A shining example of LCD technology
Written: Apr 23 '02
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Ease of Use: |
 |
|
|
Pros: Clear and crisp display with good color saturation, contrast and definition
Cons: Narrow angle for best view
The Bottom Line: This is a great display, with vibrant and well defined image quality, good color, brightness and contrast.
|
|
|
| za9ra22's Full Review: NEC MultiSync LCD1530V 15 inch LCD Monitor |
If you're wondering why all the fuss about flat screen LCD displays these days and whether they can really be worth all that money, or if you're not familiar with LCD displays over the past couple of years, gone are the fuzzy, blurred images that disappear into murk when viewed off-angle. Gone is the cursor 'sinking' and the rather tired and often unrepresentative color. All you need to do is take a look at the NEC LCD1530 and you'll see for yourself.
This monitor is pretty basic. It's a 15 inch flat screen LCD with no inbuilt speakers, auto adjust that can be manually overridden and a maximum resolution of 1024x768. Unlike many competing models, it has the power supply on-board, so using a standard power cord rather than an external transformer. It makes the monitor a little heavier than some of the others, but not much.
It has a tilt stand that allows the power and video cables to be routed inside and thus out of sight, though it can also be mounted on the wall. Unpacking it and getting it working was a simple process and involved no software downloads or patches. Indeed, it was a straight swap for my old 17 inch CRT monitor and needed no manual intervention either in the monitor settings on the computer or the controls on the display itself.
Once in use, the quality of this unit became immediately apparent. The display is clear and sharp, with good saturation, excellent contrast and brightness and accurate color. While Windows itself looked more solid and well defined, looking at digital pictures showed just how good this monitor really is. Images were almost 3-dimensional, showing clarity and detail that I hadn't seen on the previous CRT monitor.
One advantage is that because it is so thin, it's possible to move this display further away from the keyboard, which I find makes the system much easier and more comfortable to work with than the rather 'in-your-face' arrangement necessitated by bulky CRTs. And of course because a 15 inch LCD displays full height and width, it's actually almost exactly the same display size as a 17 inch CRT.
The result of installing this monitor in my system is that it makes the user experience so much better. Whether working in Word, where text is clear and crisp showing sharply black against a uniform white background, or when photo or digital video editing, the NEC 1530 provides a very good work environment that is not tiring to use. It suffers very little glare and has no aberrations.
I was concerned that the viewing angle seemed rather narrow. Moving a few degrees off center vertically or horizontally renders the image slightly washed out. Some LCD panels fare better in this respect, but for me this is not a critical issue. However, if it's needed for situations where others are expected to observe over your shoulder, this might be an important consideration. I also found the stand was a little taller than I would have preferred, but that's because in my system, the monitor sits on a low platform behind the keyboard. Without that platform, the stand places the monitor at a more ideal height.
If manual adjustment is necessary, controls are easy to use and well laid out. Range of contrast and brightness adjustments are fair, though not exceptional. I found the auto adjust feature set everything just about perfect.
Some may complain that there's no speakers built in to this design, and if this is a feature that's important, you'll probably look elsewhere. But for those who want an LCD panel that provides an excellent display quality with no frills and at a reasonable cost (given current prices) the NEC 1530V (both the black and the standard versions) will provide a very good display quality in a device that does nothing to get between the user and the computer. To me, it's a measure of the quality of a display that once first used, the controls need little further adjustment. I've not touched the buttons on my 1530 for weeks at a time, and given the wide range of things I use my PC for, that's been a remarkably refreshing experience for me!
Have a look at one - if you've got a CRT at present, you'll discover why LCDs are so widely recommended. If you've already got an LCD display, don't look at the NEC... you might want to change!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 399
Operating System: Windows
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
za9ra22
|
|
Member: Andy
Location: Virginia USA
Reviews written: 40
Trusted by: 2 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2010 Shopping.com, Inc.