Home > Consumer Reviews > NEC MultiSync LCD1715 17" LCD Monitor

First impression.

This monitor is much easier to read than my Samsung 17" GLSI CRT that suddenly died. The LCD takes up only a little desk top space. I agree with the statement that "Once you go flat, you'll never go back." I spotted this monitor at Sam's Club at a discount along with its little 15" NEC brother. Analog input only. Compared with the 19" high dollar Samsung LCD on display next to it at the store the field of view on the NEC 17" is much narrower. This field of view issue caused me to think that when I hooked it up at home that one side of the screen was somehow less white on one side than the other side on a mostly white screen. This false perception I believe is due to the very narrow field of view. Straight out of the box the NEC monitor had NO bad pixels. Taped to the screen was a "optimized" set up instruction telling how to optimize the monitor setting in your PC control panel. I used this recommended setting but in the PC monitor settings advanced menu I choose the larger font option. The "auto" button on the monitor did a better job with contrast and brightness settings than I could do manually. The thing I really don't like about this monitor is that when you scroll the page the text colors very noticably deepen during the scroll. I wonder if the power supply in the monitor is on the weak side. Also with scrolling the text seems to blur slightly during the scroll. I upgraded the driver for the monitor and video card from the Microsoft update area for my Dell XP home edition machine. I wish I hadn't done that as it seems to have shifted the Windows "Welcome" message a little to the right when the PC boots up. When I changed the LCD to a lower resolution setting I found the clarity was on par with my Samsung CRT if not a little worse. It's going to take some time for me to get comfortable with this new monitor. The screen is so flat it almost looks to bend inward at the middle but course that is not the case. The nicest thing about the monitor is the outstanding text contrast against the backgroud. The second nicest thing is the outstanding gif or jpg colors. The worst thing about this monitor is the scrolling issues perviously mentioned. And FWIW fingerprints are said to be very hard to remove.

This monitor is absolutely perfect for a less expensive analog only LCD monitor. No bad pixels on my monitor were found. Perfect for my desktop. As long as I don't scroll! This monitor is hooked to my Dell 2 gHz Dimension 4400 with the Dell supplied garden variety OEM Nvidia graphics card. DURING scroll, using the NEC recommended screen size and latest NVidia drivers, the monitor really darkens all text colors on the screen. The more color, the more the darkening during scroll I see. Of course you can't read text during a scroll but what happens is that your eyes are jarred for a few seconds by the darkened flash of the screen. Most annoying. Not annoying enough however for me to send this monitor back because when the screen is at rest it is absolutely stunningly beautiful. At the recommended screen setting I switched to larger text size in the control panel which works better for me. Sadly my NVidia card will not allow THIS monitor to go to 640 x 480 which the monitor can easily do without much image downgrade, if any, because that definition is compatible with the screen LCD array, or at least that's what I've read. The monitor puts out very little heat. I understand that LCD monitors have a useful screen life of around five years. No problem for me since my PC power down settings put the monitor into sleep mode when I'm away. This monitor is worth a look if you want an LCD monitor from a name brand manufacturer at a less expensive price.