LCD Woes

LCD woes: NewEgg said they would take it right back. Yay!

I called Princeton Graphics and they claim that the monitor I got was defective. They claim that the brightness issues are a defect and that one dead pixel is also defective.

The rainbow ghosting however I’ve learned is not a defect, it’s an artifact of 16ms LCDs. According to Tom’s Hardware 16ms LCDs don’t actually display 16 million colors, they only display about 220,000 and use dithering to flicker back and forth to give the illusion of 16 million colors. My guess is that when you drag a checkboard image around the screen the rainbow ghosting appears because the colors in the checkerboard are not native colors of the display and the monitor is slow to switch to the dithered colors.

New monitor

New monitor: Princeton Graphics SENergy 714… dissapointing

I have a pretty nice flat panel at work and I guess I take it for granted. I bought this Princeton Graphics SENergy 714 from NewEgg because it met the same specifications as my display at work for $150 less. Lessons: 1) There’s more to an LCD than just specs 2) You get what you pay for.

First, one dead pixel, stuck green. That just ruined the whole out-of-the-box experience right there and then I started to look for more things wrong with it–which I found.

Second, the brightness controls are disabled over DVI. What kind of nonsense is that? Plus, when I try and adjust the brightness from the video card the monitor starts to flip out. So I’m stuck with one mode: way to freakin’ bright.

Third, there is some mild haloing going on in certain regions of the display like what happened with the 15″ Aluminum PowerBook G4’s. It’s very subtle, but once I noticed it now I can spot it every time.

Forth, the backlight adjustment doesn’t work worth a hoot. Yes, it dims the display, but it’s not an even dim, not anything like the LCD I have at work or the one on my PowerBook. When you dim the backlight on the SENergy the whites start to turn brown, not grey.

Fifth, this thing is advertised to have a 16ms response time. IT’S NOT. I can easily spot ghosting during regular use, and in some more extreme tests I put it through you can even get the ghosting to do a rainbow effect.

Overall, I’m very dissapointed with this display. If this is Princeton Graphic’s flagship 17″ LCD, they’re a doomed. It does not at all meet the manufacturer’s specifications online.

I’d take this up with NewEgg but they claim to not accept monitors for return (I bet I can raise stink about that tho). I also don’t think I’d want to replace this with another SENergy 714–I don’t want to take another risk on this brand, I’d rather just plunk down the extra $150 and get something higher quality.

But first I’m gonna call Princeton Graphics and see if they’ll ship me a replacement. I don’t really understand their “pixel policy” online but it sounds like for this model 1 dead pixel stuck bright is enough to warrant an RMA. Maybe I just got a model made too late in the day or something. 🙂 Either way I’m still irked about the ghosting.