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"A Good LCD Panel for the Price" on by slappstah
Pros: Good Price, Simple Design, Looks Good, Works Fine
Cons: Slight fade at very edges of screen
Summary: I purchased this LCD after browsing through everything that BestBuy had to offer. I paid $279 and chose it over similarly spec'd LCDs from Samsung and LG. The bottom line was that I saved at least $50 over other brands, and I am satisfied with this one. No dead pixels, plenty of brightness and contrast.
- 1 reply to this review
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Once I heard the name "Westinghouse" all I could think of was "Gee, arent these the folks that make light bulbs and appliances?". I had a Compaq P700, which was a 17 inch Trinitron Sony based monitor I was replacing -- considered one of the better picture tube based monitors in itself. After looking at all the pre-sale ads from the holidays, decided to hold off until something substantial came along... Well, I found it. The Westinghouse LCM 19v5 had decent specs and the the price was right $279 at Best Buy. No REBATES, period. Now monitor manufacturers take notice - this is the way to sell a monitor!! A SALE. No silly coupons to send in. Used to be $349 regularly priced. This was the first sub $300 priced 19" Flat Panel monitor I could find without the silly rebates. I got it home, was a bit nervous since I heard all the horror stories about the dead pixels and all the trouble of installing the right fonts to make the text legible. I had no problems doing anything with this monitor except taking it out of the box, plugging the VGA cable in, and hitting the AUTO button on the front panel once Windows desktop came up. NO changing fonts, nothing. It was great! I was a a bit puzzled reading all those posts about LCD's being so bright, and now I know why. Sitting only a little over a foot in front of these things can overwhelm you with color. I adjusted the contrast down to 80, and the brightness to about the same level from 100 (comes out of the box set at 100 for contrast!) I have no complaints. No dead pixels whatsoever! I watched a DVD on this sitting in bed across the room about 8 feet away without any problems. I say for a 10ms monitor, with sub DVI port, and speakers (albeit good enough only for office use) under $300, this was a steal! <br><br>The only thing I can concur with that I've read about is that whites on LCD's appear not to be as bright as a picture tube monitor and the same about black. The black on powering up the flat panel is not as rich as the black found on a tube based monitor.<br><br>All in all, I am impressed with this monitor! Being my first purchase of an LCD, and considering it's replacing a Trinitron tube monitor, I say forget the overpriced 17 inch flat panels and move up to a 19"!<br><br>I will let you all know my findins when I have played a few games (Call of Duty 2, Tom Clancy Splinter Cell:Chaos Theory and HalfLife2)!!
