NEC MultiSync FE950 Totally Flat 19" Monitor (PC/Mac)
See it at Amazon.com for $379.99Average Customer Rating
(3.5 out of 5)
Amazon Customer Reviews
Most Helpful First | Newest First
(2 out of 5)Blurryness, Moire, Misconvergence
I bought this monitor a few weeks ago, and was very disappointed by the picture quality. I spent about 6 hours tweaking the controls, and using a utility called CheckScreen to test it, but was not able to get a satisfactory picture. Amazon, very nicely replaced the unit, but the new one has exactly the same problems as the old.
First, let me mention the good things about the monitor, because there are monitors out there that are worse than this one. Like the 17" FE700, it has very bright, rich, and contrasting colors that are uniform across the entire screen. (The ViewSonic GS790 in comparison, has poor uniformity). Also, the packaging looks very nice and the on-screen controls are easy to use.
However, there are some problems with the picture. There is a considerable amount of moire, which can't be gotten rid of with the moire adjustment. Moire is basically a pattern of vertical dark lines. This is especially visible on the hatched shut down screen in windows, or if you use a monitor test utility. There is a slight horizontal vibration in the picture which seems to be helped, but not completely cancelled by the moire adjustments. There is slight misconvergence in the red, green and blue beams. Possibly due to the misconvergence, in the area within 2" from each edge of the screen, the picture is blurry while in the center it is very sharp. Lowering brightness and contrast does seem to help a bit.
If you use this monitor for playing games and watching DVDs, you will probably not be bothered by any of the blurryness, but if you spend a lot of time each day looking at text, I would reccomend getting another monitor. If you do a lot of tweaking, you might end up happy with the monitor, but there are definitely beter ones out there. I sent back the second FE950 and exchanged it with the Sony E400 which has a much clearer picture and is good in every other respect....
Sincerely, Ilya Rosenberg
(2 out of 5)annoying buzzing sound when running at 1280x1024
I had high hopes for this monitor. However, I encountered several problems. When trying to run at 1280x1024, the monitor would always emit an annoying buzzing sound whenever there was a lot of white color on the screen. This did not happen at higher or lower resolutions and was independent of how many colors were being displayed. I had to downgrade the refresh rate to 75Hz from 85Hz to make this sound go away.
Second, color purity was not consistent across the screen. Colors on the left side of the screen appeared different than on the right side. Trying the various control settings did not help.
I'm probably going to return this monitor.
(5 out of 5)Do Your Eyes a Favor: Buy this Monitor
I've been using my FE950 for nearly 6 months, and it works great. The flat screen technology gives an incredibly sharp image throughout the entire viewing area, and the brightness is perfectly even. If you work with graphics or need to read a lot of text throughout the day, this monitor is well worth the difference in money. You could spend less for a 19" monitor, but after using it for a couple of months, this one justifies itself.
(4 out of 5)Nice Picture, Good Value, but it's not a Viewsonic
This monitor has a nice picture, very flat screen, and great colors, and appears to be of good quality. It's a great buy if you're looking for a reasonably priced monitor.
However, I do have a few complaints. The screen has those infamous trinitron lines (even though it's not a trinitron), one at about 20% from the bottom, and another at 20% from the top. I have a friend who bought the exact same model, same with his. The dot pitch claims to be a variable .25-.27, although judging by the clarity of picture, I'm scepticle to believe it, it's not the sharpest picture. It makes an excellent gaming monitor, but if you're into imaging or reading lines of text all day long, you might want to spend a little more dough.
Bottom line: If you're on a budget and you want a decent, good quality flat screen, it's a great choice. If you want Viewsonic or Trinitron picture quality, spend the extra cash to get one and you'll appreciate the difference.
(5 out of 5)NEC - Continuing Perfect Reputation
NEC seems to always manufacture top of the line monitors. This 19" Flat CRT from NEC is sure to surpass anyone's expectations. From the cutting edge easy-to-use settings menu to the high resolution and maximum frequency rate, you will not be able to buy a computer with a good enough graphics card to support all of this monitor's features. The screen is also "glare-proof" and displays warnings in case of hazardous conditions like power fluctuations so that you can shutdown your computer before any damage is done. All in all, this monitor is the number one choice for multimedia professionals and heavy gamers.