NEC MultiSync 17" TFT-LCD Flat-Panel Monitor

NEC promotes the LCD1765 as a highly portable flat screen designed for today's wandering gamer. The important features are all here, but NEC misses the mark with a few details, not to mention the marketing message. This $549 17-inch display is one of the best LCD panels CNET has ever had the pleasure to test--but easy to haul around it ain't.

The LCD1765's design is sturdy, sometimes to a fault. The stable, wedge-shaped base is connected to a dual-hinged neck that holds the display securely--so securely that we feared breaking the hinges when we tried to fold the neck into the stand. The display can be attached to a VESA wall mount; otherwise, it's not all that adjustable. The LCD1765 neither swivels from side to side nor pivots between Portrait and Landscape, and it'll give you only about a half inch of backward tilt. It does have decent viewing angles, however, which lets you see the screen clearly up to 80 degrees from the sides and 70 degrees from above and below. Save the packing box if you plan to travel with this display; contrary to NEC's mobile-centric posturing, the LCD1765 doesn't have a handle, which we've seen on a few other comparably priced LCDs.

A sheet of tough, glossy acrylic covers the front of the LCD1765, protecting the screen underneath and giving the display a sleek, modern appearance. The cover is reflective--even in dim lighting, we could see ourselves clearly--but the screen's brightness and vibrant colors make it easy to look past such distractions. The panel gives text a strong, sharp appearance that makes reading or entering data in spreadsheets easy on the eyes. Images are clean and sharp, and blocks of colored pixels do not leak into adjacent blocks of white pixels, a problem common to displays in the LCD1765's price range. The display also does well with subtle gradations of color shades and brightness, giving images vitality.

Our few qualms with the LCD1765 would be harder to forgive with a display of lesser quality. There's no digital input, but NEC does include an analog cable. The onscreen menus are logical and easy to navigate, but to access them, you have to reach behind the right edge of the screen and grope for buttons with labels that are not visible from the front; we repeatedly hit the autoadjust button while trying to fine-tune the image settings.

The LCD1765 is Mac compatible. NEC will provide a free adapter (call 800/632-4662), and shipping is also free.

We wish NEC's warranty were more generous; we think such a good display deserves more than one year of coverage. To its credit, NEC adheres to the ISO's strict guidelines on defective pixels and will replace a panel with more than four dead or stuck-on pixels.

CNET Labs DisplayMate tests  (Longer bars indicate better performance)

NEC LCD1765 76  Dell 1703FP 74  Philips 170W4P 71  Sharp LL-T17D3-B 69  HP L1702 69

Brightness in nits  (Longer bars indicate better performance)

Philips 170W4P 410  Sharp LL-T17D3-B 251  HP L1702 249  Dell 1703FP 240  NEC LCD1765 228

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