Now, that's really FLATron, LG! (LG L1953S)

Member Name: TheChocolateLady

Product:	LG L1953S
Date:	17/06/08 (604 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fast processing, excellent colour, looks great, good price

Disadvantages: Um... the adjustment buttons are a touch fiddly

Now that all the working adults in my house have flat screen monitors at work, it became obvious that we needed to get one for home. The one we picked out was the LG Flatron L1953S, which is a 19" that was luckily on sale for less than the 17" one, at the time. Now that we've had it for a while, I thought I should tell you what I think of this screen.

First of all, I'm totally enamoured with the colours on this screen. With the old huge screens I used to own as well as with the flat one I got at work, I had to fiddle around with the colours for quite some time before it was adjusted to the contrast and tones I like. Not so with this LG. Straight out of the box this was absolutely perfect, and I didn't have to fiddle with anything at all.

Of course, had I needed to, this would have been very easy to do. On the left hand side of the frame you'll see some symbols and hidden behind these are four buttons for adjusting every aspect of this screen. While it can be a touch confusing on how to make these buttons work properly, there is a simple logic to them that you'll be able to pick up quickly. And in case you like to turn your screen off when you turn off your computer (or when you put it into sleep mode), the bottom button will do that for you. Of course, if you're worried that you'll think the computer is off when just the screen is off, you'll not have this problem because the tiny blue light at the bottom left hand side of the screen will indicate this for you. So even though it is supposed to be an energy saving screen, you can turn it off if you like.

The screen came with its own CD with the necessary software to make sure my computer recognized it properly and worked the way it should, and setting it up was easy as pie. All we did was plug the screen into the electricity, and then with the other cord, plug it into the computer, run the software when the computer noticed the new hardware and everything was raring to go.

While this screen doesn't have built in speakers like my one at work does, I can't mark this screen down because of this. In fact, I prefer to have separate speakers so I don't have to worry about the sound quality on something that isn't meant to be a piece of audio equipment. Plus this looks so much sexier than my screen at work, with its sleek black pedestal that has a curvy oval foot on the desk - very cool!

Of course, this has a nice small footprint and doesn't take up hardly any room on my desktop. What's more, with the 19" of screen, I've felt very comfortable putting this at the highest resolution possible without feeling like everything has been reduced to microscopic size. But the best thing about this screen is that the refresh rate is so good that my kids find some of their high graphic games that used to freeze the computer up are now working without even a tiny hiccup. Mind you, I don't usually use such games but I really did notice how much smoother some of these seemed to work when my kids were playing them. This could also be due to the special 5000:1 contrast ratio which, according to their website, seems to have something to do with showing dark things, like when you're watching night scenes in movies. To test that out, I watched a few YouTube videos that I remembered as being very dark and hard to see and the pictures with this screen were really far brighter and easier to see than they are either at work or on my old screen.

All in all, I really like this screen, and would recommend it highly to anyone looking for a good flat screen for everyday use of their computer, and especially to people who want good clarity for watching movies or playing games that have high graphics, without putting out huge bucks to get it. I'll give it a full five stars out of five, as well.

Thanks for reading!

Davida Chazan © June, 2008 (for both Ciao.com and DooYoo)

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Technical Stuff:

The web page for this model can be found at http://www.lge.com/products/model/detail/l1953s.jh tml

This screen is available from many sites over the Internet including Amazon for £139.99, which is the highest price I found, but you can get better deals from other sites and pay as little as £122. That seems a pretty good price for any screen, and very reasonable considering the quality of this screen.
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Summary: One of LG's 19" Flat Screen Monitors

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