NEC LCD1765: Reflections on a beautiful monitor
Written: Feb 05 '04
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Pros: The most beautiful image you ever will see
Cons: You might not like the glare; try before you buy.
The Bottom Line: A stunning image, a beautiful monitor, a fair price: What's not to love?
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| daviddennis's Full Review: NEC MultiSync LCD1765 17 inch LCD Monitor |
Why?
For many years, I have been satisfied with my SGI 1600SW monitor. It's a classy, sleek product with very high resolution. Unfortunately, it has a rather dull fixed brightness. When I moved into my new house, I wanted to have a gorgeous, light-filled room in which to work on my computer and check out the dramatic view which I was paying so much mortgage money for.
Mission accomplished; but the glare through the windows made the old monitor almost impossible to read in mornings, and during the mid-afternoon. This killed my productivity on my home products, since that's when I had time to work.
Thus, the need for a brighter monitor.
Of course I really wanted an Apple Cinema HD Display, that masterpiece of high-resolution engineering. I even had the $2,000-odd, ready to be spent. But then came the bad news: It's not that bright, even compared to my original monitor. And it's about to be replaced by a new model, which I'm pretty sure is exactly what I'll want and get.
But what to do in the mean time? I couldn't exactly continue to work as I was, but I didn't want to spend a lot of money on a monitor I'd regret having bought in a few months.
Enter the NEC LCD1765.
This is perhaps the most attention-getting monitor I've seen. It's a monitor with a gimmick: Unlike the competition, it has no anti-glare coating, and thus a mirror-like, reflective surface. The image leaps out of the screen and grabs you with its attention-getting beauty. At the store, it looks like it's at least double the brightness of any other monitor on display.
I was expecting to report a downside, that reflections from the monitor were distracting and significantly hurt its utility. However, in 24 hours of heavy use, in every possible lighting condition including full sunlit situations that would have made it impossible to use my old monitor, the NEC has behaved like a champ. It's possible that having it tilted back far, so it doesn't capture as much direct sunlight from my window, helped. But if so, it helped well enough to make the monitor completely usable even in extremely bright conditions.
This all being said, if you view the monitor at the right angle, you'll definitely see some reflections. Try it in the store before buying if you can.
Setup
This monitor has a stand that I'm still not sure if I've set up correctly. The instructions say that you have to pull it up until it snaps. I have found it impossible to pull up more than a short distance, and it has not snapped, so I have to assume the stand goes a bit higher than it is right now. However, it seems to work just fine as it is, so I'm not worried about it. Just prepare for a big of effort during setup.
Everything else is more or less normal. The power supply is on the cord instead of being a wall-wart transformer, which is a significant plus, at least for me.
There are no digital inputs, just a standard analogue VGA cable. My old SGI 1600SW had digital inputs that nobody supported, and a box that converted standard VGA into whatever obscure digital format it needed. This monitor has no such box, but the display quality is just as flawless. I can only conclude that pure digital inputs are not really needed.
The NEC monitor is plug and play with my PowerMac G5. The G5 includes a VGA adapter from its own digital outlet; hook the monitor to the adapter and you're done. There is no need for a special "Mac" display plug; that went out with the now-ancient beige G3, despite NEC's friendly offer to supply it if necessary.
Controls
The designers of this monitor made a major ergonomic gaffe. The controls are on the right side of the screen, and they are labelled on the side, not the front. So you have to look over to the side of the screen to see the labels.
For someone like me, who generally works in a dim room, it's impossible to make out the rather cryptic icons on the controls.
The power switch is easy to locate since it's to the right of the power LED. Forget about the rest of the controls; fiddling with them is bound to increase your blood pressure but do little else.
Fortunately, at least for me, the factory settings were just fine and I've seen no need to change them. If this was not the case, I would have downgraded the monitor's rating by a star. As it is, it seems churlish to downgrade the product for controls I'd never use anyway.
LCD Monitor Size
Monitor size refers to diagonal size, from the top left edge to the bottom right. Resolution refers to the amount of detail you see in the image. Generally, when you get a larger monitor, you want a higher resolution, so things stay at the same size, but you see more stuff because you have a larger viewing area.
LCDs have two important characteristics: First, they are usually run at a fixed, maximum resolution, because it gives you the highest display quality. CRT monitors can run at lower resolution than they're designed for and still provide a high-quality picture; LCDs cannot. So you should always buy a LCD which is comfortable to view in the store at its normal resolution.
The second characteristic is odd: LCD resolution holds constant for several popular sizes, from 17" to 19". If you're buying a 19" display, you won't get to see more than in the 17", but your individual dots will be bigger, so you may find the screen easier to read. If you have no trouble reading a 17" LCD, there's no reason to invest in a 19", since you'll get the same image, only magnified a bit.
20" and above LCD monitors have higher resolutions, and you want one if you need the best detail. For Macintosh users, Apple has lovely 20 and 23" units, but they use out of date technology and are desperately in need of a refresh. I really wanted to buy Apple's Cinema HD Display, and I could have afforded its $2,000 price, but I just KNOW Apple will come up with a much better display about a day after I bought.
For PC users or those who don't want an Apple-brand monitor, I would look at NEC's 20" professional unit which I'm sure is beautiful. Unfortunately, I haven't seen or tested it.
The observant among you might note that two 17" monitors are a lot cheaper than one 23". This is because the 23" monitor has many times the number of pixels. If more than 10 or so of them are bad, out of millions, the panel is no good and has to be discarded. The odds of this are higher with the large panel, thus the higher price.
If you want to buy two 17" monitors to span into a larger unit, you should be aware that the edges of this monitor are about 1.5" thick, so there will be a distracting 3" gap between the picture on the left and that on the right when you use two monitors side by side. I plan to eventually buy a 23"-30" Apple monitor, and use this on one of my lesser systems, so this wasn't a factor for me, but it might be one for you.
Both MacOS X and Windows XP support spanning multiple monitors. I've found dealing with multiple monitors in the Apple Store to be very confusing, since the spatial relationships between, say, a LCD on a PowerBook and a Cinema Display are a bit difficult to make out. Better to get two identical monitors right next to each other.
If you want to use the NEC in a multi-monitor application, it's important to note that the bezel that frames the image is about an inch and a half wide. This creates a bit of confusion; the divide between the two monitors would be quite unpleasant. There are special monitors with narrow bezels that you should check out.
Dead Pixels
I didn't see any. On the other hand, I have never seen any in any of the LCD monitors I've bought. I've either been very lucky, or I simply don't notice dead pixels.
Price
In the good old days, a great monitor was a real status symbol, since it cost more than double what a lousy one did - and the lousy monitors of the day were a lot worse than they are now. I remember well paying $765-odd for my NEC MultiSync 4FG, and getting many years of reliable service out of it. (Actually, I still have it and it still works, but it's a bit fuzzy so it's been honourably retired). Normal monitors were $200-300 then.
Well, now you can get an exceptional monitor for not much over the price of a bottom of the barrel entry level model. 17" LCDs start at around $400; this was $549 minus a $30 rebate.
A fair price, premium NEC quality and a stunning image; what more could you want?
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 549
Operating System: Macintosh
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Member: David Dennis
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