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HANSOL 710D 17-inch monitor
STANDFIRST
Seventeen inches of class glass for less than
£200, but is there a catch? Maybe, but only on really sunny days…
COPY
Never underestimate the importance of screen
reflectivity when buying a monitor. It doesn’t matter how good the picture is
technically, if the screen throws back reflections of lights and windows then
it’s worse than useless and can be very tiring to use because your attention is
continually distracted and your eyes are forced to keep re-focusing. That’s
something we check early on when testing a monitor and the low reflectivity
screen on the Hansol 710D received a clean bill of health, until the sun came
out and the oddest things started to happen…
When a bright light strikes the monitor at a
shallow angle it appears to illuminate the inside of the screen fascia.
Depending on the angle it produces one of several strange optical illusions;
the first is a sort of thin floating border that looks as though it’s suspended
inside the screen; at a slightly different angle the screen appears to sink a
couple centimetres inside the screen. Fortunately this doesn’t impinge unduly
on image quality but it can be quite disconcerting, or intriguing, depending how
busy you happen to be.
So what else can it do? The 710D is currently
Hansol’s best-specified 17-inch SoHo monitor. It’s part of the Professional ‘P’
Series based around a very flat ‘Dynaflat’ FST picture tube made by Samsung
with a 0.25mm dot pitch. The classy casework makes a welcome change from the
drab slab-sided boxes that seem to be supplied with most PCs these days. The
spec is designed to appeal to a wide range of users, covering most
applications, up to and including demanding jobs like video editing. Maximum
resolution is 1600 x 1200 (at 75Hz) with a refresh rate up to 160Hz, which is
well beyond what most PC users will ever want or need. Needless to say it
supports all commonly used video standards for the PC and Mac. It’s Plug and
Play compatible and complies with all current power management schemes.
Connections to the outside world are a tad limited with just a captive video
lead but we don’t expect hat to be a problem for the vast majority of users.
The Tube and electronics are very comprehensively screened and Hansol proudly
boast that it exceed most environmental standards for power consumption,
radiation emissions and recyclability.
The front panel controls – indeed the only
controls – are confined to four buttons and the main on/standby switch. In
normal use the centre pair of buttons provide direct access to brightness and
contrast adjustment. The monitor’s main on-screen display is called up using
the far left button. The menu is reasonably easy to navigate and includes a
full set of picture geometry and position settings (H/V shift, H/V size, zoom,
pincushion, trapezoid, rotation, parallelogram, pin balance). There are also
items covering moiré cancellation, degauss, OSD language and position plus a
comprehensive set of colour controls with colour temperature presets and
user-set and memorised RGB values.
PERFORMANCE
After allowing the 710 to warm up for half an
hour and tweaking the picture size and shape we set to with our usual batch of
monitor test programs and moving video checks. We’re please to report that our
sample did very well on the power supply stability tests with only a barely
perceptible change in image size when fed with pulsating black and white images
of varying sizes. It had a full compliment of working pixels, satisfactory
convergence, focus and colour purity and sufficient reserves of brightness and
contrast. Moving video looks very crisp, colours are lifelike and it manages to
resolve subtle shades and hues, including skin tones, without any difficulty.
In short image quality is very good indeed and it is a very capable performer.
SUMMARY
Despite the quirky behaviour of the screen in
some lighting situations the 710D gets our vote of approval for all routine PC
and video based applications. The design and styling look good, it’s easy to
set up and use and the price is very fair indeed for a monitor with this sort
of specification. Definitely one for the shortlist.
HANSOL 710D
How Much?
£194 (inc VAT) *
Tube size
17-inch ‘Dynaflat’ FST
Visible display area
245 x 347mm
Dot Pitch
0.25mm
Max Resolution
1600 x 1200 pixels @ 75Hz
Max refresh rate
160Hz
Dimensions
418 x 419 x 517mm
Weight
17kg
Hansol
01252 360400 http://www.hansol-uk.com/
CV RATINGS
Features ****
Performance ****
Ease of use ****
Value for money ****
Overall Rating 78%
* Dabs Direct Sept PC Pro
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ã R. Maybury 2000 0309
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