Sony's SDM-S94 is an attractive 19in. LCD TFT monitor that's available in either a black or silver enclosure. While its 4:3 aspect ratio will appeal more to business users than gamers, a native resolution of just 1280x1024 pixels and brightness level of 250cd/m² are equally disappointing to all users. The screen's image quality is reasonable though, and it comes with a useful cable tidy for hiding trailing connectors. Dual video inputs also allow you to connect both analogue and digital systems. Sony's also thrown in some unique technology, including an anti-reflective screen surface that helps to produce consistent image quality under a range of lighting conditions, and an ECO-Mode that lets you change the brightness settings at the touch of a button. If you're looking for a large screen for general business use, the SDM-S94 should suffice. High-end graphics users or gamers should look elsewhere due to mediocre white balance levels and patchy colour saturation. Incidentally, if you don't have the budget for a 19in. screen, a 17in. version is available for £308.

Pros: Dual video inputs; high contrast ratio; luminance adjustment
Cons: Slow access time; not very bright; patchy colour saturation


Sony's latest 19in. LCD monitor, the SDM-S94 (412x445x234mm, 6.5kg), is both easy on the eye and a relatively capable performer for general business purposes. Available in either a black or silver enclosure, the display's stylish thin bezel is less than 19mm on each side, so it's well suited for those who need to place multiple monitors next to each other.

The display offers a regular 4:3 aspect ratio, so it's not suited to running widescreen presentations or DVD-Movies. A native resolution of 1280x1024 pixels is also disappointing for a 19in. display because it doesn't really allow you to fit two full pages of text comfortably side-by-side on one screen, as is a relatively slow access times of 25ms and brightness level of 250cd/m². A contrast ratio of 600:1 is more impressive, which is the measure of the difference of brightness levels between the brightest white and the darkest black. LCD monitors typically have a contrast ratio of around 250:1, so a contrast ratio of 600:1 helps the SDM-S94 to support above-par greyscaling.

Setting up and configuring the SDM-S94 is a breeze thanks to the intuitive on-screen display. We also liked Sony's cable tidy solution at the rear of the display. Although initially confusing as to how you connect a power and monitor cable to the display, it soon becomes apparent that the plastic cover at the rear of the screen slides up to reveal digital (DVI-D), analogue (VGA) and power connectors. The back of the rounded stand also detaches so you can tuck the cables neatly out of sight at the back of the screen. The monitor's power on/off switch is also hidden on the right side of the display (looking from the front), leaving just six flush-mounted controls vieweable to the user.

Designed to avoid potential problems arising from poor ergonomics, Sony's unique ECO-Mode feature gives you the ability to select a brightness level for different applications or lighting environments at the touch of a button. In other words, a single 'Eco' button on the front of the display lets you toggle between High, Middle, Low and User (configurable) brightness settings, saving you the effort of having to manually alter brightness levels via the on-screen menu.

There's also brightness and contrast controls, as well as colour controls that allow you to customise the colour profile of the display to suit your needs. The screen's white-point colour temperature is set by default at 6500K, although you change this to 9300K or alter RGB values manually. You can change phase and settings too, along with brightness, contrast, image position (horizontal and vertical) and gamma levels. The built-in automatic set-up control does a good job of configuring the screen though, so you may not even need to delve into the control panel.

The SDM-S94's main strength is its ability to produce a stable image with relatively fine detail and little evidence of noise or motion artefacts. The screen's colour settings are set at 6500K by default however, so you'll likely have to swap this to 9300K immediately to get the best image quality for general business applications. The brightness and colour of the SDM-S94 remained constant across the whole screen, which is a good sign of the quality of the screen's backlight, but a brightness level of just 250cd/m² isn't really good enough for working with graphics because whites in particular appear slightly yellow and are not bright enough.

A slow image response time and scan rate conversion can result in motion artefacts and image degradation for moving or rapidly changing images. While the SDM-S94's response time of 25ms is far from market leading, we encountered minimal unwanted effects like ghosting and instability when playing back DVD-Movies and games. There were also no noticeable changes in patterns when objects moved, such as blurring, darkening, fluttering and disappearing elements, or variations in colour.

Focus levels remained consistent across the whole screen, but colour purity levels were less proficient. For instance, a large area of red in our test image had slightly washed-out areas. Screen geometry was generally solid, although there was slight evidence of misconvergence, which is similar to an out-of-focus image, except that you can see thin coloured fringes around the edges of image detail. In our test samples, red, green and blue elements of a single line failed to join accurately. Our review sample also has a stuck pixel, which is an indication of poor quality control on Sony's part.

Given that most viewing is done by a single person sitting in front of the monitor, how a picture looks from directly in front of the display should be of utmost concern. However, off-angle viewing can be critical for many reasons, including business meetings, where all users need to be able to see the screen from different positions. The SDM-S94 has relatively wide horizontal and vertical viewing angles of 170-degrees, which makes it a good choice for general business environments. On less capable screens, as light passes through a series of materials prior to being emitted from the front face of the LCD, viewing angles can be narrowed, resulting in colour shifts at the extremes and particularly in the vertical direction (up and down).


About our tests:
To test imaging devices BIOS uses DisplayMate Technologies' DisplayMate, a software utility for adjusting, setting up, calibrating, tuning, testing, evaluating and improving image and picture quality on displays. It's designed to help us achieve the highest possible image and picture quality on any type of computer monitor, projector, TV or HDTV, with support for analogue and digital CRT, LCD, DLP, LCoS and plasma technologies. BIOS uses the software to check every aspect of a display's performance, including sharpness and contrast, colour and greyscale accuracy, as well as screen geometry. Where possible, we always use a digital connection for image quality purposes.

BIOS, Jun 02, 04 | Print | Send | Comments (0) | Posted In LCD