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It has been a good year to invest in a new 23-24 inch screen, the technology is improving all the time while the price points are becoming almost irresistible. The 1080p market is booming and many high quality LED 24 inch screens can now be bought for less than £250 inc vat.
What if you wanted something a little bigger than 24 inch? If your pockets are extremely deep then you could opt for a Dell Ultrasharp U3011, but be prepared to fork out £1230 inc vat for the pleasure. Dell also have the Ultrasharp U2711 with 2560×1440 Resolution, but again it costs over £800 inc vat right now in the UK.
For those with more a more modest bank balance, some manufacturers are currently offering 26-27 inch screens for under £350. Today we are looking at the Iiyama Pro Lite B2712HDS a 27 inch Active Matrix Widescreen with a solid specification. It offers 50,000:1 contrast ratio, 400 cd/m2 brightness with a 2ms response time and even has speakers onboard.
| Viewable size | 27 in |
|---|---|
| Native resolution | 1,920×1,080 |
| Contrast ratio | 1,000:1 (50,000:1 dynamic) |
| Brightness | 400cd/m² |
| Horizontal viewing angle | 170° |
| Vertical viewing angle | 160° |
| Response time | 2ms |
| Response time type | grey-to-grey |
| Screen depth | 55mm |
| Base (WxD) | 400x260mm |
| Screen elevation | 65-155mmmm |
The Iiyama Prolite B2712HDS 27 inch screen is shipped in a standard brown box, sandwiched between thick styrofoam layers for protection. The screen itself is a simple design, with a row of buttons on the bottom right and a black bezel with the name of the product top left. It weighs in at 8.8 kg with dimensions of 644x263x423mm (W-D-H).
The stand is a substantial bar which can tilt on its axis. This was preassembled in our box and it is attached to the rear of the screen with four thick screws via a 5mm mount. There was a DVI cable, power cable and literature in the box, we are not sure if the retail bundle is supplied with an HDMI cable also.
The base is a two pronged metal design which is very heavy and ensures that the screen is stable on any level surface.
At the rear there is a VGA, DVI and HDMI port, beside this is a power connector. As this product has built in speakers, there is an audio jack to connect to your PC. As these are only rated at 1.5W we wouldn't expect miracles from the sound system.
The ProLite B2712HDS is an attractive screen with a simplistic design that appeals to us. The black bezel is a matt finish which keeps reflections to a minimum. THe E2472HDD which we reviewed a while ago had a glossy finish on the surrounding bezel.
Bottom right is the control panel with a traditional ‘button' system under the text. Many screens now are using touch based methodology but these can be pretty flaky at times, so we like the fact iiyama have opted for ‘push' buttons.
The onscreen menu system offers a reasonable amount of configuration, via a colourful orange and tinted panel. As with many monitors we test, we found the default contrast and brightness settings to be very high. After a little fine tuning however we managed to configure the settings to our liking. The On Screen display options allow for the interface to be moved around on the screen. The default OSD timeout of 5 seconds was a little short, but this can be adjusted easily enough.
Iiyama offer various colour and display settings with an ECO option to save power. Again these will be very much personal preference but we prefered to turn ECO off and leave Opticolor on ‘standard'. The ProLite has volume controls if you want to use it for audio. We found the sound to be tinny and rather unimpressive, but we hadn't expected anything else so weren't disappointed.
The native resolution is 1080p (1920×1080) and if you need to check the output resolution you can access this via the ‘information' panel. The unit Serial Number is also available here. There is no sRGB mode and the left and right buttons become shortcuts to eco mode and volume when you are not in the main menu.
We tested the monitor with a Playstation 3 /1080p Bluray and a Intel Core i7 PC with an AMD reference HD6870 graphics card and Catalyst 10.10 driver running via Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit. We also used a Macbook Pro 17 inch (3ghz) with HDMI adapter.
The Iiyama ProLite B2712HDS as we mentioned earlier is supplied in a rather unpleasant default state with both contrast and brightness levels set extremely high. The first task was to fine tune these to more acceptable levels. We found that a contrast level around 30 and a brightness level around 65 gave a high quality image, however everyone will have different views on this. The onscreen configuration menu which we detailed on the last page is comprehensive and offers a plethora of settings to change many areas of the display. I would avoid the dynamic contrast setting completely as it was distracting and added nothing to the overall image quality. As this is a Twisted nematic panel, we need to keep our expectations realistic.
Response time is difficult to measure, but the Ilyama rating of 2ms seemed pretty accurate to us. We noticed no ghosting, artificating when playing games such as Call Of Duty, and watching bluray movies, such as Avatar. The 400 cd/m2 rating is also very accurate, we measured around 397 cd/m2 with our LaCie equipment which is very close to specification and more honest than many manufacturers.
Offset viewing is very good, both horizontally and vertically and this is helped by the stand mechanism. This offers a swivel angle of 60 degrees and a backward tilt angle of 20 degrees. Sadly there is no swivel portrait mode offered which might affect a portion of the audience considering this screen.
We used Displaymate to test the monitor and we were reasonably happy with the image quality. The gamut range in GamutVision was above average, falling in line with what we had expected. Text is sharp and colour reproduction is excellent, although we did notice a slight pink tinge to grey screen which is not really noticeable under real world conditions. This is slightly more pronounced at the sides of the screen which is unusual. The gamut however is wide enough to help deliver a realistic image, especially when watching HD 1080p material from the Playstation 3 over HDMI.
The depth of black is excellent and superior to many budget panels we have seen recently, this helps when watching high definition content and I did not record any unpleasant lagging when watching fast paced action movies. The colour depth was acceptable, although if you are a professional designer or photographer then you will need to spend more money on a screen this size to get truly accurate results.
There is a slight shift when testing black definition, with minor leaks from edges of the panel. It looks worse in our technical data image, however under real world conditions it isn't very noticeable. The shift was between 5 and 15% percent which is acceptable for a monitor in this range.
White purity again shows minor shift between 4% and 15% across the width, with the higher levels recorded at the panel edges. This is actually a really good result and whites look very pure across a variety of media. As we mentioned earlier there is a slight pink hue apparent when viewing neutral background (recorded cast of around 5%) although I feel that many people would not notice this.
Power consumption is very good, considering the specifications and size. ECO mode reduces power by around 24 watts, although I found it hard to live with as it lowered the settings too much to be usable 24/7. A realistic power drain for our calibrated screen was around 30 watts, which is a truly excellent result for such a large screen.
The Iiyama Prolite B2712HDS is not going to win any awards for ultimate quality of image, but when weighed in as a complete package it is hard to ignore. With recent price drops it is now available from stores such as Yoyotech for only £276.60 inc vat.
For gaming and movies the B2712HDS is a great screen as there is good depth of black, decent colour reproduction and a fine level of white purity. The 2ms refresh helps to ensure that no ghosting is visible and the overall image, while not groundbreaking, is sharp and clear.
The stand, while a seemingly unimportant point to bring up – is excellent. It ensures that the screen remains solid as a rock on a variety of surfaces, and the design means that it won't tip over, either forwards or backwards. We have seen some recent panels shipped with sub standard stands, so we feel this is a point worth making.
The speakers unfortunately dont offer much to enhance a purchase decision and while they might be useful for Windows alert sounds, they wouldn't be an ideal first choice for anything serious.
As an overall product decision there is a lot to recommend when considering a ProLite B2712HDS. It offers excellent value for money and is a great product for general use, watching HD movies and playing games – the extra inches help to enhance the feeling of immersion. The only factor against it would be that for around the same price you could pick up one of the leading 24 inch models with slightly superior image quality.
KitGuru says: The price means that this deserves serious consideration.
