NEC LCD20WGX2 review * UPDATED 25/02/06 *

ScottGTO · 22 Apr 2006 at 11:05

Hey guys, I've been reading this thread with interest for a good few weeks now. I was kind of on the fence with regards buying this monitor because of the reported backlight bleed problems, but last week I took the plunge and just ordered it and hoped for the best.

First off, the monitor is stunning. Picture quality is excellent. Very white whites and very dark, deep blacks. The reflective screen poses no problems whatsoever. Also no stuck/lazy pixels either. Very impressive.

Now the bad, I have pretty severe backlight bleed problems on all four corners and some down the left hand side. The lower left corner is by far the worse. The monitor starts off perfect but gets gradually worse the longer its left on. Maybe I should have expected it, but I was kind of hoping to be one of the lucky ones

My question is this: Should I just be returning it to OcUK under the distance selling regs (It was delivered yesterday morning) or try for the RMA from NEC. I know that Sarah is probably the woman to call at NEC. I'm a little concerned that after a lengthy period where we're told that the Japanese engineers are looking at the problem, that we won't receive a properly working replacement.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks folks.

Fr0dders · 22 Apr 2006 at 11:13

your probably wasting your time

they all suffer from the aparent backlight "bleed". As do lots of other monitors.

now that i look for it, my mums TFT on her PC does the same thing. but i never noticed it untill i looked for it. The type of backlight bleed everybody complains about on here is inevitable i think, no matter what monitor you have, as the Philips i had did the same thing as well

but that pales into insignificance when compared to the backlight bleed on some of the Dells. TRUE backlight bleed is when you get the light bleeding into the centre of the screen, just not a bit of leakage at the corners.

ScottGTO · 22 Apr 2006 at 11:26

I'm by no means an expert on this, and I know that some TFTs suffer more than others but this isn't a 'bit of leakage at the corners'. I'm talking about a couple of inches of bleed on the upper corners and far more on the bottom two. The bleed on the bottom two corners is probably only about 3 inches or so away from joining in the middle.

If you're saying that all of these monitors suffer the same defects despite the numerous posters on these forums claiming their monitor is completely free from bleed and/or stuck pixels?

I'm not trying to be argumentative; I'm just after some advice from the folk on here who know a lot more about this subject than I do. If that advice is, "They're all going to be that way to some extent" then so be it, I'll switch back to CRT.

Was just nice having my desk space back

igors · 22 Apr 2006 at 12:30

ScottGTO said:
I'm by no means an expert on this, and I know that some TFTs suffer more than others but this isn't a 'bit of leakage at the corners'. I'm talking about a couple of inches of bleed on the upper corners and far more on the bottom two. The bleed on the bottom two corners is probably only about 3 inches or so away from joining in the middle.

Yes, LCD screens do suffer usually from the backlight bleed, but question is how the panel uniformity is affected. Thing is, that in your case is very exposed ,annoying, distracting and you have every right to swap this monitor for the another one. Please remember that NEC does offer the 3 Years warranty,including backlight, and you are free to swap it until you have the perfect or acceptable one.

When you say monitor starts off perfect, does it mean that there is no visible bleed in the beginning, from the cold start, and then it's getting much worst ? Can you take any pics ? This seems somehow contrary to the normal slight backlight bleed which is cured after some time for many of the users out there.

ScottGTO said:
If you're saying that all of these monitors suffer the same defects despite the numerous posters on these forums claiming their monitor is completely free from bleed and/or stuck pixels?

Well, it's not exactly true that all NEC monitors suffer from this ... far from that. Most of the users got the slight backlight bleed which faded away, many have indeed the perfect panel, some had just one or two dead pixels (which are not visible anyway) but on the other side perfect panel uniformity and of course some users were simply unlucky. It can happen.

My suggestion is that you wait for a few days and see how things are progressing (and wait for a proper monitor burn-in). If there is no progress, just call the NEC and swap the monitor. You have nothing to loose, that's for sure.

ScottGTO · 22 Apr 2006 at 12:45

igors said:
When you say monitor starts off perfect, does it mean that there is no visible bleed in the beginning, from the cold start, and then it's getting much worst ? Can you take any pics ? This seems somehow contrary to the normal slight backlight bleed which is cured after some time for many of the users out there.

I turned the monitor on this morning and looked at the immediately. There was no appreciable bleed that I could see. I left a screensaver running whilst I was off doing other things. I came back a few hours later and the bleed was back. I would take some pictures but the girlfriend has gone off to a friend's wedding today and swiped my camera. I'll try to do it Sun/Mon.

igors said:
Well, it's not exactly true that all NEC monitors suffer from this ... far from that. Most of the users got the slight backlight bleed which faded away, many have indeed the perfect panel, some had just one or two dead pixels (which are not visible anyway) but on the other side perfect panel uniformity and of course some users were simply unlucky. It can happen.

It's good to hear that a swapout might be the way to go and I _may_ just have been unlucky.

igors said:
My suggestion is that you wait for a few days and see how things are progressing (and wait for a proper monitor burn-in). If there is no progress, just call the NEC and swap the monitor. You have nothing to loose, that's for sure.

I'll do just that Igors. I really appreciate the time you took to reply. Many Thanks.

ScottGTO · 22 Apr 2006 at 17:07

igors said:
When you say monitor starts off perfect, does it mean that there is no visible bleed in the beginning, from the cold start, and then it's getting much worst ? Can you take any pics ? This seems somehow contrary to the normal slight backlight bleed which is cured after some time for many of the users out there.

Igors, as requested I've attached a pic of the bleed as it stands now. The quality is pretty poor as it was taken with a decidedly dodgy camera phone but I think it gets the idea across. I'll edit this post tomorrow with a pic of the monitor from cold start. The top right has gotten a little better, but the bottom corners are still quite bad.

ash7jar · 22 Apr 2006 at 18:15

backlight bleed was cured after some time for me.

About 3 weeks.

ScottGTO · 22 Apr 2006 at 19:04

Was it similar in severity ash7jar?

Edit: typo.

DrMekon · 22 Apr 2006 at 20:40

Thats just a bit worse than mine....

Ive been phoning NEC on a weekly basis and quess what...

"We're still waiting for instruction from Japan...!!!"

I dont get what the problem is.. and its starting to nark me off a bit now.. there is clearly a problem, so fix it!!! Simple as that!!!

igors · 22 Apr 2006 at 21:15

ScottGTO said:
Igors, as requested I've attached a pic of the bleed as it stands now. The quality is pretty poor as it was taken with a decidedly dodgy camera phone but I think it gets the idea across. I'll edit this post tomorrow with a pic of the monitor from cold start. The top right has gotten a little better, but the bottom corners are still quite bad

Thx. Yes, you are right ... it's quite bad and definitely it's weird how it's "progressing" to such extent from the cold start. As my screen is jet black, when I look back at your black screen it's just scary. Such shame, as probably because of such backlight bleed monitor is not showing it's full capabilities. As you are impressed with the monitor even with such backlight bleed, you can imagine what will happen when the panel is completely uniform and dark

igors · 22 Apr 2006 at 21:22

DrMekon said:
Thats just a bit worse than mine....

Ive been phoning NEC on a weekly basis and quess what...

"We're still waiting for instruction from Japan...!!!"

I dont get what the problem is.. and its starting to nark me off a bit now.. there is clearly a problem, so fix it!!! Simple as that!!!

What are they waiting from Japan ?! Fixing instructions, replaced stock or something else ? On the other hand, you may try to swap the monitor now if NEC has available stock ... and you don't have nothing to loose, and it's really impossibe that *complete* NEC stock is affected. It may happen that you will receive much better monitor and even if it's not ... you may swap it again if that answer from Japan ever arrive. I remember that Richdog asked that they pre-test the monitor before shipment and it seems that at the end he received perfect panel.

igors · 22 Apr 2006 at 23:09

One user (sifulee from hardforum) posted VERY nice pictures of the NEC in action. Maybe the best pictures around

LaRZ · 22 Apr 2006 at 23:41

Thanks Igors

Thats the 20wMgx2

not the 20wgx2 btw

Mines in Native mode, and looks yellow because of this colour profile not working

or calibrated at 9300 k and I get colour banding.

a bit dissapointing really

, is there anyway I can get a 9300k white in Native mode ?

igors · 23 Apr 2006 at 00:47

LaRZ said:
Thanks Igors

Thats the 20wMgx2

not the 20wgx2 btw

Yeah, I know. Technology is the same and pictures will do the justice for the 20WGX2 also

Sometimes, I wonder why such discrimination for the Europe so that NEC didn't included this multimedia goodness:

http://home.comcast.net/~sifulee/pics/img21.jpg

On the other hand, if that is keeping the price down (comparing to US) it's fine by me.

LaRZ said:
Mines in Native mode, and looks yellow because of this colour profile not working

or calibrated at 9300 k and I get colour banding.

a bit dissapointing really , is there anyway I can get a 9300k white in Native mode ?

How come ?! when you flick the standard monitor profile DV mode & 9300K colour profile you are getting the yellow and colour banding. Weird, just weird. It's pretty much cool-white here and no trace of colour banding.

ScottGTO · 23 Apr 2006 at 10:17

Another quick question if you'll indulge me..

The panel is connected via DVI to my ATI X800 Pro. I don't see the BIOS/Post or even the XP loading screen. The screen kicks in at the XP logon screen.

Is this a setting I need to change? A fault? Me being daft?

S.

ash7jar · 23 Apr 2006 at 10:25

ScottGTO said:
Was it similar in severity ash7jar?

Edit: typo.

Yes it looked that same as that

wiko · 23 Apr 2006 at 10:40

ScottGTO

hi scot, the way i managed to see the post was to put the vga cable on. i had only the dvi on b4, hope this helps.

LaRZ · 23 Apr 2006 at 18:26

heya

here
is a quick image I made in Photoshop for an oil painting its a bmp at 1680 x 1050 and has many bluetones. If set as background you will notice in Native mode there is all the tones the steps in colour are just a few mm appart and even, but when you switch to 9300 k mode the panel drops out of full 8 bit(native mode) and then there is colour banding every inch or so my artwork

.

I guess the question I was looking for, was "Can this monitor display full 8 bit colours with 9300k whites?"

and I guess the answer would be no.

or at least I can't get it to.

Native mode is at 6500k by the looks of it = the reason for the yellow whites.
It still does a great job but personally I find Native mode useless because of the warmth of the backlight @ 6500k, So I'll have to put up with colour banding @ 9300k ?

Thank you muchly for your input

igors · 24 Apr 2006 at 10:30

LaRZ said:
I guess the question I was looking for, was "Can this monitor display full 8 bit colours with 9300k whites?"

I don't see why not ?! Generally, colour temperature is not affecting the monitor "capabilities" in such way ... as usually number of bits is hardcoded in this technology. I would rather say that it's simply the way how the colour gamut is reacting on that gradient picture when there is a colour temperature change. You will achieve the same effect when you calibrate the colour temperature from the, let's say, nvidia software calibration tool. Your gradient would definitely start to show the colour banding problems, but generally this is not related to the fact that monitor is unable to dither the full 8-bit colour range.

LaRZ said:
Native mode is at 6500k by the looks of it = the reason for the yellow whites.
It still does a great job but personally I find Native mode useless because of the warmth of the backlight @ 6500k, So I'll have to put up with colour banding @ 9300k ?

I tried your gradient test and as far as I could tell, doesn't look so much yellowish. It has cool blue, metallic, greyish warm white (but not yellow) colour tones. It's maybe slightly more "cool" when you switch to sRGB or 7500k. Yes, on the 9500k colour barrier is more pronounceable, but as I mentioned from the above it must be the way how the gradient is reacting to the colour temp change. For example, when you switch the monitor to 9500k and make one pure colour spectrum or RGB gradient in the Photoshop, it's perfectly displayed and this is the sign that monitor is still dithering the colours OK.

Not sure really. Maybe if someone who is working more with "colours" is reading this and may help you more.

LaRZ · 24 Apr 2006 at 16:58

thanks igors could you look please try this ?
set my picture as bg and reset monitor to defaults. (again :rolleyes:

)

Switch between native mode and standard mode.? with advanced DV OFF,
do you notice that the screen deiplays a different amount of colours ?
can others report on this?. (I'm aware of

thanks muchly.

PS, I would like to add that that dispite my personal experiances (which most would concider very slight)with this screen I still think it's awesome

HL2 DM for me to wind down for the day,

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

NEC LCD20WGX2 review * UPDATED 25/02/06 *