Sony X-Black HS75P/B

[pascal]

I need an advice from experienced LCD users.

I have a new Samsung 710N 17" LCD. It is very good for everyday home office use and casual gaming. But sometimes I miss my old Trinitron deep black levels, specially at night. I found a brazillian reseller with good price for the Sony X-Black 17" HS75P/B, much cheaper than 3 months ago. I am thinking about buy the sony and give the samsung to my daughter.

The improvments will be DVI-D connection, faster (8ms) panel, better contrast and deeper blacks.
Will it be worth the upgrade? Thanks

 

[Tahir2]

The blacks will definitely be better. The cost is that it has a high reflection and any kind of light sources bounces off the screen like a mirror.

Here is a review from a colleague of mine... please note we do sell these screens at times but it aimed at providing information to customers rather than a hard sell type review.

 

[pascal]

Thanks for the info and link Tahir,

I saw the sony side-by-side with the samsung in a low ambient light demonstration and the sony was amazing. Unfortunatelly I could not do my own tests.

I will buy the Sony

 

[pascal]

I bought it. Hope to have it here next weekend

 

[pascal]

The Sony HS75P\B monitor arrived this morning.
The default configuration is too bright, and I changed the gamma and color temperature.

Instalation configuration:
- 1280x1024 at 60Hz
- DVI-D connection
- Gamma level 3 (darker option, the default is the brighter level 2)
- color temperature 6500K (the default is 9300K, more blue)
- WinXP recognized it as Plug&Play monitor

I quickly tested it with photos (4 mpixels), documents (acrobat and MS office), DVDs (Sphere, Red Planet and The Invencibles), game (half-life 2) and Displaymate.
My first impressions are:
- The aesthetics is excellent
- The screen is glossy, but it is not a problem for me. Sometimes the reflections reminds me a 19" Sony Trinitron I used at work. edited: in fact images are crystal clear with this glass like panel.
- Docs and texts looks better and sharper.
- The black levels are very good, much better than the Samsung. You can notice the difference everywhere when playing DVDs, reading docs, photos and games
- Colors looks good and are enhanced by the better contrast.
- I saw no ghost or blur.

This LCD monitor is just amazing

I will do more tests tonight and upload some pics.

 

[Tahir2]

Thanks for the update, glad you are happy with your purchase.

 

[pascal]

And I have to thank you again Tahir for the incentive.

The picture below (taken with a 4mp Digital Camera) doesnt make justice to the monitor´s image quality.
This is a scene from the "Sphere" DVD. It is almost like an HDR scene.
See the strong lights in the foreground and the black details in the background.
In the Samsung I could not see the details in the background.

Also this monitor has both backlight and brightness control
I still have to learn more about it, but my guess is that the luminance equation is something like:

L = (B + CX**G)W ; where L=luminance, B=Brightness, X=signal, G=gamma, C=contrast, W=backlight.

 

[pascal]

Just took this picture (with DC) from Sin City DVD and I think the black levels are aceptable.

 

[Tahir2]

I would look but I don't have permission...

 

[Deepak]

Just took this picture (with DC) from Sin City DVD and I think the black levels are aceptable.

Good shot, can we have slightly more intersting pics now....

 

[pascal]

Just one more pic of a T2_wmv_HD
Almost two months using this monitor and still excited.

The good news is my home reform is almost finished.
The bad news is my GF5600 died and I had to buy a GF5200 in a hurry to finish my job.
Maybe it is time for an CPU/mobo/memory/videocard upgrade.
I am thinking about the following configuration:
- Athlon64 3200 (No overclock)
- A8N-VM
- 2 x 512MB DDR400
- GF6600 DDR2 PCIe

Tahir, why you cant see the pics?

 

[Tahir2]

Ah I can see it now. Previusly I did not have permission privilidges (related to post count I think).

 

[Dave Baumann]

I've had one of these for several months now. I knew what the Sony XBlack panels were like from my Sony S3-XP laptop, and if anything the panel actually appears to be better than the monitor. Still have my Iiyama panel as the display next to it and the colours are just horribly washed out in comparison.

 

[Tahir2]

Dave your last post seems a tad confusing. Your Iiyama is more washed out or the Sony X panel?

Edit: It is probably me being a bit obtuse.

 

[pascal]

I've had one of these for several months now. I knew what the Sony XBlack panels were like from my Sony S3-XP laptop, and if anything the panel actually appears to be better than the monitor...

Do you mean the Vaio panel is better? Probably because of higher dpi.

I am back to 9300K. Blue is more pleasant in the long term to the eyes.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Sorry, the Iiayama is washed out in comparison to the Sony panel, and I prefer the Sony panel to the screen on my S3 XP (I think the black coating is better and the backlight also appears to be better). The Sony is certainly one of the best panels I've seen yet (although it would be nice if they made it in the sizes the Dell 30"'er comes in at!).

 

[pascal]

Good to hear you like the HS75P Dave. It makes me more confident in my choice of LCD

I found the following information about the X-Black coating: http://www.vaiopro.sony-europe.com/professional/en/why_reasons.php?c=2&a=2

X-Black uses a special polarising filter to cancel out the 'noise' of light shining on to the screen, rather than on it. The results are hard to miss: sharper contrasting tones, brilliant colours and crisper images.

This confirm my guess that the coating is in fact a Polarising Filter probably acting like the one used by Panny in the newest panels (it is called "deep black filter").

Also interresting to notice is that the newest Vaio have LED backlight: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/mobile/display/sony-vaio-vgntx1rp_4.html

 

[pascal]

Just one more movie pic of Ultraviolet with quicktime 720p at night in the dark

 

[Mintmaster]

Just took this picture (with DC) from Sin City DVD and I think the black levels are aceptable.

Pictures are horrible for displaying black level.

First of all, the eye is much more sensitive to subtle levels of light than a camera.

More importantly, digital cameras almost never faithfully reproduce shadows. They have tone curves made to look nice to the viewer, i.e. high contrast that makes almost black look like black.

I've seen lots of pics of LCD and LCOS (pre-SXRD) rear projection TV's on avsforum and they show perfect black level. Once you see the sets with your own eyes, though, the black levels are pretty crap.

 

[pascal]

I agree Mintmaster, specially with low resolution (~70kb) pic, but some people may not know Sin City and the picture help understand the context. Thanks for the input

One more about the Ultraviolet movie, the girl is beautiful. Is she the one in the "Fifth Element" ?