Buy Microsoft Office Home & Student
- Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 8 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
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3 out of 3 people found this review helpful
4.5 stars
"Great monitor. Excellent bang for the buck."
Pros: Picture quality, Color, No ghosting, DVI Input, Widescreen, Price!
Cons: More inputs would be nice, EZTune doesn't do much for me, picture adjustment buttons are clumsy and confusing
Summary: After a lot of searching for the perfect LCD monitor under $250, my wife and I finally settled on waiting another month for the monitor we really wanted; this one. Much to our great surprise, one week after making that decision the price for the FPD1975W was dropped from $270 to $230. Eureka! So, we went out and picked one up. Here are my thoughts.
First impressions:
This monitor was a looker from the start. I really like its slim bezel and simple look. The first FPD1975W I bought had one bad pixel, lit red, in the middle of the screen. It was small and not always noticeable, but I thought "Hey, right now is my only chance to get one without any bad pixels" so at the risk of looking anal retentive, I took it back to the retail outlet where it was purchased and exchanged it for another (which I had them check for bad pixels at the store before taking it home). I now have a screen full of healthy pixels, and boy do they look nice. **Side Note: It is for this exact situation that I recommend buying LCD's at local retail outlets whenever possible. Having played the bad pixel mail order return game before, I can say that it's truly no fun and a waste of time and money.**
I truly enjoy the picture quality of this monitor. Right now I'm running it on VGA and it looks great. Text and graphics look sharp. Before purchasing this I had tried a Sony Ultrabright (nice) and an HP business LCD (not so nice). The picture quality of the Gateway is far better than the HP and is on par with the Sony, in my opinion.
The screen uniformity and viewing angles are pretty good, though not perfect. As with most monitors in this price range, the center is slightly brighter than the corners, and if you tip your head about 6" to the left or right you will begin to see the faint yellow hue along the edge of the screen. I found neither of these issues are distracting during normal use, however.
The monitor has solid color reproduction, though it should be calibrated for optimal use, like most LCD's. The calibration tool on my graphics card worked like a charm to achieve that perfect balance. Its still only a 6 bit panel, so don't expect to use it for high professional work, but I have never noticed any colors that seem awry on the web sites I visit everyday, even after switching from a CRT.
It?s also very bright, a setting which I had to turn way down to keep from searing my retinas.
One of the advantages of a 6 bit panel is fast response times, and this monitor does not disappoint. I have had a blast playing Half-Life 2 and Far Cry with no apparent ghosting; a beautiful sight to behold at full resolution (1440x900). This is thanks to the 8ms response time. Action scenes in movies are also smooth and fun to watch.
As for the aspect ratio, I must say that I love having a widescreen. The afore-mentioned games are truly more immersive with the extra width (HL2 will scare you to death), and widescreen movies are quite a bit larger than on a traditional 19" LCD because of the more closely matched aspect ratios. If you are a hardcore gamer, be warned that not all games currently out support widescreen resolutions so it?s worth checking on your favorites if you are considering purchasing a widescreen.
Though I have not tried it yet, this monitor does have a DVI connection, something which I hope to use someday. Having the DVI gives me the option of using the VGA for Xbox 360 connection, should I ever purchase one.
For anyone looking to use the monitor at a resolution other than native, it seems to have good quality interpolation, as well.
Overall, I'm very pleased with this monitor. Hopefully I will get many years of solid, consistent performance out of it.
Gateway FPD1975W:
