Nice little space saver.

Author's Rating:

Pros: space saver, both TV and monitor, can hook it up to PC sound

Cons: no picture-in-picture, mine flickers

The Bottom Line: 
Good display for saving space with a combo monitor/TV. You can't work on the computer and watch TV at the same time.

Author's Review
This is a pretty good little multi-purpose display. I got it because I wanted a TV, but I live in a dorm room and space is at a premium. I had previously been using a CRT monitor which took up half of my desk space. This monitor is obviously thinner and freed up a considerable amount of space for me to work.

As a computer monitor, it's pretty good. It does what it's supposed to. It has a few settings that are supposed to be tuned to viewing different types of things (like web sites, word processing documents, and so on), but it looks like the settings go from dim to bright so I keep it on the brightest one.

Something that is quite annoying is that my screen will flicker. This could just be my screen, but it will flicker ever so slightly going from dim to bright to dim to bright and then settle on dim. After a while it might pop back to bright. While the screen is still readable while it is dimmer (it's not too much dimmer), it would be nice for it to stay bright.

I've had this monitor for about two years now, and I only have one dead pixel. It's very small and hardly noticeable. You can only see it when the area where it is is white.

As a TV, again it's pretty good. I'm sure it's not the best picture quality you can find, but I do think it is supposed to be a computer monitor first. If you want a great, shining picture, you'd do better to get a "pure" TV.

The remote control is a piddly, pathetic little thing, but it does have all the buttons you need. It's not the one that comes pictured on the box. The TV has closed-caption capability, which I like.

One thing that is not a feature that I would have liked to have is a picture-in-picture. Meaning you can't have a smaller picture of a TV show running while you are using the display as a monitor; it's one or the other.

It's pretty easy to set up. I don't recall having any problems with connecting it to the computer or to the cable outlet. I hook up a VCR to the cable connection and run my cable through that. I've also hooked up a Gamecube to the RCA connections, so those work.

The monitor comes with a cable to connect your PC sound to the monitor, so if you're really pressed for desk space or you don't want to buy a set of speakers, you can route your PC sound to your monitor. I've never used that feature, myself.

The box it came in was very nice. It has a plastic handle and you can pick it up and carry it much like a brief case. This is nice for me, because I'm always hauling this monitor back and forth to school. It's great to be able to carry this in one hand and something else in the other while going out to load up the car.

Lastly, I thought the shape of it looked a little weird when I was looking at it in the store and when I first got it. But it doesn't look weird to me anymore; it just takes a little getting used to.

All-in-all I think it's a good display. It suits my needs just fine. The best thing about it is that it doubles as a PC monitor and as a television which is great for space. The one thing it could use is a picture-in-picture feature.