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After building myself a new system in March of this year and choosing the NEC MultiSync 95F as my monitor I felt like I had made the worst choice of my life! The monitor had to be replaced once for picture imperfections on the right of the screen and my second also suffered the same fate. After two screens, both developing the same fault I thought it was time to give another manufacturer a try. After much deliberation and recommendation from friends I decided to go for an Iiyama monitor. After looking at the dabs website (and also my bank balance!!) I decided that the Iiyama Vision Master 452 would be the monitor I went for. The specs were fantastic and the price of just £310 inclusive of VAT was even more appealing.
Like I just said, what stood out most about the VM 452 was the specifications Iiyama had managed to pack into this superbly priced screen. The quoted maximum resolution is 1600 x 1200 @ 75Hz but I prefer to run at 1280 x 1024 @ 85Hz. This helps to keep the picture that little bit more stable. As you can probably guess the monitor is a 19" (18" viewable area - 0.25dp) and comes with a shadowflat tube, the DiamondTron NF tube to be precise. Other specifications worth mentioning include the anti-glare and anti-reflective coating applied to the screen and the TCO 99 and Energy Star Compliant badges the monitor carries.
I'll take this chance to make a brief word about the actual size and weight of the screen. The monitor weighs in at 21kg so don't break your back carrying it upstairs. Iiyama do in fact print instructions onto the box stating that they recommend two people carrying the box. The depth of the monitor is also worth mentioning, measuring at only 44.55cm this is much slimmer than many 17" monitors I've seen.
The 18" viewable area and the flat DiamondTron tube help to produce a perfect picture that is crisp and clear and a little playing with the colour temperatures and resolutions and you have a perfectly balanced picture with very little glare or reflection. The OSD on the VM 452 is incredibly easy to use. It's a 3 button affair with the controls being divided into Colour Control, Screen Control, Shape, Picture Quality and Function. The Colour Control section is home to colour, contrast and temperature settings which are all straight forward enough to understand. The Screen Control panel features horizontal size and position controls, vertical size and position controls and also a zoom function. This allows the picture to be blown up and would come in particularly useful is the screen was being used by someone with a sight problem. The Shape control has adjustments for pincushion, trapezoid, parallelogram, pin-balance and tilt. Fine tuning of these controls can help to tweak the picture just that little bit more towards your personal preference.
The Picture Quality controls comprise of horizontal and vertical moiré settings, a degauss function and a raster rotation control. The advanced controls within the OSD mean that there are no geometric imperfections and the damper wires that can be seen on many CRT's using aperture grill technology cannot be seen. The final menu in the OSD, the Function menu, contains some very innovative and useful controls. One of these is the Lockout function which locks up control of the OSD until the Lockout is taken off. This would be very useful in stopping prying hands from altering that perfect picture you so carefully set up. Other controls in the function menu are horizontal and vertical OSD positioning controls, an OSD time-out and language selection. All in all the OSD is child's play to operate and yet harnesses some very useful picture-tweaking controls.
So then, is the monitor actually any good? Well I'd be a fool to say no. The excellent specifications and price are just superb. I think I ought to mention one or two things that did annoy me about the monitor. One was the lack of any drivers in the box. Windows 2000 would only register the screen as Plug & Monitor before I downloaded the driver package off Iiyama's website (www.iiyama.co.uk). The second gripe I have with the monitor is the single captive VGA cable. I don't think it would have taken much to make the VGA cable removable.
So then, a superb monitor that not only packs value for money and excellent picture quality but also a superb 3 year on-site warranty called VisionCare. At £310 inclusive of VAT you really should snap one of these babies up before it's too late.
