Originally posted by: mallow005
NEC 20WMGX2 mini review:
Awesome.
THE END
That's what I felt like saying.
Compared to my old monitor, a 6 year old Viewsonic PF795 CRT, the brightness blows me away. Any LCD probably would, but viewing the 20WMGX2 next to my old CRT is like reading in daylight compared to reading by candle. I think to anyone who switches, that is the greatest difference they will see (aside from text sharpness). However, I suspect that it's just my video card, I can't believe that my old monitor looked THAT dark. I have my brightness around 60%, or else my eyes start hurting quite a bit after a few hours.
Your CRT was around 100 cd/m2 at 6500K color temperature. The NEC is 470 cd/m2 at the same temperature and peak brightness, so it's up to 4.7 times as bright. At reasonable settings it's 300 cd/m2 or so.
After getting this monitor, I just want to browse flickr all day, the photos are incredible. Colors and details! MMMmmmmm, makes me want to do photography. I do some mockups for my job and Inkscape is now a joy to use. Text and colors are so yummy looking.
Try the Windows Media and Quicktime HD galleries. BBC Japan was the best IMO. It's a godsend they managed to lower the response time on S-IPS screens to 7-14 ms. or so. You have 30 ms S-IPSs then all of a sudden, they release a fast AS-IPS just like that. That really did breathe new hope into LCDs.
IMO, the best settings are: DV mode: Standard, ADVM: On, Sharpness: 16.6. Set color gamma/temp to sRGB. Native is OK, but inappropriate for the color space most of the world uses. It makes things too bright, but sRGB makes them just right (no rhyme intended). It does cast a greenish hue over everything, but you'll realize it looks better in the end (closer to a calibrated CRT).
You will have to calibrate brightness/contrast yourself. I used my fullscreen mixed gradient test (it works great for adjusting brightness and contrast). You can just watch the settings making a big difference. As you set the contrast to the correct settings, most of the kinks in the gradient get worked out. ADVM itself will not cause banding. The DV modes do separate the gradient into pieces, which is easily visible when you use
gradlin. Don't forget to use the standard DV mode when you calibrate with this gradient. Otherwise, the gradient looks separated due to movie-intended color-enhancing features. The black level test on my site is hard to get right with this LCD though. Not a huge deal. There is some color-mapping going on (some double tones) in the 256-step gradient. Obviously it's not perfect. I'm just glad I finally made a test this thing struggles at.

The rest of the color spectrum is amazingly clear, pure, and lush. Not to mention, it's amazingly even.
It will probably take me a few weeks before my productivity is back to normal, for now I just want to look at everything I can through this monitor.
I know what you mean. I mostly do general usage anyway. But after that general usage, as you sit back and watch HD video, your breath is taken away.