Big Screen, Small Footprint
March 9, 1999
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Sit down to work with a new
18.1-inch diagonal Compaq
TFT8000 LCD desktop monitor
($3,200 street) and you may feel as
if you're staring at a billboard
instead of a PC screen. It fills your view without
taking over your desktop, but the TFT8000 may
eat up your budget.
The active-matrix LCD panel uses in-plane
switching--the liquid crystal cells are at right
angles to traditional designs--to improve off-axis
image quality. Compaq claims you have a
80-degree off-axis view in both vertical and
horizontal planes; we observed that image
brightness drops off rapidly as you move to the
side of the screen, but the image remains
sharp.
With a native resolution of 1,280-by-1,024, the
monitor can handle resolutions down to VGA.
The scaling is extremely effective, and though
some characters may look a little fuzzy at lower
resolutions, text and images are readable and
have few scaling artifacts. The only problem is
that standard lower resolutions use an aspect
ratio of 4:3, but a 1,280-by-1,024 resolution
uses a 5:4 ratio; as a result, objects look slightly
stretched vertically at lower resolutions.
We tested the display using images created by
DisplayMate from Sonera Technologies
(www.displaymate.com), and with a few
exceptions, the quality was excellent. The
on-screen display (OSD) made configuration
relatively easy, and the images were mostly
rock-steady, though we were not able to remove
pixel jitter at all gray-scale levels.
Horizontal and vertical lines were of equal
thickness and brightness, and there were no
apparent cell defects, which is remarkable given
the number of pixels in the panel. The only
significant fault was a sudden drop-off of
shades of gray or color at the low end: The
darkest shades were black.
The image is roughly equivalent to that of a
21-inch CRT display, yet the TFT8000 weighs
just 20 pounds, in contrast to the 70 or so
pounds a CRT weighs. Compaq has targeted
the TFT8000 primarily at financial markets
where space is at a premium; the monitor is
also intended for executive and high-profile
applications. Compaq provides a one-year
warranty on labor and a three-year warranty on
parts, including the backlight.
Since Windows can work easily with multiple
monitors, the question of value enters in. Two
15-inch 1,024-by-768 LCD monitors in portrait
mode cost less than $1,000 apiece yet provide
about 20 percent more display area and 20
percent more pixels, at a savings of nearly 40
percent.
So although the Compaq TFT8000 is big, bold,
and beautiful, there may not be a huge market
for it. Users willing to consider spending this
much on a display may want to think about
some alternatives that will deliver similar results
at a lower price.
Compaq TFT8000. Street price: $3,200.
Compaq Computer Corp., Houston;
800-345-1518; www.compaq.com.
— Alfred Poor
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