perfectly adequate 40fps refresh rate (compare to 24fps for a movie), so I didn't notice any blurring or streaking on some sample movies or 3D game play.
The 5-foot power cord isn't very long, but it's a standard cord with a standard plug at the panel end, so it can be replaced with a longer one if necessary. The 4-foot video cable is permanently attached.
There's an instruction card and a non-informative "Don't ever do this" type of manual in umpteen languages. There's a more complete manual on the enclosed CDROM, but it doesn't say much more. There's a test-pattern display program in case the auto-adjust function on the panel has trouble reading your standard Windows display (worked fine for me). There's also a driver on the CDROM, but aside from setting the "Monitor" name and parameters in Windows, it doesn't seem to do anything significant.
The warranty seems excellent - 3 years on everything, including the backlight, free 48-hour replacement for the first year.
What don't you get with this model? There's no built-in speakers, and there's no connector for digital video input. Also no special features like being able to rotate the panel to landscape mode. Nothing too surprising.
So - good value for the money in a basic LCD monitor. The only thing I'd watch out for is that need to custom-adjust the contrast in your display driver.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 375
Operating System: Windows
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
Ames100
|
 - Top 1000 |
|
Member: Doug Ames
Location: Texas
Reviews written: 90
Trusted by: 8 members
About Me:
An engineer who likes thorough product research and testing
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.