After having recently had a little misadventure ( It blew up on me ) with my Jurassic CRT monitor I was informed on Friday by those extremely nice Tech Guys at Currys that it would not be repairable and that as per the terms of my whatevehappens agreement a replacement would be delivered on Monday morning. There had been a slight disagreement with the couriers who would only deliver between 8 am and 10 am, so my wife duly got off work early ( with her being nearest our home ) to receive the bulky package.

I phoned home at about half eleven to see if it had arrived, since I'd have to get onto Currys sharpish if there were any problems, but no problems were present and my wife informed me that a huge CRT monitor had been delivered. I had hoped for a flat LCD replacement being that CRT monitors are now hard to get, so I was a little disappointed.

To my absolute delight when I got home I was soon to discover my wife had decided to play a small prank and the monitor delivered was an AMW 1700DS. It arrived in a nice thin box and was very well protected by bubble wrap and the likes. All the leads and cables required for connection to my PC were also in the package, alongside a quick set-up leaflet and a CD with the manual and drivers which might be required for older systems.

I'd been wanting an LCD monitor for ages and although they really aren't that expensive, in the region of £110, I found it hard to justify the outlay when I already had a perfectly good working monitor. The only small problem I had was with fitting the base which seemed to leave the screen tilted far too much forward. Adjusting the angle as it said on the CD was just a matter of applying slight force to the rear of the unit and pushing backwards or forwards depending on where you intended it final position to be. I therefore removed the stand completely a discovered that the two large metal screw plates which formed the bond between the base plate and LCD where moveable, but a bit stiff. A couple of juggles back and forth and voila once the base plate was fitted angle adjustment was easy.

Once connected to my PC which was simply a matter of connecting the power cable and the D Sub connector, I powered up the LCD. There is the option to connect your sound output to the monitor and a cable is supplied for this but I omitted this since I use a cinema system wih my PC. A small blue message appeared almost instantly with the very satisfying words AUTO _ CONFIG. After a few seconds and a couple of brief flickers all was fine. I wasn't completely satisfied with the end result so tweaked it a little from the Windows control panel, and now I have a very crisp bright monitor which I am very pleased with.

There are only five buttons on the front of the unit a MENU Button an OK Button a main Power Button and two direction Buttons which indicate left and right. With the exception of the power button which needs no explanation the others are used to adjust the brightness, contrast, Vertical and Horizontal position and few other options I am unsure of so will leave alone.

The front of the monitor is framed by a brushed silver frame which has the AMW logo central at the bottom and just above the five control buttons. The rest of the unit is is a matt black finish which has a very slight sheen. The specifications are pretty good considering it is a replacement , I probably would have expected a lesser model.


Specifications

 Device Type Flat panel display / TFT active matrix
 Dimensions (WxDxH) 38 cm x 17 cm x 37.3 cm
 Weight 3.64 kg
 Diagonal Size 17"
 Dot Pitch / Pixel Pitch 0.264 mm
 Max Resolution 1280 x 1024 / 75 Hz
 Colour support Up to 16.2 million colors
 Response Time 8 ms
 Image Brightness 300 cd/m2
 Image Contrast Ratio 500:1
 Digital Video Standard Digital Visual Interface (DVI)
 Audio Output Speaker(s) - stereo - integrated


So I am writing my first review gazing into my nice new monitor and I have to say I am quite impressed, as of yet no flicker and I'm not expecting any for at least a few years. My old monitor would flicker quite badly sometimes so the difference in that department is unbelievable. In fact overall it is a really neat looking very efficient unit which certainly adds a bit of style to my old PC. It also takes up considerably less space than the bulky monstrosity that preceded it. Well that is perhaps unfair since the CRT monitor did a great job which I had no complaints about, until I saw the light.