Good for games and movies and.. that's about it.
Written: Oct 31 '02
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Pros: Clear, sharp, bright image; flat screen.
Cons: Annoying geometry distortions impossible to correct, poor screen regulation.
The Bottom Line: If you plan to watch movies or play games on this monitor, then it's a good choice. Otherwise, stay away from it, or test it very carefully.
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| dandv's Full Review: ADI Corporation MicroScan F720 17 inch CRT Monitor |
I had two ADI MicroScan F720 monitors for testing, and I returned the first one due to very poor focus in the lower right corner, poor screen regulation, and geometry distortion. I'm currently using the second one and I'm having a pretty hard time at it, because the image is just too distorted: suppose you divide the image in three equal vertical stripes. Well, the center stripe is lowered by 2 millimeters compared to the edge stripes, and there's no geometry control to change this. There is "Pincushion Balance", but that's for the horizontal version of this problem. The bottom line is that whenever you have horizontal lines on your screen (such as title bars, menu bars and so on, practically ALL THE TIME in any Windows-like GUI), you'll have a hard time ignoring their curved look. Consequently, the text in the left side of the screen looks inclined downward, and the text in the right looks inclined upward.
Besides this annoying geometry distortion, the second monitor had a so called "dead cell": a black pixel on the screen that remains black all the time because the phosphor behind it was burnt.
Some other aspects: the monitor is very heavy compared to other monitors (and I had to transport them back and forth to the METRO store I made the mistake to buy them from). The OSD is is no way "Easy Screen (TM)" as Adi claims. because the menus don't remember your selection when you return to them from submenus and there's no text at all, just icons. Well, once you learn what the icons do, the monitor becomes pretty easy to operate.
The "screen regulation", which means the distance the edges move when the screen switches from full black to full white, is beyond acceptable limits (as defined by the Nokia Monitor Test - NTEST, 2 millimeters). This leads to the screen "waving" when you move a dark window over a bright background, or when you simply switch from a dark window to a white one.
The convergence is good, but the horizontal moire can only be partially eliminated. If you find a setting to eliminate it from the NTEST's "Resolution" screen, you'll notice that the moire appears as horizontal lines in any white background. So, you'll have to settle for a compromise.
Color purity seems OK to me, but I'm not a trained professional to certify this. However, at least on my second Adi F720, the bottom of the screen is darker than the top. You can easily test that by moving the task bar from the bottom to the top and comparing luminosity. There are no controls to adjust color purity.
Well, that's about it,
Dan Dascalescu
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 187
Operating System: Windows
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Epinions.com ID:
dandv
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Member: Dan Dascalescu
Location: Sunnyvale, CA, USA
Reviews written: 15
Trusted by: 0 members
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