LG Flatron W2343T-PF Review
I just bought LG LG Flatron W2343T-PF. It is a 23 inch LCD monitor. It cost me €168 at Amazon.de. Considering the size of the monitor, I think it is a good deal.
Inside the box, there were monitor with the stand, setup guide, guarantee document, setup CD(which failed to be recognized by my MBP), D-sub cable, and DVI cable. Since my MBP 2.16 C2D has DVI port, I used DVI cable to connect it to my mac. It was instantly recognized without installing driver, and began to display at proper resolution. I still had to play with display setting on the System Preference panels to set it up as the primary display(just move around the icons on the panel, including the menubar icon. It is very easy).
At 1920×1080 and 16:9 ratio, it is Full-HD, which means it can display HD movies without distortion. I played Toy Story 3 QuickTime trailer in HD, and it looked magnificent. The trailer is 1920×1080, which means the video is displayed pixel to pixel, without any distortion.
The design of this monitor is okay, even though plastic case looks cheap at close inspection(but it looks fine if seen from a distance). On the lower right side, there are five buttons for control, and one huge power button. The mysterious Fun button has two sub-menus, one for 4:3 display, another for photo effect(like sepia and monochrome). I don’t understand why 4:3 ratio display option should be “fun”, unless you really like playing legacy games in full screen. Photo Effect will be mostly useless, unless you use this monitor to display only full screen pictures(very unlikely scenario in my humble opinion).
Menu button bring up some useful functions, like Picture, Color, Tracking, and Setup. On Picture menu, you can control brightness, contrast, and gamma. The problem is, if you set brightness lower than 100, you hear annoying high-pitched noise, which get worse as you lower the value, so I don’t understand how anyone can change the setting(unless you are hard of hearing). Fortunately, I like bright monitor, and I do not need to lower the brightness. But, if you find it too bright, you are out of luck(unless the noise is peculiar to the unit that I bought).
In Color, you can change preset(color temperature) and red, green and blue values. I tried to adjust the values to match the color tone of my MBP, but I found it hard to do it. I also changed the color profile from System Preference panel, but still without success. Since I am no graphic artist, I decided to live with different color tone.
f-ENGINE button enables you to choose different modes of display. There are Normal, User, Internet, Movie and Demo. They are self-explanatory, and you can choose the right mode for your purpose. For example, Movie mode exaggerate the color so that it looks really vivid. Demo divides the screen into good half and bad half, showing how this display looks better than… something else.
In conclusion, I am satisfied with LG Flatron W2342T. The price is quite reasonable, and I really enjoy watching full HD videos(now I understand why people pay extra to buy HD movies on iTunes Store). At dynamic contrast ratio of 30000:1, it has great contrast, so black is really dark, and white is really bright. I was slightly worried about the fact that it has relatively slow response time(5ms, gray to gray), but I’ve never noticed any ghost while watching movies, and since I rarely play games, it should not be a problem.
What I don’t like is the fact that with high contrast and bright colors, everything looks a little bit like a PC. I used macs for more than 10 years, and it seems I have to adjust myself to a different visual information pattern. Well, small price to watch full HD movies on my desk, I guess.
