NEC LCD20WGX2 review * UPDATED 25/02/06 *

Cal_G · 10 Mar 2006 at 23:09

I can't see anything they could do with an RMA other than resell it as new, although personally I wouldn't be impressed if I received such a model. Good job NEC are replacing mine direct with a brand new model they are yet to have in stock.

igors · 10 Mar 2006 at 23:31

Cal_G said:
Good job NEC are replacing mine direct with a brand new model they are yet to have in stock.

Great. As far as we discovered for now, NEC is doing the "cross shipping" replacement. In other words they will send the courier to give you the new monitor and pick up the old one.

Iluka · 10 Mar 2006 at 23:54

Well I hate to add another negative to this thread but I got mine home and, while it's dead pixel free, there's noticeable backlight bleed in all four corners - particularly noticeable in the upper and lower left. What's more I have a sneaking suspicion that mine may have been RMA'd before as well (probably due to the bleed!). I'm not 100% sure but there's definitely more than one layer of tape over the top (one is longer than the others and clearly applied after) and the cables, while pretty neat, seemed like they'd been opened before.

Does anyone else with this monitor know if the manual pouch and the instruction sheet attached to the front of the monitor are supposed to have been attached with cream masking tape? I would have expected the usual clear tape on a new one. Maybe I'm just being paranoid but it raised my suspicions. Also, while the foam around the ends of the DVA cable were held in place with rubber bands, the VGA ends had sellotape on theirs.

Regardless, I'm going to live with it for the weekend and see if a) it fixes itself as some have reported or b) I can live with it. Gutted though as otherwise the monitor is stunning.

HungryHippos · 11 Mar 2006 at 09:50

hi just received mine and it looks perfect so far

can't see any dead pixels or backlight bleed at the moment, gonna burn it in and see whats what.

Yeah cream masking tape was used throughout the documentation but I didn't find mine had been taped up twice or anything.

edit - do seem to have some backlight bleed, gonna run it over the weekend and see if it disappears any, any good things to run to aid the backlight bleed removal?

What settings should I change on the monitor?

Baddass · 11 Mar 2006 at 11:02

sorry to hear some people's issues with "backlight bleed" here. However, i felt i should say that there is a LOT of talk on these forum recently about bleed, and what a LOT of the cases boil down to is not backlight bleed really, but just the overall panel uniformity of the screen. TFT's are often a little varied in the backlighting because of the way they are built, and the backlight can often be seen around the edges and on the corners. This is not really a case of backlight bleed...i would say THIS is backlight bleed!:

A lot of this "slight backlight bleed" is really down to uniformity and all i am trying to say is, you may not have room to be as fussy about the evenness of the backlighting as you may like. Just be wary that this might just be a general thing as with many many TFT's and that even if you RMA the monitors, you will just end up with a similar result. Ie there may not be faults with some of these, you may just be witnessing uniformity issues which a lot of TFT's do.

just adding some input really, if cases are really bad then RMA the screens, just be wary of this

Richdog · 11 Mar 2006 at 11:11

**** that info is dis-concerting. Mine had very minor bleed in the bottom left, the only really bad thing in my eyes was the "wonky" button which looked like a buck-tooth in the middle of a nice row of pearly whites.

In light of the chance of getting one with worse bleed If I could fix the button i'd keep the damn thing...

igors · 11 Mar 2006 at 12:30

Thank you for the keep up, Simon. Yeah, you are right. This "backlight bleed" thing really started to drag this thread, almost transforming it to the "NEC backlight bleed review"

Anyhow, that DELL is scary

and your example and pictures I've seen from other monitors around (even from the new Viewsonic VX2025) are even worst than the worst one submitted for NEC. Positive thing is that no dead pixels are reported for now. This is the major reason why I'm advising people not to make any drastic steps at the beginning and just give the monitor a few days (as there is high possibility that "slight backlight bleed" effect will fade away, anyhow). If effect is unbearable, they are covered by NEC "backlight free" panel state so no problems for RMA there.

igors · 11 Mar 2006 at 13:44

Richdog said:
In light of the chance of getting one with worse bleed If I could fix the button i'd keep the damn thing...

Rich, you already bite the bullet with the RMA ... so I guess you can't do much now. Maybe you can just unpack & power on the newly received monitor and compare it and decide which one to return

Unfortunately, not sure about such things and if they are "allowed" from the courier. Fingers crossed for you that everything should be exactly as you hoped.

Anyhow, do you like the monitor ? You were somewhat quite on this one, apart from the annoying winky wonky problem you had

Raymond Lin · 11 Mar 2006 at 13:52

I wonder what the NEC's reception would've been like without igors' enthusastic support

So much so I am half tempted to get one myself !

Richdog · 11 Mar 2006 at 14:15

igors said:
Rich, you already bite the bullet with the RMA ... so I guess you can't do much now. Maybe you can just unpack & power on the newly received monitor and compare it and decide which one to return Unfortunately, not sure about such things and if they are "allowed" from the courier. Fingers crossed for you that everything should be exactly as you hoped.

Anyhow, do you like the monitor ? You were somewhat quite on this one, apart from the annoying winky wonky problem you had

Ahh I forgot to post it here, let me just copy it form my main forum...

Well, the monitor was delivered to my work a couple of days ago but I sent it back after a few hours of use. Why? Well, for a start the power button was "wonky", it stuck at a real upward angle and looked completely mis-alligned compared to the rest of the buttons, too annoying to bear. I couldn't seem to fix it either. On top of this although the monitor had no dead pixels, it did have some bleed in the lower left corner, and while it wasn't major, NEC have a zero bleed policy and I figure if im going to pay 420 notes for something then it had better be bloody well perfect. So, waiting for a swap out on Monday hopefully!

However the good news... I did test it for a good few hours and here's my opinion... it looks ****-hot. I'd never seen a 20.1" widescreen in the flesh before and wow it is REALLY wide, I can imagine all games that support it looking completely bloomin' awesome on it and can't wait to fire some up!

Colour reproduction and blacks, again wow, I never imagined it would be that good. Blacks are deep and velvetty, yes gents that means "CRT black", as if the screen were off, simply amaying. With no tweaking whatsoever the colours also looked fantastic, rich and even. The monitor also has a feature called "Advanced DV" and this further dims the backlight to create greater contrast and colour depth, it also adjusts intelligently depending on what you are viewing. White text pages will dim to reduce glare, and dark pages will do the opposite. From what I saw it really looks to be a top feature of this monitor.

The OSD options are many and highly tweakable, for those that can't abide "stretching" in games that won't work with widescreen, the monitor scaled down to 1280*1024 on a 1:1 pixel resolution, meaning no blur whatsoever, razor sharp.

I fired up MOH (our work LAN game of choice) and with a eye beadier than that of Sauron I strafed about like a loon and popped off a few guards. Ghosting is something i've always imagined with horror, a bit like waking up with your friends fat mother. However I am happy to report that in the 15 minutes I played it I, a fussy sod at the best of times, detected no noticeable ghosting whatsoever, and only minimal "blur" which is inevitable. It's a **** fast screen, and I can't wait to play away on it.

One last note the screen is very reflective, you will not to be able to use it with a light source facing it, it's best viewed in darkness or with a lamp behind the monitor and you'll be fine. For you WOW players who live in airless pits and last saw daylight a year or two ago this will not bother you

Just a few thoughts for you there, and provided the monitor I receive next week has a straight button and no bleed then there will be a review coming your way soon...

How do I write a proper review though when you'Ve already done so much, it'll be like playing a broken record.

FoxEye · 11 Mar 2006 at 14:29

Raymond Lin said:
I wonder what the NEC's reception would've been like without igors' enthusastic support So much so I am half tempted to get one myself !

You're not overly impressed with your Philips then?

Raymond Lin · 11 Mar 2006 at 14:36

FoxEye said:
You're not overly impressed with your Philips then?

I am very happy with it, but i wanna get an NEC just to see the difference and whats the fuss is about.

Fr0dders · 11 Mar 2006 at 17:21

Baddass said:
A lot of this "slight backlight bleed" is really down to uniformity and all i am trying to say is, you may not have room to be as fussy about the evenness of the backlighting as you may like. Just be wary that this might just be a general thing as with many many TFT's and that even if you RMA the monitors, you will just end up with a similar result. Ie there may not be faults with some of these, you may just be witnessing uniformity issues which a lot of TFT's do.

i had wondered this

so many of the new 20" panels are suffering from backlight leeking through at the corners. its no wonder that its not a fault, its just a feature

how come we dont get this with smaller monitors ? is it down to the size, the widescreen or what ?

Fr0dders · 11 Mar 2006 at 17:22

Raymond Lin said:
I am very happy with it, but i wanna get an NEC just to see the difference and whats the fuss is about.

i made the swap from the philips

the brightness of and overall impression of the colours is so much more "wow"

the philips is good, but didnt have that wow factor that the NEC does.

Baddass · 11 Mar 2006 at 19:11

MrLOL said:
i had wondered this

so many of the new 20" panels are suffering from backlight leeking through at the corners. its no wonder that its not a fault, its just a feature

how come we dont get this with smaller monitors ? is it down to the size, the widescreen or what ?

well some of the older generation 17" monitors did have some quite poor panel uniformity, and the edges in particular were often quite bad. Uniformity can still vary quite a bit, and some models are verging on the "bleeding" boundary. In theory i suppose the larger monitors might be harder to keep uniform because of the size

igors · 12 Mar 2006 at 01:30

Raymond Lin said:
I wonder what the NEC's reception would've been like without igors' enthusastic support So much so I am half tempted to get one myself !

LOL

Ray, no worries. Mission accomplished here and one big-fat-seven-figures check is just on the way from NEC.

igors · 12 Mar 2006 at 01:34

Richdog said:
How do I write a proper review though when you'Ve already done so much, it'll be like playing a broken record.

Richard, my friend ... there is no need to compete with the master, seriously

Your comments & thoughts here are much much appreciated and they are probably more usefull than the review of the review

zonta · 12 Mar 2006 at 14:22

First time poster here. I have been reading this thread since it began and igors review convinced me to get the NEC. Now i have had it for just over a week and must say general windows operation is brillant, vibrant colours great contrast etc. However some games have terrible tearing and dvd playback is nowhere near as crisp and clean as the LG flatron i came from. The screen also suffers from the backlight bleed problem and has one dead pixel dead centre.

So basically my question is could the tearing and dvd playback quality be affected by backlight bleed or is that just the way TFT screens are in general?

UOcUK Poopscoop · 12 Mar 2006 at 14:31

zonta said:
First time poster here. I have been reading this thread since it began and igors review convinced me to get the NEC. Now i have had it for just over a week and must say general windows operation is brillant, vibrant colours great contrast etc. However some games have terrible tearing and dvd playback is nowhere near as crisp and clean as the LG flatron i came from. The screen also suffers from the backlight bleed problem and has one dead pixel dead centre.

So basically my question is could the tearing and dvd playback quality be affected by backlight bleed or is that just the way TFT screens are in general?

To get rid of tearing in games make sure "wait for V sync" is turned on in your graphics options.

Richdog · 12 Mar 2006 at 14:31

zonta said:
However some games have terrible tearing

Turn V-sync on my friend.

NEC LCD20WGX2 review *** UPDATED 25/02/06 ***

NEC LCD20WGX2 review * UPDATED 25/02/06 *