I can see clearly now... (NEC 1550VM)

Member Name: Islander

Product:	NEC 1550VM
Date:	26/08/02 (738 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Size, Quality, Features

Disadvantages: No DVI

Having decided that a TFT monitor would be a good idea for my desktop PC, as I found the one with my laptop actually left me with less eyestrain and headaches than the CRT monitor I?d been using, I had a look at few different makes before deciding on this little beauty.

So what made me choose this one?

Well first off the NEC Mitsubishi brand is well known and I?ve had a Mitsubishi TV and Video and both have been very good, and secondly at the time Dell had a 10% off offer on monitors, which brought the price of this one down to around the same as the budget models (although there were a couple of really cheap ones), this one cost me £310 but the normal price is £355-£375, and is still good value at those prices.

I had a look at the various specs of the TFT screens in my price range and this one, easily had the best specification ? the Contrast Ratio is 450:1, whereas the others were from 250:1-350:1 (the contrast ratio governs the brightness of the screen), the screen update speed is 25ms which is about the best in this class, the resolution is 1024x768@75hz refresh, again higher than some which only have a refresh of 60hz (although to be fair the refresh rate is not such an issue with TFT screens as it is with CRT?s due the way they work they don?t suffer from flicker anyway), there are a pair of built-in speakers and it comes with a 3 year on-site/swap-out warranty. It also has a low power usage of 30watts.

Setting it up was a breeze, it is light anyway (around 4Kg ? my 17? CRT weighed in at a hefty 20Kg)) and the three leads that are needed are all supplied. It was just a case of unclipping a panel on the back and plugging in the power lead (standard kettle/PC type), the monitor lead (has a standard 15pin monitor plug on each end) and the speaker lead. Upon booting the PC the monitor was detected correctly by both W2K (I tried it on the laptop first) and XP and the resolution and refresh set-up automatically.

What
?s it like to use?

Well let me put it like this, I could not now go back to a CRT monitor, the picture quality is a knockout, it is extremely sharp and crisp (I had heard that TFT screens can be dark, but on this one I have had to turn the brightness/contrast down to under 50% of maximum), and I no longer suffer from eyestrain reading text even though the screen is now further away from me than the CRT was, due it?s size. The colours are vibrant and display correctly, there are no dead pixels in the one I have and the screen geometry is aligned perfectly. All the adjustments are made using an On-Screen Display with the buttons arranged under the screen.

The available adjustments are:

Volume
Brightness/Contrast
Auto set-up the screen geometry (works well)
Manually set-up the screen geometry
Adjust the RGB (where the three main colours ? Red, Green and Blue - that are used to make up the picture can be adjusted individually)
Adjust the position of the ODS on the screen.

One of the major complaints I?ve heard is that TFT screens are no good for games players due to the slow screen update. Well I haven?t tried it with any of the FPS games like Half-Life etc so can?t comment there as I don?t like these sort of games, but I have had Morrowind and NeverWinter Nights running on it with absolutely no problems even when there has been a lot of action on screen or with the fast moving spell effects.

In fact the only downside to this monitor is the lack of a DVI output, not something I was that bothered about, but I now have a graphics card with DVI so it ewould have been handy. Although the picture quality is faultless anyway, so I don't think there could have been that much of an improvement.

Overall I?m very impressed with this monitor and wouldn?t hesitate to recommend it.

Summary: