Sometimes more is better (Philips 109S)

Member Name: isvikthere

Product:	Philips 109S
Date:	27/11/02 (3904 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Small footprint, good specifications, "Lightframe" technology a bit bloated

Disadvantages: More expensive than other entry level monitors

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

Summary: