Last night my Iiyama Vision Master Pro 451 died, just 3 weeks after the three year on-site warranty expired [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]

So, it looks like I'm in the market for a new one - but how to choose? The one thing I really want to do before I buy a monitor is look at it to check the picture quality, but that seems impossible with any model that's not stocked by retailers. Given that I want a high-end unit for photo editing, finding something suitable in PC World seems unlikely.

Any recommendations? Price isn't really an issue, but excellent sharpness and colour accuracy are. I want to run 1600x1200 which sadly eliminates all but the most frighteningly expensive LCDs, and the refresh rate needs to be at least 80Hz which eliminates quite a few CRTs too.

Is there anywhere on the net with recent reviews of 19" (or even 21") CRT screens? I can't find any that are less than a year old now that the world seems to have gone LCD crazy.

Ta
Andy

 

PC Pro have just done a labs test on 19" TFTs FWIW. Their A-List 19" is the VM Pro 454.

Have you tried e-mailing Iiyama? Worth a punt.

 

Am I missing something or is that review dated Apr 02 ?

Baz

 

Actually I called them this morning and they have promised to take a look at it - though they'll only actually fix it for free if it's something fairly simple. Given the nature of the fault (display scrambled if refresh rate is above ~70Hz otherwise stable but distorted), it sounds like dodgy electronics to me rather than a faulty tube. Fingers crossed, but I figure it's worth doing my research into new ones now.

I'm a little surprised that PC Pro rate the 454 so highly - it's actually the monitor I use at work. Focus and convergence are excellent, same as my dead 451, but the colour and gamma response are truly awful. Given that I want it for pro-level photography that's no good at all!

Thanks for the link to the LCD reviews, I'll take a look.

 

I've recently bought this:

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1918

It blows the ones in that review into the weeds and is cheaper too. 1600 x 1200 native resolution and 16ms response time.

Brilliant.

 

I've had excellent customer service from iiyama in the past, even when outside of warranty. Suggest you keep talking to them.

Whenever I buy a new model, theirs are the first ones I check out.
Scan seem to do a good line of their monitors.

I recently sold my last CRT (IIyama 22")as I have a loan TFT, but as soon as that goes back I'm buying a TFT, no question.


Joolz