Philips 170S5FB LCD Monitor

Author: Quadophile
Published on: 06-08-2004
Views: 89958


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Videos / Flight Simulation Software

Visual Performance of the Monitor

I did not specifically buy the monitor to watch videos, nonetheless, I was curious how it performed with a fast response time, which is supposed to help eliminate streaking and ghost trails which plagued earlier LCD monitors having 25+ms response times. The performance was very good, in fact far better than I expected, I can see the trailing effect on my laptop clearly, but not really on this monitor. It is not really like the Pixel Plus Television where you can follow the image clearly while being panned by the camera, but, perfectly acceptable for all practical purposes. Comparing the LCD monitor with the likes of the Pixel Plus Television is not really a correct way to judge an LCD monitor, but I believe it is an ultimate test for any LCD screen to know how well it performs in the department of video.

I used Fly II and demo software from Matrox to check the quality of the graphics. The monitor did not exhibit any artefacts or jaggies. The colour was rendered very nicely and the shadow detail very good.

The correct way to compare the Philips 170S5FB would be with a similar type of monitor, in my case I had compared it with the office Philips 150P3 and I found the technology has certainly improved in a short time of just one year. The standard Philips 170S5FB definitely proved to be better than the Philips 150P3 pro model from little over a year ago.

Photo Editing

Photo Editing Performance

I checked some of my pictures in the collection having sequence of bracketed exposures in a single folder and the monitor was capable of showing the minute differences quite distinctively. I feel I can manage to edit my pictures on this monitor. For critical photography, I am still dependant on transparency film and my trusted Nikon SLR bought 10 years back.

Conclusion

Final thoughts on the Philips 170S5FB

If you were contemplating going for the change from CRT to LCD and were procrastinating due to poor quality of the screens or high price of a good LCD monitor, you may be in for a surprise how good they have become and how affordable they really are.

As mentioned earlier, this is a standard "no frills attached" LCD monitor and not the top of the range from Philips. It does not even have a DVI input facility but the analogue input worked as well as the DVI input I use on my office monitor. I felt the monitor is more than adequate in all the departments and for someone who is not very finicky about features, this certainly is a sensible buy.