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08/08/2004 |
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Philips Brilliance 150P2 TFT Monitor Iain Laskey focuses his eyes on a tasty flat screen monitor
When you can pick up a TFT monitor for under £300, why should you spend £450 on one? There are several reasons, not least of which is that not all monitors are equal when it comes to image quality. Just as traditional tube based monitors have a wide variation in image quality amongst different models, the same is true for TFTs. The second reason is additional features. As the Philips 150P2 is up at the top end price wise it needs to be something special to warrant the price. Specifications The top resolution as with nearly all monitors of this size is 1024x768 at 75hz. This is also the native resolution and whilst you can choose to run at lower resolutions, you will get some blurring in the image as the only way to run at lower resolutions is to scale the image artificially. Despite being a 15inch model, the physical size of
the displayable area is almost the same as a 17inch tube monitor
measuring in at around ½ an inch smaller than my Iiyama 17inch
sitting next to it. As the power supply is in the base it is
surprisingly heavy at 5.4 kg. The unit came supplied with a VGA lead
but no DVI-D cable which is a pity as many modern graphics cards now
sport DVI-D outputs which provides a superior image with compatible
monitors. The base unit contains a small pair of speakers with an
on/off switch, bass and mute buttons. An optional ‘multimedia base’
unit provides USB ports if required at around £35. The maximum number of colours is 16.7m (24 bit) so the 150P2 can be used for a wide range of applications. The monitor can be swivelled from portrait to landscape mode which can be a boon especially with word processing. Once you have tried working on a Word document in portrait mode, you’ll wonder how you ever did it any other way. The downside is that the supplied software to achieve this trick is only a 30day trial version and if you wish to make real use of it you will need to fork out extra cash for a full copy. Performance Setting the monitor up was interesting. You install the monitor drivers then plug in the monitor and let Windows do the rest. There is a supplied software tool and an ‘Auto’ button on the monitor which together make configuring a breeze. I did find the image too bright with one PC and had trouble cranking it down enough to be acceptable but on three other PCs it produced a beautifully even and clear image. The clarity was excellent and sitting side by side with an Iiyama Pro 410 it made the 410 start to look pretty fuzzy. The brightness was extremely even over the entire surface of the display. The geometry was also top notch. What impressed me most though, especially for a TFT unit was the subtlety of shading. When viewing an image with many shades of grey, it managed to show each shade distinctly. This was born out with further experiments using test cards with bands of grey. If you intend using this monitor for photographic work, you will not be disappointed. In Use The monitor was a joy to use both with normal Windows applications as well as games. It is only recently that TFT technology has progressed to the point that fast moving games can be properly displayed without obvious motion artefacts and glitches. Some games actually looked better than on my Iiyama. Colours appeared more vibrant and more subtle detail was visible in textures. In Quake there was a small motion blur effect but the game actually looked better for it! The excellent on screen control menu allows a great deal of flexibility over the display although the auto setup did such a good job I didn’t feel a need to do much tweaking. The small speakers in the base unit sounded frankly awful and might be OK for an office environment but any home user with £450 to spend on a monitor will no doubt have a good set of speakers already. I would rather they’d left these out and included a DVI-D lead instead. One thing I liked was the virtually instant response when re-activating from sleep mode. It isn’t really a problem waiting for a traditional monitor to get itself together but in this day and age of instant gratification it somehow appealed beyond its usefulness. There is also a kind of subconscious (and probably totally unjustified) feeling that using a TFT screen was somehow healthier than a traditional monitor. One odd problem I had was with certain video clips. I like to use my PC for video editing and whilst most clips played fine on screen, every now and then I would find a clip, usually one that had been post processed in some way with a special effect, that would glitch badly on screen. It looked like the monitor was having trouble tracking the frame rate of the clip resulting in coloured horizontal lines, blurring and other fairly unpleasant stuff. If you intend using this monitor for video editing, you might be better off looking elsewhere. Conclusion. If you have the money and want a top quality image then this monitor should be the first item on your short list. The ‘video editing glitch’ not withstanding, the 150P2 is amongst the very best in current TFT technology and is well worth the premium price although a full copy of the portrait software and a DVI-D cable wouldn’t have gone amiss. |
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