LG Flatron L2010P 20.1" LCD Monitor reviewed

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Manufacturer: LG Electronics
Price: £999 excluding VAT (Search here for deals)
Requirements: Graphics card capable of 1600x1200 with analogue or DVI output

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BIG MONITORS are a must if you're an IT professional. Whether you're a coder, a DBA or a sysadmin, the more screen real-estate you can get the better. Even a not-so-humble technical author like myself wants lots of resolution and a big screen. The question is, if you're used to a 21" monitor, what do you go looking for now that we're in the TFT era?

User interface counts for a lot. A good mouse/monitor/keyboard combination is more important than fast processors, ultra fast graphics or huge amounts of memory. It's no use having a blindingly fast machine if staring at the monitor attached to it is literally a blinding experience. If you're looking at a screen for eight hours a day, a sharply focussed monitor is essential.

After spending years using a 21" CRT, there was no way to even consider working with something smaller. The equivalent LCD TFT panel would have to be 20" or better. And to find out if the top level LCD panels were any good, the panel needed to be worked on for a good few weeks. Step forward LG who were kind enough to loan THE INQUIRER a serious panel for a decent length of time.

Find the DVI
The very first lesson in plugging in an LCD panel is that if it has a DVI port, use it. Buy a new graphics card if you have to, just use it. People who use standard analogue connections to their LCD panels will say that it's fine. They do that right up until they see someone using the same sort of display with DVI. The LG has a DVI port and, although the standard analogue input was tested and worked fine, the panel has been kept on DVI for almost the entire time it was here.

When it first arrived, it was hooked up using the analogue connection and it was used like that for about three days. The display was impressive. In comparison with using a decent Eizo 21" CRT, it was immediately obvious that the LG was much better to work on. Both monitors were set to UXGA (1600x1200). Looking at the two screens side-by-side, the Eizo looked positively fuzzy - it had wowed everyone with its clarity up until that point. After three days, the LG was switched to DVI which produced an even more pronounced difference.

Working for the Money
From a work perspective, using the LG has been a joy. So much so that it's going to be very difficult going back to the CRT. Where using the CRT for ten hours a day could cause dry eyes and a feeling of radiation tan, using the LG for almost any length of time is a pleasure.

At a work level, the monitor was tested with three major applications: MS Word 97, MS Visual C++ 6 and Adobe Photoshop 7. At a play level, it was tested with numerous DVDs and several games.

In Word, it was possible to clearly read and work with 8 point text at 100% resolution. That's the kind of thing that was not quite possible with the CRT. Using "Two Pages" zoom, an essential if you're working on large documents, was a much nicer experience.

Spending a few days coding with Visual C++ was highly enjoyable too. The resolution helps enormously but the clarity of the picture and the easiness on the eyes means that the LG is a software engineer's dream.

Work of Art
Moving over to Photoshop produced the first nasty experience. There was something wrong with the colour reproduction. It took a long while to figure out what it was. It was accurate. After years of staring at CRTs, good quality ones at that, a certain expectation of what colours should look like had fixed itself. Using the LG for a few weeks and going back to the Eizo was a shocking trip back to poorly saturated colours and false white.

One of the areas that has plagued LCDs and still leaves some people worried is that of contrast. The LG manages a contrast ratio of 400:1. That, in theory at least, is not as good as the 400-450:1 that a CRT can manage. The reality is that putting the LG next to the Eizo with both showing a series of Photoshop created graduations it was difficult to spot any difference. The graduations were a full greyscale; pure R, G or B to black; and pure R, G or B to white. In every case the LG matched the CRT for contrast, both of them picking up and trailing off in almost exactly the same place and showing the same graduation points.

All Work, No Play?
Playing DVDs was a much richer experience than playing them on the CRT. The colour purity, the excellent contrast and the fact that LCD is a truly flat screen made a lot of difference. It's worth pointing out that playing DVDs on a CRT monitor gives a much better viewing experience than on a television. The difference between LCD monitor and television is simply jaw-dropping.

Games were dealt with in an OK fashion. This is perhaps the one area where the LG doesn't shine quite so brightly. In real-time strategy games, the monitor was great. In first-person shooters, the story was not so good. If you're an occasional gamer, the monitor will seem fine. If you're an MC Stephen Hawking style Quake Master, this is not the monitor for you. If you live for frame rates, you'll need to stick with CRTs for a few more years.

The Conclusion
If you go through this review and pick out all of the superlatives, you'll be getting somewhere close to what it's like to use the LG on a daily basis. One of the criteria that LG had to agree to about this review was that the monitor was going to be used in a working environment for at least eight hours a day and for several weeks. There's no point in just sitting a monitor like this on a test bench for half an hour, it costs a grand and you want to know whether you can actually work with it. There is no doubt that the LG L2010P is a fantastic piece of kit. It's the sort of thing that makes all the difference to a work environment. It has to go back soon and, quite frankly, the idea of returning to a CRT monitor is horrible. And it's not like the CRT here is bad, it's one of the best in its class.

If you have any control over the kit you have sat on your desk, the LG is well worth getting hold of. If you need high-resolution and, let's face it, IT professionals need as big a desktop as possible, the LG fits the bill superbly. Stuff getting a new machine or a faster processor or anything like that, the LG is quite possibly the best investment you can make for work. The L2010P is worth every penny and then some. µ