Worth the money and then some

Author's Rating:

Pros: Xlnt resolution. Good PC use. Nice bright image. Price.

Cons: Not the most attractive unit on the market.

The Bottom Line: 
Xlnt picture. Durable now for 6 months. Flat screen. Prices have since dropped to record lows so pickup two of them. I did.

Author's Review
I decided to upgrade my computer system to the latest AMD FX series and as a result felt the need to upgrade my monitor from my 21" LCD. After weighing my options and reading other reviews along with a nice price tag I ordered up a Syntax 27" for my office. TigerDirect had a $100.00 rebate which brought my price to $1300.00. I can be had much much less nowadays.

Item was shipped ground due to the size of the item. My coworker commented that he initially thought it was a bicycle from the size of the box.

Packaging is nice and item was received in good condition.
Comes with a OK manual and a remote.

Now I wanted to mount this at eye level but did not want to pay the $200.00 for an LCD wall mount so I picked one up from Tiger as well for only $70.00. Well worth the price.

Couple of things that really caught my attention of this unit for computer use is the fantastic response rate of 12ms. The lower the better. The response time is similar to refresh rate in that the faster (lower number) the less blurring of moving images on the monitor. 12ms is very good and since this was primarily my game machine this was important. Some vendors mistakenly label the refresh time as 16ms. It is 12ms. See Syntaxusa.com for the specs.

The unit does come with 2 speakers and are detachable. This was also a big plus as I had no intention of using TV speakers. Never seen one yet that will outperform a nice stand alone surround system. Other LCD TV's out there have speakers permanently affixed which adds weight and sometimes looks awkward depending on the brand.

Connections are plenty. DVI as important to me again as it gives the best image detail from my ATI X850 video card. The TV also boast component inputs, S-video, composite, and VGA for standard computer use. Do yourself a favor and ensure that you utilize the component and DVI connections. Otherwise why bother?

Connections are also easy to make with the unit attached to the wall. No fumbling, just a little twisting of your neck. Other units have covers that refuse to be removed once mounted. Not this unit.

Now keep in mind that the resolution of this unit is 1280x720 which is not a standard resolution. However, advanced video cards do support this as well as almost all new games and several old games. ATI products have this format in the Advance portion of Windows resolution screen. Not sure if Nvidia supports this or not.

This way games are very crisp as you are using the standard resolution instead of stretching it.

One caveat of computer use is that the unit is not compatible with the Energy Star format which means that the computer cannot control the power standby mode of this unit as computers do regular computer monitors. This means that you will have to power the TV down/up manually via remote. No bother for me.

TV pictures. I have not played any regular TV on this unit but did run my satellite and several DVD’s through it. Very good picture. Very little as far as dark areas. In other words the detail in the dark areas are noticeable whereas other units are simply black or grey with no detail. Viewing angle is very good so you do not have to be directly in front of the unit for it to perform well.

Very please so far with the unit and it does a fantastic job as a computer monitor.

Oh, and the $100.00 rebate? I received it well within the time period. I am still waiting for rebates from other companies.
Lee Dye
Fontana,CA