BIOS: Technology Means Business

The SDM-S204E, like most Sony products, makes a great first impression with its minimalist appearance and the smooth action of its pneumatic height adjustment and horizontal pivot. Its 20.1in. viewing display is also big and a native resolution of 1600x1200 pixels is ideal for graphics professionals and gamers. Regrettably, the monitor's performance is lacking and it's very expensive. This is a real disappointment from a company whose displays are generally outstanding.

Pros: Large screen; slim bezel; three video inputs; ergonomic design
Cons: Expensive; poor focus and brightness levels

Sony continues to develop stylish monitors with the SDM-S204E. Similar to the SDM-S75F, SDM-S95F, SDM-X75K and SDM-X95K LCD displays from the company's business TFT range, the SDM-S204E (441x72.5x355mm, 8.2kg), touts a number of features that can help you to avoid posture problems that can damage your joints and muscles, and reduce eyestrain caused by hours of staring at a screen.

The SDM-S204E is a 20.1in. TFT LCD which supports an eye-watering native resolution of 1600x1200 pixels. It also offers a relatively speedy response time of 16ms, which should please gamers and video buffs, and its slim bezel display lets you put multiple screens easily next to each other (screen-stacking). Other features a relatively average, including a contrast ratio of 500:1 and brightness of 250cd/m², but the sliding back cover helps to keep your desk tidy by hiding the video and power cables.

Particularly beneficial for business users, the SDM-S204E offers an easy-to-use height adjustment mechanism that makes it a snap to adjust the monitor to your eye level by using just one hand (adjustable up to 100mm). The swivel feature is also a neat addition, enabling you to share screen content with colleagues by gently rotating the whole screen either clockwise or anticlockwise. Relatively wide viewing angles of 176-degrees also means the screen can be viewed clearly and comfortably from the side, top or bottom, which is useful in meetings.

The monitor comes with triple video inputs - one digital (DVI-D) and two analogue - so you can connect multiple computers to one display, improving productivity while saving valuable desktop space. And the digital input in particular helps to deliver clearer images and enhanced colour reproduction for graphics professionals. Additionally, a new cabinet colour scheme includes both black and silver bezels, making it a little easier to match the display with a workstation environment.

To help maximise brightness the SDM-S204E comes with Sony's ErgoBright technology, which adjusts the brightness level to ambient lighting conditions. This one-touch luminance adjustment makes it easy to set personal settings and saves energy when brightness isn't necessary. There are also four preset brightness modes - High, Middle, Low, and User Defined - but the onscreen menu controls are frustrating to access and operate.

For a start, the seven controls on the front of the display are hard to distinguish thanks to subtle labelling. It's also not very clear whether you're supposed to press the Menu or OK buttons to confirm settings. Having said that, the menu system offer a relatively wide range of user-definable settings, such as the ability to alter backlight, brightness and contrast levels, turn ECO Mode on or off, alter horizontal and vertical viewing positions, set colour levels (9300K, 6500K, sRGB or user definable), set predefined gamma levels, select one of 10 languages, alter phase and pitch levels, and move the menu position.

The SDM-S204E has most of the features required by a high-end business. The display is stylish, its tilt and swivel stand is a dream to use, it is wall mountable, has both digital and video inputs, and comes with a 3-year parts and labour warranty. The problem is that it was an average performer in our tests.

Text looked clear but was not especially sharp, we noticed a number of colour inaccuracies, and it was not very bright. The sRGB standard colour profile also made whites look slightly greyish-pink and it had trouble making a smooth transition from the dark end of a greyscale to the light end. As a result, there are much better displays available.

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.