I have had NEC AccuSync 70 for almost three years now, and I am very happy with it. I’ve been thinking of buying a Flat panel LCD monitor, but my AccuSync still keeps me from spending money with its faithful service. Even now I look at it, while writing this review.

The box: the minimum

When you buy the AccuSync 70, you get the 17” monitor with attached VGA data cable, a power cord and documentation. No fancy extras, such as built in speakers or microphone.

The monitor is medium-heavy. On my desk, the screen is about 18 inches from the wall. However, the backside of the monitor is somewhat narrow, thus I can hide my computer speakers there, so that they share the table space with the monitor.

Performance: solid

The picture is very sharp (especially at the vertical refresh rate of 85Hz) and the colors are vivid. The surface of the screen is almost flat, and no geometric picture artifacts can be observed. I have noticed no picture degradation over the two and a half years since I have used the monitor on a daily basis. There is no noticeable sound or humming.

User interface: three buttons are enough

Everything about the monitor can be selected with three buttons: “Select”, “+” and “--“. The menus are iconic, and the features besides brightness and contrast include basic picture size and position adjustment as well as advanced adjustments such as rotational, skew and RGB color intensity. First you select the function with +/- buttons, and then you press “select” and adjust the function with the same +/-.

The annoying part is that in order to get rid of the menu dialogue you have to go all the way back to the “exit” menu item, which may happen to be 8 or more +/- clicks away. The alternative is to wait about 10 seconds and the menu will go away by itself.

Nice feature is that you can check the current refresh rate by entering and exiting the menu. The frequencies are displayed on the screen for a few seconds.

Nobody is perfect: do they check them before selling?

I have two complaints to make about the monitor. The minor complaint is that it seems to change the size of the picture depending on... weather? Or is it temperature? What I have noticed is that the width of the picture varies between different days of usage. I adjusted the picture to take up the whole screen, but a few days later the picture was smaller. Another couple days it was back to what I set it to. The variations are very small, I’d say negligible, about 1/4 of an inch.

Now comes the big complaint. Being so happy about my monitor, I suggested it to a couple of my friends. One of them bought AccuSync 70, the other ordered the “flat” version: AccuSync 75F. Both of them ended up returning the monitor very soon after the purchase: the picture just died. However, since the replacements arrived, they have been working fine for a few years now. I wonder, is there a quality control problem at NEC?

My experience: I will keep it

I have and still am enjoying the monitor for my all-purpose computing visualization needs. They include word-processing, programming, web design, image and video editing, you name it.

And, it seems that when you buy AccuSync70, even if it does not work, you can get a replacement, which will work for years. When will I get rid of it? When I buy a flat panel LCD :-)


Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 210
Operating System: Windows