Cadalyst - April 2008 - (Page 19)

cadlabsreview they strive to distinguish their products from those of others. A number of niceties are showing up in today’s LCD displays, and the ability to display content-protected high-definition (HD) media (along with the associated cable) is beginning to be incorporated into the products. In this current roundup, ViewSonic offers the first monitor I’ve seen with a dynamic contrast rating of 3000:1. Features such as these, in combination with faster response times, are making their way into more moderately priced displays — a definite advantage for end users who are looking for large, high-quality displays at good prices. Testing Procedures For this roundup review, I used the new DisplayMate Multimedia Edition on USB display testing, adjustment, and calibration utility (see the “A Rule of Thumb to Test Monitors” sidebar, p. 20) to run through a range of video tests for brightness, contrast, focus, convergence, purity, geometric distortion, and raster rotation. DisplayMate also incorporates tests specific to LCD displays, such as the displays covered in this article. During the course of testing, I also evaluated the on-screen menu (OSM), the general functionality of the available controls, and the connectivity options. I examined a suite of digital photographs on each display, and although these latter results cannot be quantified easily, this evaluation proved very useful — particularly because many design professionals find themselves working with either photographs or visualizations in their daily work. After testing, the LCD displays were rated based on several factors, each of which was weighted according to its importance: image quality (6x), price (4x), connectivity (2x), image controls (2x), and warranty (1x). For this roundup, all tests were driven by an NVIDIA Quadro FX 1700 graphics card with 512 MB of onboard GDDR3 memory. All tests were completed with NVIDIA drivers v.6.14.11.6252 (7/20/2007). The test system was a new HP xw4600 workstation that Cadalyst Labs already had in house. or it might get balanced by another factor that might be less apparent at the time of testing. Pricing can also be a determining factor that results in an otherwise excellent monitor getting less-than-topnotch ratings. If I feel that the pricing for a particular monitor is out of line with other comparable displays, I make a deduction that, like the previous example, could be amplified due to the weighted nature of the categories evaluated in the report card. Due to the inherently higher cost of larger LCD displays, pricing considerations are given, but even then pricing can be difficult to evaluate. In general, the display quality varied little from display to display, with the overall level being very high. If I felt that a display was particularly remarkable, then I awarded it an A+ grade for display quality. Otherwise, at least an A grade was awarded. Factors such as warranty and pricing tended to vary more than display quality. Based on the weighted grading system, any display with a grade point average of 9.0 or higher was given a Highly Recommended rating. Flat-panel LCDs get better every year, with faster response times and increasing contrast and brightness ranges. If you’re in the market for an LCD display, you have a lot of high-quality options, whatever your evaluation criteria might be. In the near future, I expect to see more displays with a greater color gamut and even better image fidelity, but the displays covered in this roundup are more than satisfying. ThinkVision L220x The Lenovo ThinkVision L220x is a 22” 16:10 wideaspect-ratio display that uses an active matrix, thin-film transistor (TFT) display that incorporates vertical-alignment (VA) panel technology. The L220x has a native resolution of 1,920 x 1,200 (WUXGA) and a dot pitch Lenovo 866.96.THINK www.lenovo.com Price: $499 Evaluating the Products Each LCD monitor model is designed with a rated resolution sweet spot for which the display is optimized. Although other resolutions typically can be used (most often by scaling the original image), the best results are achieved at the rated, or native, resolution. Using a lower resolution tends to result in a display that is somewhat granular in appearance. I looked at each of the LCD monitors in this roundup in several different modes, including the default, or optimal, resolution and color depth. For more information about the features of the products in this review, see www.cadalyst. com/0408LCDtable. As with Cadalyst’s 2007 monitor roundup, display quality was consistently very high, which made my evaluation even more difficult. Certain things stood out — having fewer than the usual connectivity options, for example, or a warranty that went well beyond the norm. With this high level of overall quality, slight flaws have a way of getting magnified in the final tally. A one-quarter-point deduction in one area, for example, might be a determining factor — April 2008 cadalyst www.cadalyst.com Lenovo’s affordable ThinkVision L220x display provides excellent contrast and good brightness, focus, convergence, geometric distortion, and raster rotation. 19 http://www.lenovo.com http://www.cadalyst.com/0408LCDtable http://www.cadalyst.com/0408LCDtable http://www.cadalyst.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Cadalyst - April 2008

Cadalyst - April 2008 Contents Editor's Window Cad Central The Summer of BIM Thin Is In — Large LCD Monitors Caligari trueSpace 7.5 — 3D Modeling Software HP Compaq 8710w — Mobile Workstation Autodesk Design Review 2009 — Design Viewing and Collaboration Software Getting Better — What Should You Learn? Technical Uses for Nontechnical Software AEC on Macs Cad Cartoon Issue Indexes Tips Rain Down on Harry

Cadalyst - April 2008

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