Quality yet affordable (Sony E400E)

Member Name: sponner

Product:	Sony E400E
Date:	30/11/01 (195 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Picture Quality, Sony support

Disadvantages: Price, Damper wires

Having spent many happy hours in front of my Sony 17" Monitor (G200) I finally decided it was time to upgrade to a larger more comfortable 19" model. Having been pleased with the quality of Sony products in the past I decided to stick with their products rather than hunting down the cheapest option. I am glad that I did!.
The Sony E400 is an aperture grille model, rather than a shadow mask. This design, coupled with the pin sharp 0.24-0.25 dot pitch makes for an ultra-crisp, clear display which displays colours that are vibrant and consistent. I have used lesser montiors in the past and they all apear slightly "fuzzy" and "washed out" in comparison to Sony's Trinitron screens. The screen has a black anti-glare coating and is as flat as I have seen from a CRT tube. In short the picture quality of this model is hard to fault.
The hardware performance is nothing exceptional for a 19" monitor yet is perfectly adequate for all but the most demanding user. It will go right up to 1800x1440 but this is at an eye-straining refresh rate of 60 Hz. I run mine at 1280x1024 which gives acres of desktop space at a comfortable , if unexeptional 85 Hz.
The on screen controls are a little fiddly but adequate and have ample options to obtain optimal picture quality.
There is little in the way of frills, no BNC connector (just standard VGA), no usb hub etc.
If there is anything to moan about the tube seems a little way back from the glass so althought the tube is truely edge to edge there is a slight black line around it and of course the damper wires are visible when viewing items with a white background. (Damper wires are a feature of aperture grille screens, they are two faint grey lines one third down and up from the top and bottom of the screen. In this case they are almost imperceptible but can be a bit offputting to new users of this type of screen. Trust me you will not notice them after half an hours use and the pictu
re quality of Trinitron tubes more than makes up for their presence.)
In summary a great, albeit no-frills, monitor. Not cheap but a reasonable price considering the image quality.

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