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Philips 109S
by isvikthere
For those of you that don't like to read long technical stuff here's the bottom line : I LIKE IT! I am currently typing my review on this very same type of monitor. In fact its full name is the Philips 109S20. The S (for Standard ?) in this stands for Philips' entry level range of monitors which goes all the way from ... S over B (for Brilliance ?) up to P (for Professional).
Please take into account that for my overall rating and the other recommendations I didn't forget that this is an entry level 19inch monitor and definitely not the best top money can buy, which for Philips should be the P-series then.
TECHNICAL INFORMATION
As I am too lazy to type them all over again I simply copied here this monitor's technical data from the Philips CD that came with it. I know no review can do without them so let's deal with them quickly before going on with the real review :
CRT
Size and deflection 19 inch / 46 cm ; 90° deflection,angle viewable size 18 inch
Dot pitch / Grille pitch 0.27 mm
Horizontal pitch 0.23 mm
Tube type Shadow mask, flat square, high contrast, anti-glare, anti-static, anti reflection, light transmission 42%
Phosphor P22
Recommended display area 14.0" x 10.4" / 355 x 265 mm
Maximum display area 14.4" x 10.8" / 365 x 274 mm
SCANNING
Horizontal scanning 30 - 92 KHz
Vertical scanning 50 - 160 Hz
VIDEO
Video dot rate 234 MHz
Input impedance
- Video 75 ohm
- Sync 2.2 kOhm
Input signal levels 0.7 Vpp
Sync input signal Separate sync
Composite sync
Sync polarities Positive and negative
WHITE COLOR TEMPERATURE
Chromaticity CIE coordinates:
at 9300 K degrees x = 0.283 / y = 0.297
at 6500 K degrees x = 0.313 / y = 0.329
Weight 19.7 kg
Warranty : 3 years on site
A footstand integrating USB-ports and spe
akers is optional. Mine doesn't have this option.
In fact the monitor comes with this CD containing all possible information on the monitor and with a small multilingual booklet explaining how to quickly and safely install it on your PC. It really is an easy and fussfree installation on your PC ; you just plug in the powercord and the fixed 15pin cable into your videocard start up, whatever windows flavour your are running and install the necessary .inf driver file to make sure the monitor is properly recognised.
The two most impressive features of this 109S monitor are first its footprint. From behind you would hardly guess that you are dealing with a 19inch monitor, Philips really did a good design here making sure the neck of the monitor takes up as little space as possible. Secondly also it's technical capabilities are good, it can easily manage the optimum resolution for a 19inch monitor which is 1280x1024 pixels and it can do this at an excellent refresh rate of 87hz.
Less impressive is its dot pitch which being 0.27 mm is absolutely nothing to boast about.
Nevertheless I am very happy with this screen which hasn't given me any problems in the year I've been using it, this in contrast to its predecessors which were both Acer (now Benq) monitors and which only lasted a few months. In fact I'm glad I finally decided to put in a few more (25 £ to be exact) over the price of the Acers to finally get this one.
LIGHTFRAME
In fact this monitor supports both through hardware and software a technology developed by Philips and which is called "Lightframe" a small logo on the front top right corner of the casing testifies of this. This lightframe technology is supposed to give better sharpness and brightness in selected portions of the screen e.g. images. In short you select an area of the screen and then the visibility of this selection (and only this selection) is enhanced through the
Lightframe technology. A bit like in police carchase videos where the bit of the film with the fleeing criminal is lit up.
For the rest it has nothing spectacular : five buttons underneath to use the On Screen Display (OSD) for making all possible adjustments, viewable size, brightness, contrast, etc. and a bigger round ON/OFF button a bit further to the right, with the now well establised amber coulered LED (Light Emitting Diode) for "standby and no signal" and the green one for the "in use" status.
Prices of monitors have come down seriously over the last year especially for the 19inch CRT models and the 15 and 17 inch LCD flatpanel screens, which are more and more pushing aside the "classic" CRT monitor, but I noticed this exact Philips 109S20 still is systematically sold at a higher price (more or less 50 pounds more) than similar models of other (lesser ?) brands (Acer, Relisys, etc.) and I think it is justly so because this really is a good monitor, and being a reference in electronics Philips has a name to hold up. Of course if you are willing to dish out even more cash better 19inch CRT monitors can be found but in this case the 50 pounds over other entry-level monitors is in my opinion justified.
Cheers,
vik
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CTX EX710F
by KirkcaldyDad
So the time has finally come to get a new monitor. This one is to go with the new PC that I am about to build, but that's another story. So what influenced my choice? Well, I wanted a 17 incher. 19 would be nice, but they are so much bigger and are still to expensive for me to justify on this occasion. A flat panel type ... would be nice, but they are even more expensive. So a conventional monitor it is. I like to have my display set to work at quite high resolution (currently 1152x864) and I find I'm quite sensitive to flickering, so I like to use a high refresh rate.
At work I've been using a monitor with absolutely flat screen for about 6 months, and I've really got used to it. The main advantage is that reflection from windows, lights and other monitors is so much more reduced, so one like that would be nice, but I thought it would be out of my price range. But it wasn't - read on to find out my little secret on pricing.
So why CTX? Well, more about that later as well, but I suppose I'd better say something more specific about this monitor.
The EX710F is from the middle range of CTX CRT monitors. The ranges are prefixed VL for Value, EX for Executive, and PR for Professional. Executive is one of the most misunderstood words in the English language, and I'm glad to see that CTX think that Professionals deserve better monitors than Executives.
It's just a plain monitor, with no built in speakers, USB hub or the like. So you are paying for pure monitor, not other gadgets that may or may not be of value to you. It's all pretty standard stuff on the outside. A captive input signal cable and four buttons on the front to drive the on-screen menus.
It has an absolutely flat screen - or so it seems at first. A closer inspection and you can see that the front is a flat sheet of glass, but the actual screen surface behind it has a very slight curve. It's not really a
noticeable curve unless you are looking for it. Anyway because the front is flat, there is absolutely no problem with unwanted reflections. It has an anti-reflective coating, so even if you get the angles just right so you can see a bright light, it really is not very bright when reflected.
As is usual these days, all adjustments are made using on-screen menus and the four buttons on the front. Almost all monitors have only four buttons now, and this makes it really rather fiddly. The problem is that you can't easily adjust two related parameters without a bit of menu navigation in between. You have to press several buttons to move between adjusting any two of the twenty or so parameters, and it's just far too easy to press the wrong one by accident. To centre the image horizontally, say, I find myself switching several times between the width adjustment and the horizontal position adjustment. Throw in a few "enters" instead of "escapes" and the whole process becomes rather tedious. This is no criticism of CTX in particular - all monitors are like this these days. Personally I preferred it when they put just one or two more buttons and the menu system seemed to be much more intuitive; I'm sure that extra button wouldn't add too much to the cost.
Anyway there are all the usual adjustments, including six for all that pincusion, trapezium, rotation, keystone, corner and pinbalance stuff. Again, a bit fiddly to get them all coordinated, but you only really do that once for each display mode you use. Most of us use only one, once we're settled in.
Contrast and brightness are both easily accessible by a single button press without going into the whole menu thingy (although dumb old me didn't find contrast at first).
So to the picture. The whites are really bright white, and the darks are really dark. And the colours are really coloured. So can I tempt you to swap back to your old
washing powder....... The contrast really is good.
The fault I see with the image is that right at the sides there seems to be a slightly grainy, well more mesh, sort of effect. For the technically minded, I think it is probably a bit of an interference pattern caused by a slight change in the screen mask (an internal grid thing), and the scan lines. This only affects about the last inch each side of the screen, but it seems to show up most on that nice grey colour of the windows scroll bars that you invariably have down the right-hand side. I haven't tried with Windows XP yet so it may be less noticeable with those colours. I guess I'll get used to it. The image in the remainder of the screen is very clear, with good detail even at high resolutions.
Resolution and refresh rate is where we really find that this is a bit above the value range. It is rated up to 1600x1200 at 77Hz, although I can't really see anyone using it in that mode. The image gets a bit blurry at the higher resolutions but is fine at 1024x768 and 1152x864 which are the ones I consider practical for a 17 inch monitor. Those practical resolutions will happily run at 85Hz or more which is enough for flicker not to be a problem, even for such a sensitive chap as me.
So why CTX, and what's the pricing secret? Well, last Christmas my brothers and I bought a CTX VL700 (17 inch, value range) monitor for my dad. That was chosen purely based on price, written specification, and a few reviews I found. It came from www.dabs.com. I had never heard of CTX before and as far as I knew has never used one of their monitors. I've since found that they are a Taiwanese company who have been around about 20 years, and they very much specialise in monitors. I suspect they built their business making stuff that was badged by some of the big names in computing, but they don't really like to admit it, so I probably have actually used one of their mon
itors without knowing it. On the VL700 I
was quite impressed with the image quality for an entry-level monitor. Unfortunately it developed a fault in the first few weeks. The colour kept flickering to being yellowish. This was intermittent, and my dad being my dad, he never complained, so we never got around to doing anything about it for months. Then a couple of months ago I decided I had better try to sort it out. I felt responsible, since it had been a present from me. So I dug up the guarantee information on the web site (we couldn't find the book). I was impressed. A three year guarantee and they would simply swap the faulty monitor for a working one. I was a bit doubtful, but gave it a go. I composed my description of the problem, got dad on the phone to read out the magic serial number and model numbers and filled in the form on the CTX web site. That was on a Sunday night. .... Nothing happened! .... Still nothing happened! .... I began to doubt the good words in their guarantee. .... By Wednesday afternoon I thought I had better call to see if the form had arrived. So I phoned, and the call was answered immediately by a friendly voice. She had a quick look for my message from the web site, but it seemed to have completely disappeared. Anyway that didn't matter, she took all the details, and immediately promised that a replacement monitor would be delivered on Friday. Exactly as stated in the guarantee (call before noon and it will be next working day, after noon and it will be the one after that). So Friday the monitor arrived at dad's house, and the old one was taken away. He did have to have the old one ready packed for collection, but he was up and running again quickly.
It's really quite a sad reflection on the world that I am impressed when a company has clearly written guarantees, and sticks to its promises in a friendly and helpful manner. But I am impressed! The last thing I had to sort out under gua
rantee was a DVD drive from Dell, and that took several evenings of my time spread over about a month to build up enough evidence to convince them that the thing really was broken.
So even though I had seen a faulty product from CTX, I thought they were worth buying from again.
And the price? Well, during all that messing about, I found that CTX have a small online shop where they sell off "refurbished" stock with a very attractive discount. By refurbished they mean stuff that has either been used for evaluation and demonstration, or has been returned under warranty but found not to be faulty. They are not items that have been returned and repaired. There are also some obsolete models in the shop.
The address is www.ctxshop.net
From here you only get a three month guarantee, instead of the standard three years. Also, there are only small quantities of a few models from the range, so there's an element of luck as to whether they have the one you want.
So I got my EX710F for £108, including VAT and carriage. Compare this with about £160 or more from other online shops, and I certainly thought is was worth the saving. It came properly packed and clean, with its mains cable, manual and diskette, and looks nearly as good as new. It has a few very minor marks if you look really closely, but nothing too serious.
As for the shorter guarantee, I console myself that it has probably had a much longer "burn-in" period than most. If something is going to go wrong with a monitor it's most likely going to happen in the first few weeks of use. I hope mine was beyond that period long before I got it.
So all in all a good buy I believe.
Stop Press: I've just seen that ebuyer.com are doing this monitor new for £127 delivered, so consider that if you want the security of the full three year warranty. Everyone else still seems to be around the £160 mark.
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