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It's unofficial because it's all subjective. After agonizing over this monitor, the Eizo 2411w, and the LCD2690, I opted for this one. This is my first experience with an LCD monitor other than my Dell 17" widescreen, which is an S-PVA panel and subject to noticeable and unacceptable color/contrast shifts when viewing from *any* angle. Since the Eizo 2411w is of the same panel, that ruled the Eizo out (however, I debated long and hard before ruling it out).
My main purposes are 1) photoediting, 1a) gaming, and 3) watching DVDs, editting home videos. So for that, I really wanted the 2690 and it's wider color gamut. However, repeated reports of problems coupled with the fact that it was a few hundred USD more, and well, I decided to get the 2490.
I'm still playing around with the settings, but this is my experience so far (after one week of use).
The good:
1. No dead pixels, no stuck pixels.
2. Silent as the night. No high pitched whine, no hum, no audible noise at all.
3. It's fast. I played Oblivion at 1920x1200 at the default monitor settings but with the highest quality option set in the game and the game response was in sync with my mouse response. AND THIS WAS WITH OVERDRIVE OFF (default setting). I may not turn overdrive on because I really don't see the need to, but I will just to test it out (and because I can
). Seriously, I don't need to compare lag with a CRT side by side because I just don't notice it. As soon as I moved my mouse my character was moving simultaneously.
4. No ghosting/blurring that I saw. I need to play more and get into some intense battles, but the fighting I did in Oblivion did not show any ghosting blurring. Even just swinging my mace around I did not notice it (and I was looking for it).
5. No backlight bleeding or non-uniform color/luminance/blackness. And this with colorcomp off (default). I once saw, in the first 2 days of use, the horrific bright splotch in the lower left corner that andyo exagerrated in the 2690 thread, and I thought, oh great, even the 2490!!! I don't recall the circumstances under which I saw it, but I pressed my finger on the lower left screen, the image shifted slightly, and then it was gone. I haven't seen it since. I don't know if it occurred during a switch in screen state (for example, from off to on to off again) or if there was no signal when it showed up (and thus why it showed up) or if pressing my finger on screen actually fixed it (I seriously doubt it), but it's gone now, so I'm happy.
6. H-IPS. Absolutely no color/contrast shift.
7. I put in a 4:3 version of Spiderman in the DVD player and it played fine at the correct aspect ratio. The monitor default setting is FULL screen, but there were vertical bars are either side, so I'm not yet sure what FULL screen means. I have subsequently changed it to ASPECT, but I haven't played another DVD at that setting. I will say that the 480p quality (or lack thereof) shines through on a 1080p monitor The manual says the monitor will not display 480i, 568i, or 1080i, so I don't know what happens if the source is one of those.
8. The panel is NOT a mirror. I have two windows over my shoulder in the room I have the puter set up in and the glare off the windows is not a problem. My laptop is horrible to the point where I cannot play games during the day with windows over my shoulder.
The bad:
1. The single most annoying thing I can say about my monitor is that the screen door effect is noticeable if I sit too close. The monitor is sooo big and my desk sooo small that it's hard not to sit close (<24"). But if there is a gray background (for example, the Windows pop up windows), it's noticeable almost to the point of giving me a headache. I have to move back from the screen to make it go away (>36"). I don't know if that's the fault of the menu windows or the monitor. Sometimes it's visible on white background too. I thought by getting the 24" vs. the 25.5" that the screen door effect would be minimal. If not, I'm glad I opted for the 24" instead of the larger model. I messed around a little with brightness levels to see if that would make it go away. If anything, reducing the brightness made the screendoor effect on a white background noticeable. I do not notice it with dark colors. FWIW, I can see lines on both my 17" CRTs at 60hz, so maybe my eyes are sensitive to that frequency (which is also the frequency of the digital signal at 1920x1200)? Anyway, I'll play around some more to see if I can improve the situation. I plan on taking a picture of what I'm talking about and looking at it on my laptop to see if it's as noticeable.
I do have to say that I only notice this on my windows desktop or in office programs that have a lot of gray/light colors and are static. Gaming, movies, or my photos, I don't notice it at all. I think it's because the image is constantly changing and my photos are not pictures of gray cards
2. Black levels are not black at the default settings. This doesn't bother me and I will play around with black levels to see what I can do, but it's been well established that IPS panels aren't great at black levels (and I concur now that I have one). And there is the ever-so-slight-barely-noticeable-unless-you-look-for-it purple tinge to the black level.
What I have yet to do/other observations:
1. I do have a colorimeter and I plan to calibrate this monitor in the near future. In particular, maybe the contrast will improve and the brightness level dialed down to something more tolerable.
2. The default brightness is VERY bright. It's great during the day. At night with all the lights turned off, it's unbearable. However, there are some settings (ambilight and auto-brightness) that supposedly help this, I just haven't had time to play with it.
3. I think, maybe, perhaps, those people complaining about lag may not have a fast enough computer to drive 1920x1200 resolution (see the 2690 thread). I noticed lag on my lDell aptop playing Oblivion, but I have settings notched up a bit from what that computer can do easily. I notice nothing on my current rig and monitor.
Conclusion:
Other than the screen door effect, the monitor is great. It's responsive, it's big, it's IPS. The colors are crisp, it's quiet, and it doesn't put out a lot of heat. No dead/stuck pixels, no backlight bleed or non-uniformity, just great. Given the choice between my S-PVA laptop screen and my NEC with it's screen door, I'll take the screen door any day of the week. I just hope it goes away soon though..... Hmmmmmm, now that I think about it, maybe if I set my desktop to something lower than 1920x1200 the screen door will go away? Will have to try that soon.
Hope this helps. Oh, and from what I understand, this monitor is only available in the U.S., which probably explains why there is very little info on it.
My main purposes are 1) photoediting, 1a) gaming, and 3) watching DVDs, editting home videos. So for that, I really wanted the 2690 and it's wider color gamut. However, repeated reports of problems coupled with the fact that it was a few hundred USD more, and well, I decided to get the 2490.
I'm still playing around with the settings, but this is my experience so far (after one week of use).
The good:
1. No dead pixels, no stuck pixels.
2. Silent as the night. No high pitched whine, no hum, no audible noise at all.
3. It's fast. I played Oblivion at 1920x1200 at the default monitor settings but with the highest quality option set in the game and the game response was in sync with my mouse response. AND THIS WAS WITH OVERDRIVE OFF (default setting). I may not turn overdrive on because I really don't see the need to, but I will just to test it out (and because I can
). Seriously, I don't need to compare lag with a CRT side by side because I just don't notice it. As soon as I moved my mouse my character was moving simultaneously.4. No ghosting/blurring that I saw. I need to play more and get into some intense battles, but the fighting I did in Oblivion did not show any ghosting blurring. Even just swinging my mace around I did not notice it (and I was looking for it).
5. No backlight bleeding or non-uniform color/luminance/blackness. And this with colorcomp off (default). I once saw, in the first 2 days of use, the horrific bright splotch in the lower left corner that andyo exagerrated in the 2690 thread, and I thought, oh great, even the 2490!!! I don't recall the circumstances under which I saw it, but I pressed my finger on the lower left screen, the image shifted slightly, and then it was gone. I haven't seen it since. I don't know if it occurred during a switch in screen state (for example, from off to on to off again) or if there was no signal when it showed up (and thus why it showed up) or if pressing my finger on screen actually fixed it (I seriously doubt it), but it's gone now, so I'm happy.
6. H-IPS. Absolutely no color/contrast shift.
7. I put in a 4:3 version of Spiderman in the DVD player and it played fine at the correct aspect ratio. The monitor default setting is FULL screen, but there were vertical bars are either side, so I'm not yet sure what FULL screen means. I have subsequently changed it to ASPECT, but I haven't played another DVD at that setting. I will say that the 480p quality (or lack thereof) shines through on a 1080p monitor
The manual says the monitor will not display 480i, 568i, or 1080i, so I don't know what happens if the source is one of those.8. The panel is NOT a mirror. I have two windows over my shoulder in the room I have the puter set up in and the glare off the windows is not a problem. My laptop is horrible to the point where I cannot play games during the day with windows over my shoulder.
The bad:
1. The single most annoying thing I can say about my monitor is that the screen door effect is noticeable if I sit too close. The monitor is sooo big and my desk sooo small that it's hard not to sit close (<24"). But if there is a gray background (for example, the Windows pop up windows), it's noticeable almost to the point of giving me a headache. I have to move back from the screen to make it go away (>36"). I don't know if that's the fault of the menu windows or the monitor. Sometimes it's visible on white background too. I thought by getting the 24" vs. the 25.5" that the screen door effect would be minimal. If not, I'm glad I opted for the 24" instead of the larger model. I messed around a little with brightness levels to see if that would make it go away. If anything, reducing the brightness made the screendoor effect on a white background noticeable. I do not notice it with dark colors. FWIW, I can see lines on both my 17" CRTs at 60hz, so maybe my eyes are sensitive to that frequency (which is also the frequency of the digital signal at 1920x1200)? Anyway, I'll play around some more to see if I can improve the situation. I plan on taking a picture of what I'm talking about and looking at it on my laptop to see if it's as noticeable.
I do have to say that I only notice this on my windows desktop or in office programs that have a lot of gray/light colors and are static. Gaming, movies, or my photos, I don't notice it at all. I think it's because the image is constantly changing and my photos are not pictures of gray cards
2. Black levels are not black at the default settings. This doesn't bother me and I will play around with black levels to see what I can do, but it's been well established that IPS panels aren't great at black levels (and I concur now that I have one). And there is the ever-so-slight-barely-noticeable-unless-you-look-for-it purple tinge to the black level.
What I have yet to do/other observations:
1. I do have a colorimeter and I plan to calibrate this monitor in the near future. In particular, maybe the contrast will improve and the brightness level dialed down to something more tolerable.
2. The default brightness is VERY bright. It's great during the day. At night with all the lights turned off, it's unbearable. However, there are some settings (ambilight and auto-brightness) that supposedly help this, I just haven't had time to play with it.
3. I think, maybe, perhaps, those people complaining about lag may not have a fast enough computer to drive 1920x1200 resolution (see the 2690 thread). I noticed lag on my lDell aptop playing Oblivion, but I have settings notched up a bit from what that computer can do easily. I notice nothing on my current rig and monitor.
Conclusion:
Other than the screen door effect, the monitor is great. It's responsive, it's big, it's IPS. The colors are crisp, it's quiet, and it doesn't put out a lot of heat. No dead/stuck pixels, no backlight bleed or non-uniformity, just great. Given the choice between my S-PVA laptop screen and my NEC with it's screen door, I'll take the screen door any day of the week. I just hope it goes away soon though..... Hmmmmmm, now that I think about it, maybe if I set my desktop to something lower than 1920x1200 the screen door will go away? Will have to try that soon.
Hope this helps. Oh, and from what I understand, this monitor is only available in the U.S., which probably explains why there is very little info on it.