Monitor Reviews

I purchased Magellan MAP 330X two years ago. That one was working really fine. But because its design was not as cute as I would expect, I sold it off eBay one year ago. Then I was searching for a replacement one, and it was found to be Garmin eTrex Vista. So I purchased it and used it during the 2002 Christmas vacation in California. To my much disappointment, it is really quite inferior to MAP330. The only reason I bought it was it it looks cute, easy to fit my pocket. However, on technically side, there are many problems. After making painfully decision, I decide to sell it and buy back the MAP300 again.

First, Garmin's GPS does not come with the detailed city maps, which is sold separately for $99+. It is quite expensive. Magellan's city map comes with MAP330X. (Garmin's GPS is already sold higher than comparable Magellan's). Second, Vista's map on the screen is not floating. For example, if the street name is "Main St.", and the first two character "Ma" is happened to be cutoff on the left side, the screen only displays "in St.". Very bad, isn't it? MAP330X's text names are floating to fit in the screen. Third, very very bad, Vista is very slow and difficult to lock the satellite signals. And once it does lock, it is quite easy to get lost (see other reviews for any Magellan GPS). This is the main problem that makes me abandon it finally, even though I like its stylish design so much. Fourth, once it lost the satellite signals, it displays the message on the bottom of all screens and just will not go, which blocks the necessary information (such as elevator, distance, street name, etc.) that I will like to see even though the signal is off. Fifth, it is quite difficult to navigate the map to left, right, up or down. In MAP330X, you just move the cursor, using one hand only, can do it, whileas same functionality in Vista needs two steps and needs two hands. It is not likely to do it during driving. Sixth, although Vista outside design is quite cute, its button locations are very bad. It is very difficult to manipulate them using one hand during the driving. You may say it is not supposed to use it during driving. But using it during driving, so what, it is just a quite look on the screen, just like drinking an soda or eat a bite of McDonald. It does not cause any problem when using probably. Plus, it is only useful during the driving when one needs to figure out if he/she is in the right direction on highway, or if miss an exit, and how far it is needed to get the destination. Without the proper use of it with one hand, you bet how many people will be buying a GPS. Seventh, when Vista is first turned on, it locks the screen to scan the satellite frequencies (which is already quite long compared with MAP330X) and does not allow you to go to any other screen further. This is also very bad feature. Sometime I just want to see the map of last location, I don't really need to track the current location; or I just want to setup configurations, why should I have to wait the satellite signal? There're also other major issues such as not showing what's the version number of the firmware, how much memory is left, what kind of external map is loaded, etc.

In this deflationary world, I make purchase carefully on high-tech gadgets. I understand the prices will drop quickly. So if I do buy it, I really expect to own it and consider the money is discarded. If a company does not provide a good product, it cannot expect to sell it too many, because nowadays there're on-line auction and trading sites everywhere. If a customer does not like the product generally after using it, he/she will sell it, say, at eBay. Therefore, the used ones get circulated again and again in the secondary trading market, making the new ones difficult to be mass sold.

I am very happy with the Magellan MAP 330x GPS. I had purchased it because, for the price, it was better than any of the other brands. It has a good battery life (9-10 hours from 2 AAs depending on how often you use the light feature) , and comes with map software which is a must for this type of GPS. The features it has meet or surpass other products in its class. The only problem I have with it, is that in order to see any local streets you must be zoomed in pretty close, but you can't expect much more since the screen is only about 3"X2". I feel that its very accurate... With the map software I can see all of the rural streets around my home. Sometimes it takes a while for the unit to orient its self, but once it has gone through its cycle it stays locked on, even in my basement. I did my homework on this one, and I would recommend it over the other brands, unless they can come up with a better package... Though the others might have products in the same category, they don't package their GPS with the software and the data cable so they can ding you with the cost of buying it later. ... It would be worth your while to do some research before you buy though, so take the time to look around on the above web pages, and visit epinions.com to help you make a sound purchase.

I've had my MAP330 for over a year now. It works well for both street navigation as well as hiking uses. I purchased the MapSend Topo CD and was impressed with the detail it downloads into the 8 meg of programable memory the MAP330 has in addition to the 8 meg reserved for the base map (16 meg total). Magellan provides FREE software upgrades for the unit that are available at their website. I have downloaded and installed three upgrades since purchasing the unit. Each has added new features that were desirable to have. Did I mention that these are FREE?

I don't think you can get more GPS for your money than the MAP330. If you purchase the MAP330X you get lots of extras for very little additional expense.

I have had this TV for about 2 years now and serveral months ago I noticed a problem with the cable we had connected to the TV. After several hours of use the picture would develop wavy lines of static that would eventually make the TV unwhatchable. I've tried switching out the cable box the VCR even the coaxial cable the picture still deteriorates after no more than 5 hours of use. The use of the VCR tends to speed the occurence of the problem and can obliterate the picture in roughly 4 hours. Also when whatching cable TV I have noticed ghosts in the picture. I have tried switching cable boxes with the TV in the other room but the problem persits. I would like to belive that the problem is with the cable but after discussing the matter with several of my chums who were pleased with the cable on the next street I ruled that out.

I am disapointed with this TV.

The TV is great, I've just had a few minor problems. First of all, after receiving it from Amazon, it didn't work out of the box. I had to drive it out of town to have a connection on the picture tube repaired before I could watch it. Now that I have it back, there are three lines of what I would describe as dim pixels on the screen. Not a big deal, annoying at best. Otherwise, I'm happy with the Sony as always.

I've had this tv for 3 years and it is wonderful, great picture and sound. No smart color or anything it's does everything for you. And it's made by the wonderful company Sony!

Bought two of these monitors about two weeks ago. Both came with several dead pixels right next to each other forming an annoying blimp on the screen. Samsung agreed to replace both units. However, when the replacements arrived today, they turned out to be refurbished and with MUCH greater problems. One had a horrible color problem where one edge of the screen has one shade and the other another. Much worse when looked at from an angle. Another replacement was too dim even with brightness set to 100. Both refurbished monitors had many dead pixels. Apparently, this is acceptable to Samsung.
Beware! Samsung will only replace with refurbished monitors, so if yours comes defective, you are out of luck trying to replace for a new unit.
Needless to say, I will never buy Samsung again.

I have had a 20G 20" Viewsonic CRT monitor since 94 or 95, and although it's been good to me, it was starting to show some signs of aging, like not being able to handle strange resolutions ( like 848x480 ), and different refresh rate combinations. At times it would get stuck between switching resolutions and never recover until hours later.

After much on-line research, I decided to spend about the same about ($1200) I did 8 years ago, and get the best monitor for coding, e-mail and gaming I could find.

After having dual 18" LCDs at work, I decided that I needed at least a 20" LCD at home.

I bought the Samsung 213t...and got it plugged into my Quadro4 ( similar to GeForce4 ti 4400 ) through the DVI. The display model at Fry's was using Analog and looked awful due to ghosting. When I tried the DVI, it looked great. Based on that, I can't recommend this monitor unless you have a DVI connector on your video card or are willing to upgrade to such a video card.

I run it at native 1600x1200x60hz and it looks stunning. After getting ClearType set up properly through the Microsoft web interface, it looks even better. Text is so crisp I could cry, and gaming didn't exhibit noticeable ghosting to my eye so far.

No dead or stuck pixels on this monitor either. This is the best computer upgrade I've ever done. Highly recommended.

I use this monitor exclusively for gaming. It's hooked up via DVI-D to an nVidia GeForce FX 5950 card. I have nothing bad to say about the monitor's performance - the games I play look spectacular with it.

I am used to a Sony Trinitron 19" CRT and now, when I look at the CRT alongside this Samsung LCD? The CRT looks terrible :)

Best part of this Samsung LCD? The blacks are REALLY black. When I use xterms the clarity of the text is out of this world.

If you can afford ~$1200, I really recommend this monitor to anyone.

It's [bad]. I have one. I wish I'd been given another make or model.

Batteries last about 10 minutes, and I'm not talking [bad] batteries here. The data sets loaded into it are a complete waste of time, they'll just about tell you which country you're in.

I purchased my GPS II plus in Sept 1997 and have used it throughout Fla bay and the east coast North to Hilton Head S.C. The elementry maps of the GPS III & III plus are not of use to me as a boater but some people love this feature.

I have used Garmen, Northstar, Lowrance & Magellan Units. The Garmen is by far the easiest to use, Very intuitive menus & text identifiers. Accuracy is Exellent The 12 Channel reciver is fast enough to provide accurate positions at high boating speeds, unlike some older multiplexed recevers I have used. Differential GPS is marginal in extreme S. Fla and therefore I have not persued this technology.

However my unit has had problems, the unit will shut itself off without warning and will not always reboot when switched back on. This has been very disturbing at night in the boat near shallow water. The last time it did this it would not work for several months only to come on the day I was going to ship it to Garmen for repair. Never depend on only one means of navagation!

The unit has been durable and not effected by salt spray or fresh water washdowns.Except for the one issue I am very happy with my Garmen and this is probably an isolated problem. I intend to purchase 2 more units one for each of my boats and a back up to be carried in my "dry box" for good luck. Lot's of bang for the buck! This would be a 5 Star revue except for my one problem.

I ordered my GPS II+ in december '98, and though there is now the III and III+, it is by battery life and easy handling the best GPS device I tried. Although it has the US-city-database, most european cities of evidence are included (and the rest of the world, too !!) - and the rest is easily to be loaded by pc + interface cable. It's easy to operate, and of worldwide use - GPS coverage in South Africa, Europe or in Scandinavia is OK for most purposes in hiking and biking navigation.

Bought these a few weeks ago, have been using them purely for studio work, which I'm convinced they were designed for without much thought to the home user. These have a very flat frequency response and a sharp and unforgiving dynamic response, along with very little of the harmonic excitement or sound colouration that makes consumer headphones sound "better". You can pick the parts from the mix with ease and you can almost see the knobs on the dynamics effects used in recording whatever you're listening to. If you're looking to make music and want to hear PRECISELY what is coming through the wire, these headphones can't be bettered under £150. If you haven't the slightest clue what I've been talking about and just want to listen to your music, go buy something else, but beware; audio equipment that colours sound (ie the vast majority of supposed "audiophile" equipment) will sound great with one peice of music and will kill another stone dead.

After using these for about a month, i am very pleased with them. I am a home user, not a recording engineer, but if you prefer a neutral sound, these might be just what you want. They don't add to or take away from the music. Attenuation of external noise is pretty decent (i chose these in part to reduce the noise from the computer, and was not disappointed). Despite the good noise attenuation, the pressure against one's head is not uncomfortable (even for someone with a fairly large head). You can easily wear these for one or two hours at a time without discomfort. I would describe the sound simply as full and complete: good clarity in the highs, prominent midrange, adequate bass.

Although saying something sounds "neutral" may convey an impression of boredom, these headphones do deliver that unquantifiable feature known as *pleasure*. They are involving. You will probably not find yourself thinking "if only i had bought better headphones". Overall, for the asking price, these are a very good value. Sound equipment *should* be neutral :)

As everyone else has said, they have extremely tight sound, uncolored, and neutral as possible. No extra reverberations that make music seem warm or bright; as a result, everything sounds straight out of the studio. You can use an equalizer to make the response not so flat, but you can not recoup the extra colouring with an equalizer. If it's what you desire, look else where.

On the other note, great sound isolation, well in excess of 20dB for higher frequencies (les than 10% of sound gets through)

Pros
1) This monitor is very well designed. Its stand is flat and doesn't need to much room, the case is stable.
2) The workmanship is excellent. The whole monitor module is wrapped within a metal cage. It also hosts the switching power supply (which is the cause of the 'noise' the monitor produces). It seems (and NEC's product summary implies it) that the monitor's application includes also production facilites - that might be the reason for the extraordinary robustness of this model.
3) The picture quality is very good. It achieves sRGB color. You will recognize it when you watch a DVD and compare the picture's quality with your notebooks monitor (Notebooks usually don't support sRGB, except high priced models). It also allows wide viewing angles of 160 degrees. The brighntess and contrast ratio spec is bove average for such a large LCD panel.

Cons
1) The unit excepts analog signals only. Therefore a D/A conversion of the video signal in your VGA adapter must be reversed by a A/D conversion within your monitor. Each conversion adds noise to the signale and the A/D process underlies digitization errors. In the contrary a digital input like DVI obviates this process. However, not every VGA adapter supports DVI and for backward compatibility it makes sense to provide a anlaog VGA input only. The bottomline is - you wont recognize the D/A - A/D conversion at all. But be sure to run the unit with a refresh rate no higher than 60 Hertz.

Note
For all those of you who hear grass growing: The monitors 'noise' is caused by the switching power supply which is included in the monitor's unit. But be reasonable with the comments made - you will only recognize a tone of constant frequency when every device (including your computer's main unit) is switched off. If it is boring you, simply switch the monitor off. It's like audio stream bandwidth reduction: when listing to a song of a certain sound level (POP will do it), your ear wont be able to recognize a falling needle on a glassplate. That is exactly what audio compressors do - with algorithms like MP3, WMA or Sonys minidisc compression. And that is also the case when you have at least one device with a fan running...

Summary
Great product, I enjoy it since October 2001.

I have been using a Sony 20" CRT for a few years. This is an excellent replacement in many ways:

Display Quality: Since the LCD is pefectly flat, the 18" display area is not much of a compromise from my CRT's 19" viewable area. At 1280 x 1024 (which is recommended by NEC as optimal), you can pack a lot of stuff on the screen, yet text stays sharp and images are vivid. Also this LCD is very bright. Compare to my CRT, the NEC LCD causes less eye strain after long viewing hours.

Physical Aspects: This is a well-built monitor but the greatest thing about LCD, which I am sure all Flat panel users know already, is the tremendous saving on your desktop space, especially when you switch from a 20" monster.

Price: There is more LCD for the money with this 18" monitor in my opinion.

I've read about the "noise" issue from other reviews but I have not experienced any at all. It is cool that this monitor has 2 analog VGA inputs, but I'd rather see a digital input instead.

This is truly an excellent product and I really enjoy it.

You get vibrant color, excellent color saturation. I use it a lot to make adjustment to scanned pictures and photography. Extremely detailled, very fast as well. My son once tried it with a Star War game and I was astonished by the 3D and the rapidity of that screen... NEC support service is excellent: I had a defective unit (basically the colors were not right) and without any question, they send me a new unit!

If your thinking about buying a ViewSonic, THINK TWICE!
And when you droul over the wonderful quality of what is before
you, and the screen goes blank (during a dead line) remember how much it is going to cost you when you have to ship it back to Calafornia. and when you get your replacement don't be so sure
that it is any better, (or the replacement after it!) And if you think that's alright viewsonic would never send me a defective monitor, I have a wonderful warranty and that's all I need, THINK TWICE!

The speakers and USB ports don't work in Digital mode, but if you attach both digital and analog cables and the analog signal is live, then you can select the digital input and the analog signal will keep the base unit powered up which will allow the USB ports and speakers to work. However, the analog signal must be up.

If you have defective pixels viewsonic will say that they will replace it if the panel has 6 bad pixels, or 18 bad subpixels. Buyer beware.

The Hercules Geforce DDR/DVI or the GTS may ruin this display...

Simply awesome. The ViewSonic VP181 has turned my long hours spent at the computer into a pleasure. This monitor offers more saturated colors than many other LCDs I have tried and has one of the best contrast ratios of LCDs in this class. A feature I am especially fond of is the ability to easily switch between landscape and portrait modes when working with graphics or extensive business applications. Furthermore, because of the built in speakers, I was able to free-up additional space on my desk. On games, I found the video to be smooth, quick and just as rich as when I am running simple business applications. This unit is attractively priced for the features it delivers.

I'm quite picky when it comes to buying elections (especially computer components). I did a lot of research and it kept leading back to this monitor. Perfectly flat screen, .25mm dot pitch across the entire screen, fast refresh rates at high resolutions, not to mention it's a shadow mask monitor so none of those pesky lines at the top and bottom of the screen that apperture grille monitors have. I upgraded from a generic 17" monitor I had been using for about 5 years so purchasing this monitor made a huge difference in games (very immersive). After seeing and using the monitor, I would easily recommend it to anyone. It's Sony-level performance without the Sony price. ...!

Huge in size-but incredible performance.Easy to set up-clarity,brightness,color,high refresh rates & high resolutions-with right graphics cards untouchable yet-inexpensive 4 size &quality of display.None of problems apperture grill monitors have -no lines & uniformity of picture.Have 2 Viewsonic P815-4 monitors about 4+ years also 21" monitors-still work great dispite almost constant use 24/7 never had a problem+ they have topnotch support 4 CRT's -all fudge on flat panels&pixel problems.In Short 20" flat panel or trinitron Crt cost more {LCD over 2x}-&will not perform as well despite hype.This monitor is a bargain-blows away my older 21's at less than 1/3 the price.Amazed that no one has posted a review!! Bought 2-For less then price of 1 LCD. P.S. Also LOOK GREAT in BLACK!!

First I bought a Samsung 1100DF (21") it had nice specs .20 mm dot pitch, but the picture was not acceptable: it was dark and blurry, so I returned it back to Amazon.
Next, (figuring that I need to spend more to get an acceptable 21" CRT) I got a NEC-Mitsubishi MultiSync FP2141SB-BK 22", this one had those annoying AG lines and the picture was distorted. It also had a poor focus in the corners and a useless "superbright" mode which just dulls and blurs the picture IMHO. Supposedly this is one of the best AG monitors out there.
Then I thought: seems like I have to cash out for an LCD since I cannot find an acceptable 21" CRT. Well, in order to get one of these with the same viewable (20"), you have to spend at least 900 'rubles'. So I decided to give the G220f a chance. Well, let me tell you I am finished buying. This is as good as it needs to be. It's sharp, clear, and bright enough, and NO AG lines (being it's not an AG monitor of course)
Right now I have it running at 1600x1200@ 85 Hz. And I am happy with the picture. Had to do some geometric adjustments first to straighten the corners, but that's OK.

If you read one of the reviews below, a user complains that his is grainy. Well perhaps it's grainy if the he has it set at 800x600, in that case he should have bough a 14" or a 13" dumb terminal screen with that cool green text, nice and sharp at his preferred resolution. It would be ridiculous to buy this size display and then low ball the resolution.

Anyway, until LCD's are as fast as CRT's and have comparable price tags, I recommend this thing to anyone looking for a large display. Be you an editor, a gamer, a grapher or a lamer, you cannot go wrong here.

One thing I would change is the fact that the monitor cable is hard wired to the monitor. However, in the unlikely event that any part of the cable goes, I will have no inhibition of popping out the guts and re-soldering (but that's just me).

Just a week ago I read a polarized reviews of this monitor asking myself which opinion to believe. At the end I was stupid enough to make a decision based on the professional look and average high marks. It was a mistake. The screen is realy bad.

I used to order computer hardware for the company I worked in and saw lots of good and bad CRTs. This one looks like a cheep "Business" series of other brands. Terrible moire on the left curable only by 100% h-moire correction, which on the other hand makes it a bit blurry. It looks like you can actualy see the crt mask. Every line is comletely separate. Every black dot has a colored side shades.

Don't beleave your eyes. This screen looks very professional but it's not.

I purchased this monitor in December 2002, and by December 2003 the picture had turned green. Since that time the color has been on and off. Prior to this failure the color has always been beautiful, but I had hoped it would last longer than a year. I have been working with NEC to get a replacement, but in the end I will have to pay to ship the old monitor back, and they will only give me a refurb to replace my failed monitor. Not sure what to recommend instead.

I was shopping around for a 19'' monitor to replace my Dell flatscreen 17''. I stopped by in BestBuy and CircuitCity a couple of times just to check out what I should expect from a 19'' monitor, in terms of size and picture quality. And then, I read some of the reviews in amazon.com for this monitor, before finally decided to order one from amazon.

What can I say, this monitor is first rate. Color is accurate. Contrast and brightness quality is excellent. The black color suits my Dell PC and keyboard perfectly.

If you are shopping around for a 19'' CRT monitor, get this one. You won't regret your decision.

this monitor has good resolution and contrast ratio...however, the screen turned complete white and blank after just 1.5months of use. i ended up switching back to my old CRT monitor and it worked fine...call up sony and was told they can only send me a refurbished monitor because its more than a month since purchase..and there you go, I lost $100 value in less than 2 months...i am very disappointed with the quality of the monitor.

I bought this lcd in gray. Thought it's gona be a fine monitor for digital imaging. It came with one defective pixel. The warranty does not cover the repairing of that. Only if there's more than four bad pixels. Redicolous. It's a nightmare to look on the monitor every time you peer on it, you see that little pixel vibrating in your eyes at almost the center of the screen.
I don't know how can Sony let such crap out of their factory. I'm sure they testing them, but then why don't they repaire it.
Otherwise i've seen better lcd-s. Over all i was not facinated by the colors, contrast, it's not better than avrage. The coated screen still doesn't help if you wiew it from angles. Colours vary upon the angle you view the monitor. Those who are a bit serious about their monitors, still should by a good crt, or a viewsonic lcd, instead of that. Don't let the nice design and the famous brand cheat you, it still just a monitor.

The quality of this monitor is amazing. I purcased the Limited Dark Blue Edition off of Sonystyle.com. The qualiy is simply amazing. It is definetly worth the extra $$$. However I would reccomend the 15 inch version for the typical user.