Home > Consumer Reviews > Kogi L7EH-BL 17" LCD Monitor (Black)

I've had this monitor for about a month now and I can safely say that I made a very wise decision in buying it. I did alot of research prior to buying it and I was slightly put off by the brand name (I'd never heard of Kogi) but my doubts were unfounded.
You open the box, plug it in to your pc and your basically done. There is an auto tune function which gets the best color and clarity settings and, after I had set the text setting on my pc to true type, the text was just as clear as the graphics. Since then, I have never had to touch any of the settings.
The only thing wrong with it is the really bad speakers built in which are very small and sound tinny. I have other speakers which I use although if you're not bothered about sound quality, the built in speakers are fine.
Whether I'm typing a letter, playing a game or browsing the web, both graphics and text are crystal clear and with a response time of 20ms, you cant go wrong. It looks great and for $299, it's clearly a real bargin.

First the bad news...

At the time of this review, the Kogi L7EH-BL is advertised by both Kogi's .... and Amazon's websites with a 20ms response rate and a 350:1 contrast ratio. The manual, however, states that the response rate for this monitor is 40ms and the contrast ratio is 400:1. While the higher contrast ratio is welcome, the higher-than-average response rate is not!

I contacted the Kogi's parent company, GVision ....., and spoke with Pat in technical support. Pat verified that the L7EH-BL that carries the Kogi brand name is indeed a 40 ms unit, while the same model with the GVision name has a 20 ms response rate (he said that the GVision was a more expensive monitor).

This sort of deceptive advertising is extremely annoying and I probably would not have purchased the L7EH, even with the $90.00 rebate, if I had had known up front that the response rate was so poor.

Now some good news...

The quality of this monitor seems to be quite good. At 1280 X 1024 resolution, the text is very sharp and clear; however, at lower resolutions some manual adjustments need to be made to get the text to be its sharpest. Also, there are no dead pixels -- a testament to the quality of the monitor. You will see this point echoed over-and-over again in most of the reviews for this monitor. It seems apparent that the manufacturer has really good quality control in place.

The color is very sharp and true -- in fact I think it's better than my Dell LCD at work. My house is very bright, yet the screen is still easy to view, no washout at all. Sometimes the L7EH is too bright! Fortunately, it's very easy to toggle between two user modes -- one darker than the other.

I noticed no ghosting while playing Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Other reviewers have tested more graphics intensive games with this monitor with similar results. This is important because many LCD monitors with slower response rates are said to have problems with graphically intensive games. (Note: do a search on Kogi L7EH, without the "-BL", and you'll find a lot more reviews than the ones you see here).

I haven't tried the built-in speakers, so I really can't comment on them. Other reviewers have found them to be "tinny". This is typical of almost all built-in monitor speakers. No-one wanting good sound will use monitor speakers in the first place.

As of right now...

I would have given the L7EH a 5 star rating if I hadn't been misled on the response rate. GVision's Technical Support was very good and that speaks highly of GVision's (and Kogi's) commitment to the customer. It's much better than other manufacturers I have had to deal with in the past. All said, I am very happy with what I see in front of me, but I'm still concerned that I'll regret the 40ms response rate in the future. Is it enough for my to keep the monitor? Well, I plan on testing some more games and video clips to see if there are any problems. If not, then I'll probably keep it.

I have spoken to Amazon's customer service, and they have told me that they will look into correcting the incorrect information on their website. They also said that the would give me a full refund and pay for the return shipping, should I wish to return the product. I guess I can't ask for more than that!

Update 11/15/2003

I decided to keep the monitor, and I am still very pleased with it. I compared it to a friend's 17" Dell flat panel (E171FPb), and I was shocked to see that it easily blew it away in the sharpness of text and colors. I'm not sure why the reviewer immediately following my original review found the quality so objectionable. The only thing I can think of is that she wasn't running it at 1280 X 1024, which is the Kogi's native resolution.

I just got the monitor, not bad at all.. had one dead pixel, and I had to autotune it to get it to look right.. but it seems to be working fine. I tried out tony hawk 4 on it to see how it looked in games, and it looked great, very bright.. The manual says 40ms response time, but the website says 20ms, so I dunno who to believe..

For the price, this monitor can't be beat. It is very bright, and not a dead pixel. Of course, that's not a guarantee for the next person that buys. The speakers are tinny, but if you want to listen to music, you wouldn't use your monitor for that anyway. I looked high and low, and this was the best deal to be found when the rebate is included.

If the monitor can sync with video card output, the image appears ok. I have hard time finding a right vido card to get this monitor to show a good screen output. "Auto-tuning" does sometimes fail; image gets wiggly. You can do it by hand, and it will be ok. For the price, this is a good monitor. Also there is a wall attachment if you want to mount this in your bedroom - plus if you want to make this monitor into a TV.