|
BELINEA 10 60
30
INTRO
A 19-inch
monitor for less than £250, so what’s the catch? Rick Maybury weighs up the
memorably named Belinea 10 60 30
COPY
As recently as
a year ago the average street price of an entry-level 19-inch monitor was over
£400. If price erosion continues at the current rate -- and if the Belinea 10
60 30 is anything to go by -- this time next year manufacturers will be paying
us to take them away. Even so, £250 for a 19-inch monitor sounds just too good
to be true, there has to be a catch?
There are one
or two, but they’re relatively minor ones that most users will be able to live
with; moreover you can’t see them from the outside, at least it looks like it
could cost a whole lot more. It is a very straightforward design with few, if
any bells and whistles, unless you count an on-screen display as a luxury
feature. There are signs of cost cutting when you delve a little deeper. The
manufacturer ‘highly recommends’ the use of its Windows 95/98 driver software,
but manages to save a few pennies by not including a driver disc in the box,
instead owners are urged to downloads it from the Belinea web site. They
probably shaved another few bob off the price by giving it a captive video lead
and making no effort to give it any sort of Mac compatibility. However, the
biggest saving must have been on the tilt stand. It really doesn’t seem to be
up to the job of supporting over 20kgs of dead weight. It wobbles alarmingly
and the adjustment is stiff and awkward.
The tech spec
look okay though; the sync range covers all commonly used Windows resolutions
and graphics modes up to and including 1600 x 1200. It conforms to all power
saving protocols and the on-screen display includes a wide range of adjustments
and user preferences. The display is called up by pressing the right side of
the large semicircular button on the front panel, the two other button-like
protuberances are in fact cosmetic and possibly an effort to stop it look like
a frowning face. Menu item selections and adjustments are made using a
concealed thumbwheel beneath the screen surround. This is actually quite
clever, when there’s no display on the screen if you turn the thumbwheel
clockwise the contrast adjustment appears, and moving it counter clockwise
calls up the brightness display.
PERFORMANCE
The 10 60 30
like one or two other Belinea models we’ve tested has very little in brightness
reserve, which can make the image look washed out in a brightly-lit room. It’s
not helped by only moderately effective anti-reflective coatings on the screen.
The OSD has moiré correction settings but neither completely eliminated the
faint patterning that is visible on light grey backgrounds and desktops. Our
sample suffered from some slight colour staining in the top left hand corner of
the screen, which would not go away, despite repeated use of the degauss
facility, however we’ll treat this as a one off and in any case it can be
easily eliminated using a manual degauss coil. Our standard test routines and
patterns indicated that focus, convergence and linearity were all spot on, but
they did throw up a couple of niggly faults. There was some slight smearing on
sharp black/white transitions – not enough to be concerned about it has to be
said – and the power supply grumbled a bit when we got to the power regulation
test (slight ballooning when fed with a flashing black/white test pattern).
Again it wasn’t enough to worry about but it does suggest some penny-pinching
in the design of the electronics.
Moving video
looked quite good though, pictures are sharp, showing plenty of detail and
crisp, natural looking colours. Images are not as vibrant as a similarly sized
Trinitron screen, say, or some of the top-end CRTs but it’s certainly liveable,
assuming it’s not going to be used in very brightly lit surroundings.
SUMMARY
Against the low
price must be weighed the fairly average picture performance the cheapo stand
and lack of Mac compatibility. It’s not really in the serious CAD/CAM league
but for general Windows applications and video editing the 10 60 30 looks like
quite a good deal, especially if you’re on a tight budget.
MAKE/MODEL
BELINEA 10 60
30
How Much?
£249 (inc. VAT)*
Tube size
19-inch FST
Visible display
area
mm
Dot Pitch
0.26mm
Synch range
Horizontal: 30
to 96KHz
Vertical: 50 to
160Hz
Max Resolution
1600 x 1200
pixels
Dimensions
460 x 462 x
407mm
Weight
21.5kg
Maxdata,
telephone (01344) 788900
CV RATINGS
Features ***
Performance ***
Ease of use ***
Value for money ****
Overall Rating
74%
---end---
ã R. Maybury 2000 0205
| 
