kengland4's Full Review: Hewlett Packard L1906 19 inch LCD Monitor
I flew on over to the great team at PCMall.com in Torrance, CA, to take advantage of this offer. They were nice enough to accept my return of an unopened external hard drive, no questions asked, even though it had been a few days past the refund period. I used the credit to grab this, as well as the 17" model (for a client).
I was very relieved not to be saddled with the external hd, as I didn't need it, and also allowed the rebate period to pass. See my related review of an external CDRW at http://www.epinions.com/content_283781926532.
I was so happy to be rid of it, and had good results with 2 purchases of the 17" model for 2 clients, that I hadn't closely looked at the specs. This slowly occurred to me as my initial elation turned to impatient frustration, and I started to have nightmares of dead pixels, excessive ghosting, and limited connectivity--had I read somewhere about 8 millisecond response time, or had I been dreaming? I paid $199, and a $50 rebate is forthcoming.
I scanned a couple of reviews, and confirmed that it only had 12ms response, and some complained of not enough brightness. These worries led me to keep it in the box for several days before finally deciding to take the plunge.
When I finally hooked it up, I was initially underwhelmed. Mind you, I connected it to a relatively old Emachines I'd inherited from a cousin, along with another forbear. This machine has 256MB of memory, integrated graphics, and a 366 Mhz Celeron--heck, it even has a front-mounted serial port (to it's credit, a USB 1.1 is adjunctly located, and I'm writing this review on it). To the point, though, the text seemed fuzzy, and the colors, somewhat dull. There were no visual defects whatsoever, such as as dead pixels, and it was immediately and very bright.
I tried many adjustments and used the included driver. I tried all the resolutions, but I was not ready to abandon a CRT for this model based on this initial impression. I went to a store and looked at some other LCD models. I concluded that a 19" widescreen Viewsonic model with 8ms response and a DVI port was what I should've aimed for. However, that was before I connected it to my more modern 1.6 Mhz AMD pc with 512MB and a 128MB GeForce card.
Connecting the unit to my newer pc showed an immediate and dramatic improvement. Text was much sharper, colors popped, contrast was great, and I immediately knew I'd made a good choice. I played a DVD, and didn't notice any distracting ghosting, although there wasn't any very fast action occurring. I played some video files ripped to 700MB wmv and divx files, and they looked great, although the pixelation that is inevitable with that much compression was more obvious than on a CRT, which I attribute to the fine level of detail provided by this unit. And I must say that using my pc with this LCD immediately made it 200% more fun, and even makes the Celeron seem acceptable. And the gray-framed unit looks GREAT in my living room--almost like a 3-dimensional floating effect, compared to many black-framed units I've seen. I would even say it's an Ikea-like, minimalist design approach. See a review of the excellent Antec Sonata case, and the odyssey of how I built the system here--http://www.epinions.com/content_208540438148.
Performing mundane functions on this LCD looked as good as, or better, than a 17" CRT monitor, and I normally use a Viewsonic GS771 Graphics Series, after an excellent KDS .24 dot-pitch monitor died on me, so I'm accustomed to superlative optics. Three megapixel and higher picture files looked awesome, almost like oil paintings, and I was able to observe very fine detail when zooming. Two-megapixel pics taken with my Canon Powershot S330 looked merely ordinary, however. Web browsing on the large real estate of a screen was simply fabulous, keeping eye strain to an absolute minimum, even after hours of use. I should also point out that the "12ms" designation is assigned by HP's labs, and that these ratings are not entirely interchangeable among manufacturers, as many other variables are involved. 16ms models exist, but I found an HP-assigned speed of 12ms as fine for movies and daily tasks.
The unit is very attractive, with rounded edges, and finished in a powder-coated light gun-metal gray frame. An auto-adjustment button is in the center, and it does just as its namesake--automatically adjusts the resolution and screen refresh rate for your graphics adapter. A menu button provides, brightness, contrast, color adjustment (temperature, a custom setting, and sRGB), languages (7 different ones), management (of power, sleep, mode display on/off, power-on recall), OSD controls, information, and a factory reset option). The unit also logs the total hours the unit has been on. It's mounted on a just-right black base that is not height-adjustable, but does pivot forward and back. The usable viewing angle is about 135 degrees, in my estimation (and a claimed 140 degrees, horizontal, 135, vertical). It has connections for the power cable and a standard d-sub monitor cable, but no digital or composite outputs. It also has the TCO '03 certification, neatly indicated by the tidy half-postage stamp sticker. An unobtrusive power button floats in the lower-left corner pocket, left-flanked by a small green LED.
The unit supports resolutions up to 1280X1024 (the recommended resolution) at 76/83 Hz vertical/horizontal, and is PC-only. It has a 3 year warranty, and consumes 37 watts (Energy Star-compliant). It has a brightness of 250 nits, and a contrast ratio of 500:1. It also sports a non-glare screen, is anti-static, and is VESA external mounting-capable. It weighs 11.7 lbs, and has a very small footprint, bearing a depth of 8 inches. The frame extends an extremely short distance from the screen, adding to the 3D "floating" effect, for an overall dimension of 16.8 inches high X 16.6 inches wide. It also bears these additional regulatory approvals--UL • ISO 9241-3 • ISO 9241-8 • FCC • GOST-R • ISO 13406-2 (Pixel Defect Guidelines) • ISO 9241-7 • MPR- • ||• TCO-99.
Update--I have now started using this monitor with a newly-built AMD 64 computer with an Nvidia 7300le video card, which is dual-booted with XP Pro and Vista. With Nvidia's 7.15.11.5824 driver, dated 4/26/07, the monitor output has never been better, brighter, more contrasty, or colorful. I was disappointed with the Vista drivers prior to this, but this version is the first I've seen to permit the myriad adjustments that Nvidia users are accustomed to, and the output is rock-solid, and actually more so than I was experiencing with XP. It's kind of hard to believe the monitor is not using a DVI input! Leave it to Nvidia to continuously improve their products, from the obsolete to the avant-garde. However, there was an acknowledged issue with Vista where recovery from sleep mode only resulted in a "no input signal" message, which was becoming much more frequent with the previous driver. Read the details at the tail-end of my Vista review, here--http://www.epinions.com/content_379836927620
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