Iiyama ProLite E2472HDD Review – LED for the masses

1. Introduction2. iiyama ProLite E2472 HDD3. Controls and on-screen display4. Performance Testing5. Closing Thoughts6. View All Pages

KitGuru loves a high quality LED backlit screen and with pricing continually dropping they are now firmly in the grasp of the mainstream audience. Unfortunately while LED television screens are normally much better than traditional CCFL models we have found at KitGuru that buying an LED monitor for your computer doesn't always translate to a significant jump in quality.

Today we are looking at the Ilyama ProLite E2472HDD which is an affordable LED backlit 24 inch screen and hopefully it will fare well during our testing. The E2472HDD is for all intents and purposes identical to the more commonplace ‘E2472HD' model, except it loses an HDMI port, falling back on a dual port VGA and DVI configuration.

Panel	LED-Backlit
Diagonal	24″
Display area h x w	298.89 x 531.36 mm; 11.8″ x 20.9″
Response time	2 ms
Contrast	5 000 000 : 1 ACR
Contrast	1000 : 1 typical
Brightness	250 cd/m² typical
Viewing zone	horizontal/vertical: 170°/160°; right/left: 85°/85°; up/down: 80°/80°
Display colour	16.7 million
Pixel pitch h x v	0.277 x 0.277 mm
Native resolution	Full HD 1080p, 1920 x 1080 (2.1 megapixel)
Horizontal sync	31 – 83 KHz
Vertical sync	56 – 75 Hz
Analog input connector	D-Sub
Digital input connector	DVI-D
HDCP	yes
Synchronization	Separate sync
Plug & Play	VESA DDC2B™
Included accessories	AC adapter, power cable, D-Sub cable, DVI-D cable, stand, screw, quick start guide, safety guide
Apple – Mac	All iiyama monitors are compatible with Apple-Macintosh computers.
Controls	Via OSD in 10 languages (EN, DE, FR, ES, IT, PL, NL, Chinese, RU, JP) and 6 front controls (Power, Menu/ Select, Scroll up, Scroll down/ ECO, Exit, Auto)
User controls	audio adjust, luminance (brightness, contrast), geometry ( H. position, V. position, pixel clock, phase), colour, OSD ( H. position, V. position, OSD time), language, recall, miscellaneous (sharpness, DDC/CI, display information, ACR, display mode, OD, opening logo), input select
Driver	Windows 95 / 98 / 2000 / ME / XP / Vista / 7
Safety	CE,VCCI-B,TUV-Bauart
Power supply	DC 12V 3A
Power usage	24 W typical; max. 1 W in Power management mode
Power management	VESA DPMS, ENERGY STAR®
Anti-theft-device	Kensington-lock™ prepared
Tilt angle	15° up; 5° down
Dimensions (w x h x d)	570 x 420 x 179 mm
Weight	3.8 kg
Aspect ratio	16:9

The Prolite E2472HDD panel arrives in a plain brown box with stylish blue squares on the right side. The ‘HDD' has no HDMI port, so if you need that, look for the ‘HD' model.

The package contains both DVI and VGA cables, the external power adapter, a manual and a power connector. There is also the stand which screws into the base of the monitor by hand. This thumb ‘ring' screw is easy to connect and took us about 20 seconds to secure. The weaklings among you might need a screwdriver for the last few turns.

The 24 inch monitor is very attractive with a thin 1.7cm bezel and touch sensitive controls with a glossy black finish. The specifications are 5,000,000:1 ACR with a fast 2ms reported response time which we will look at later in the review.

The only downside is that with all the high gloss finish, the panel attracts dust and fingerprints very easily. The thin lines are flowing and no silly glaring design decisions mar the overall appearance of the unit.

iiyama have cleverly built the power source into an external adapter meaning the LED monitor can be kept as slim as possible. It is 2cm deep at the edges and 3cm deep at the back. Very sexy indeed.

You certainly wouldn't confuse the rear with Jennifer Lopez, it is svelte and very understated with only the dual input connectors in the middle.

DVI and VGA are the only options on offer – the ‘double D' version omits HDMI. To the right is a power connector for the external adapter. We like the fact that iiyama have opted to keep the power electronics outside the chassis as they are able to reduce the size of the rear assembly.

The stand is a dust magnet and requires constant cleaning to look spanking new.

The front panel gives access to the onscreen displays and we found that this was one of the better touch sensitive panels we have used. Our memories of the Asus MS236H touch panel system were not favourable, but the Prolite implementation is a lesson on how it should be handled. Only slight pressure is needed and it works every time. The only thing I would like to see would be an active white backlight on the buttons which would dim when not used.

iiyama's onscreen menu system is clear, fast acting and responsive and offers most functionality needed to fine tune the display to your own personal preferences.

iiyama have kept the control system simple, yet effective. Everything is accessed by directional buttons and ‘enter' which forces the selection down a level. Exit moves back up a level and as a secondary function offers quick access to the monitor's Opticolor presets. The left button doubles as an ECO mode switch and the right can be used as a brightness control shortcut.

The OSD will certainly not win any awards for the level of control but I found it very functional and the ‘out of the box' settings were actually very good, with only slight adjustments needed over DVI with a Radeon HD5670 graphics card. The sharpness mode will be the most used however as I found it actually surprisingly good with ‘softer' onboard graphics output solutions.

The panel ships with five available presets. Game, Movie, Office, Standard and Scenery. I never find these ‘enhanced' modes to be anything close to useful however the illyama settings are quite decent, if a little bright and saturated. The office setting would be useful to an inexperienced user as it can help with text if your eyes are little weaker. Standard mode is the one to be using however with adjustments made to that setting giving the best end result.

So far we have ascertained that the panel is very well designed and the on screen menu system offers a ‘no frills' but effective user interface. The image quality is the most important aspect of buying a screen however and while this is a TN based LED display, we have high hopes it will offer a reasonably good image for the modest asking price.

Subjectively when the screen is first enabled we were pleasantly surprised with the default configuration. Most screens arrive with us in a state of disarray, with images so bright and blasted out that 30 minutes of tweaking is immediately required. I was pleased to see full support for various aspect ratios offered for lower than native resolutions, when needed.

The E2472HDD however ships with a very pleasant set of parameters which only required us to make minor tweaks, firstly  to brightness and contrast. The default setting of 3 sharpness (out of 5) was perfect for the high quality HD5670 display output.

We noticed however that whites were never resolved to their purest levels which is always going to be an issue with a TN display, however it was not a major issue unlike some I have tested in the last year. The 3/4 range, between shadows and pure black also had some issues with definition, but again it didn't ruin the image quality. Granted with some movies which rely on many ‘night' scenes there will be an issue of resolving the finest black detail.

Viewing angles are decent, but vertically limited to rather tight angles without the images losing colour depth and saturation. Generally if you are sitting at a desk and using this as a computer monitor then it won't be so much of a problem, but if you have it in a larger room and are showing images to people standing at different heights, then the screen would need to be tilted for maximum impact. Again this is more a limitation of the specific technology rather than an individual issue with the illyama product. Horizontal viewing performance is very impressive and is more than I would have expected from a screen using this technology.

Colour banding across a rainbow pattern was some of the lowest we have recorded with a TN panel and only on a green gradient was it missing a few steps between the upper register and a mid tone graph.

As this is an LED display we are happy to report that light bleed is minimal and backlighting is very even throughout the full diameter of the area. There are only slight +10% variances on the edges which puts this firmly into the top echelons of backlighting performance.

Sharpness deserves a mention as even the finest type was legible and small fonts on screens in a similar price bracket can often smear and blur. For typographers and designers on a budget this will certainly be an appealing purchase decision.

This leads me into one area which I need to highlight. The screen really does need calibrated to get the most from it – colours in particular need slight adjustments as they tended to have a slight tendency to cyan balance than I would like to see. There is also a slight, but not really noticeable dithering noise, only measured by our testing equipment.

Gaming on the screen was very enjoyable and the 2ms refresh rate seems a fairly accurate company statement as I did not notice any smearing at all – blacks are not always ‘pure' black but it is a minor point to bring up and one which can be improved with a little tweaking in the ATI and nVidia driver panel.

As the Prolite E2472HDD is an LED panel one of the advantages is lower power consumption, and we were stunned to see that under ECO mode it was only consuming 13 watts of power ! At the highest settings we managed to get power consumption up to 23 watts, but this is not really usable under real world conditions. At our configured settings the panel was consuming around 17-18 watts of power. These really are fantastic results.

The Iiyama ProLite E2472HDD performed exceptionally well during our testing and while there are always going to be some viewing angle issues with a TN panel we found the ProLite was really well optimised out of the box and only required some minor adjustments to reach full potential.

The backlighting quality is exceptionally well balanced across the whole area of the panel and colour rendition, while not class leading is focused and tightly saturated. We found a slight adjustment was needed to remove a little blue from the overall image, but once this was in place we were happy with the overall image quality on a variety of levels.

Firstly, for typographers and people who spend most of their time on forums and reading editorial, at native 1920×1080 the screen was a pleasure to use, with crystal clear text even at the smallest of pixel sizes. Photographic quality is good, but not exceptional – with a little calibration it would be perfectly usable as a cheap, entry level photo editing tool, but hardcore designers will need to dig a little deeper into their pockets for the best partner.

Gaming is exceptional on the E2472HDD screen, and while it won't always resolve shadow detail to the same level as a more expensive panel, the overall quality certainly is hard to fault. The 2ms refresh rate means that there is no noticeable smearing with fast moving first person shooters.

Power consumption is class leading, with the screen consuming less than 20w after calibration, this is one of the lowest figures we have recorded for a 24 inch screen … the LED technology is showing its true worth in this regard.

KitGuru says: Checking stores in the UK we were able to find this panel for £165 inc vat which makes this an incredible bargain for a high performing LED screen.

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