ViewSonic E72f+ Monitor

ViewSonic E72f+ Monitor

Ameya Dalvi, Apr 07, 2005 0000 hrs IST

This 17" true flat CRT has more to it than just looks

Sharp display, Good color reproduction, Excellent contrast, Perfect color registration and screen geometry, Cool looks.

Screen regulation not perfect

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Expert Review

A few years back I was reading about and drooling over the iMac. Just then an ignorant friend of mine dropped in. He glanced at my screen and said " hey thats a nice monitor. With an equal degree of amusement and shock, I reacted " iMac, monitor? You serious? The rest of the story doesnt have much of relevance here. But what reminded me of that little incident was this monitor that we have for review today.

Though not exactly a carbon copy of the classic iMac, the designers of the ViewSonic E72f+ were surely inspired at some level by the Apple success story. The curvy posterior is a fair testament of that fact. Though the E72f+ is far from being as funky as the iMacs, its silver-black exterior looks very cool n classy and is sure to catch your eye. Also, this 17-inch true flat screen CRT monitor has a lot more to it than just the looks.

This monitor has a view area of 16 and all its functions can be accessed through an OSD. There are 5 buttons on the front panel other than the power button, four of which are used to control the OSD while the fifth is labeled UltraBrite. That key is basically used to apply either of the 3 default levels of brightness. It is capable of pumping the brightness way up to 500 Nits. Having said that, I would advise you to use the default (normal) level of brightness unless you are playing a game with lots of dark areas. Also note that, the brightness can also be manually adjusted using the standard OSD controls. A function similar to UltraBrite has been incorporated in certain Samsung CRT models too. They call it Magic Bright.

The monitor is compliant with popular emission and safety standards like MPR II, VESA DPMS and Energy star. It supports a horizontal dot pitch of 0.21 mm and a diagonal dot pitch of 0.25 mm. The frequency range supported by this model is 30 KHz to 70 KHz (Horizontal) and 50 Hz to 160 Hz (vertical). The maximum resolution supported is 1280 x 1024 at 60 Hz refresh rate but the maximum usable resolution is 1152 x 864 at 75 Hz. Maximum usable resolution signifies the maximum resolution supported by a monitor at a refresh rate of 75 Hz or better. Though 85 Hz is an ideal refresh rate, 75 Hz is the lower limit. Any refresh rate, lower than 75 Hz, will give a flickered output and can cause some serious eye damage after prolonged usage. All the technical specifications stay similar to the previous ViewSonic 17 monitor that we tested a year back.

We tested this monitor by using DisplayMate to get a bearing on how well the monitor performs when put through various test patterns. DisplayMate first lets you tune a monitor to get the best possible display settings and then runs it through a series of test patterns to test everything from color/brightness to screen geometry to moiré and regulation. We ran the test at 1024 x 768 resolution with a refresh rate of 85 Hz.

The results were fantastic. True to the ViewSonic legacy, the colors were rich and vibrant and there was absolutely no bleeding of colors anywhere on the screen. The brightness and contrast levels were right up there with the very best in monitors that we have tested. The picture was sharp and there wasnt any blurring in any region. There wasnt any noticeable Moire either. The last ViewSonic we tested faltered in the horizontal color registration test. There was a small mismatch but not in case of this model. It was absolutely perfect. The only test where it did not give a perfect output was the Screen Regulation test where there was a marginal expansion and contraction of the screen. However it was as slight as it gets. Other than that, there were absolutely no flaws in this model.

The ViewSonic E72f+ is available for a street price of Rs. 7,500 which is at par with its Samsung and LG competitors. This is one of the best monitors that we have tested here and is recommended to anyone looking to buy a high quality flat screen monitor. Its cool looks are just an added benefit.

Test Unit sourced from Roop Technologies, Mumbai.