Quick-Look: $300 24" Soyo DYLM24D6 VS $400 24" Westinghouse L2410NM

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Rock&Roll

[H]ard|Gawd
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In case you haven't heard about the three-hundred-dollar-bandit of a 24" LCD that is the SOYO DYLM24D6, they you should brush up here and here.

Many of us geeks and forum dwellers are experiencing the pain of making multiple trips back to Office Max to give them their POS back. You'll see me in those threads, first overjoyed at the bargain I had scored, and then later on tensely awaiting the death my 3rd Soyo in less that a week. So far #3 hasn't died on me yet. But, in my eager certainty that the Soyo will break imminently, and knowing that I wasn't going to accept exchanging for a fourth, I decided I'd give the Westinghouse L2410NM a shot.

There isn't much info about the Westinghouse out there. But, since BustBuy had it on sale for $400, I figured I could get it, and take it back if it sucks. (You can also get it at Newegg for $360 after MIR) I couldn't do much worse than the Soyo. So I'm going to take this opportunity to (subjectively) tell you how these monitors compare when they are side by side. Let me say this up front, the IQ difference between these two monitors isn't large, and you'll have to be looking pretty hard (like I am) to see the differences. Having them side by side would be the only way to tell them apart.

Now I'm currently positioned in front of these two beautiful 24" monitors. I spent about 2 hours calibrating both of them to get the best possible picture, without using any software or driver based image enhancements. I used a combination of checkemon, this web site, and this thread to help me get these monitors calibrated. When I got done, the desktop and solid color tests were identical between the two monitors. With that done, I spent the next three hours doing side by side comparisons of the monitors in movies, flash video, desktop apps, and in TF2.

Here's a list of the final settings I settled on with these monitors

......................Westy:...........Soyo:
Brightness:...........70.................30
Contrast:..............80.................60

Red:....................32.................38
Green:.................32.................38
Blue:...................38.................38

Image Quality:
Read Here

Gaming:
All's well here. No noticable or lagging ghosting on either monitor.

OSD:
Just be warned. The on screen display for both of these montors sucks big time. The westinghouse is annoying because the menu button is also the source selection button. As well, the power button is easy to hit by mistake while you're trying to make adjustment. The soyo is also very non-intuitive............

Viewing Anlge:
I didn't do any special tests here. I just quickly moved around the room while looking at the screens. I would seem the Westinghouse does a bit better at side-to-side view angles, but it does substantailly worse at vertical viewing angles


Miscellaneous:

1)
The westy's stand isn't quite as cheap as the soyo's, but niether one is capable of verticle adjustment. The Westy is about 1/4" taller than the soyo.

2)
with the Westy, you'll need to buy a DVI to HDMI cable, as it does not have a DVI port. DO NOT pay $70 bucks at a retail store for one of these cables. You can buy them online for $10 bucks. However, I was anxious to compare, so I went to Wal-Mart and bought a very nice RCA DVI to HDMI cable for $30. (they had another brand for 2 bucks less, but it had less pins in the DVI connector, therefore I assumed it would be a worse cable) (Kind of like paying extra for a theoretical instantaneous delivery from newegg) And don't be so rediculous as to run your 1900 x 1200 monitor with the 15-pin D-SUB VGA cable.

3)
If you wan to play Xbox on your LCD, avoid the Soyo.

4)
Strangley, the Westing house internal circuitry does sqeal a little bit. This happens in two instances. One sound is emmitted any time I have 120 volts applied to the panel. A second sound is emmitted when I have the brightness lower that 100. You won't be able to hear this if you have a desktop with any sort of fan inside, or if the room isn't 100% quiet. This, as of now, is my only only cause for concern on the Westinghouse.
 
Westinghouse is $376.63 after $50 MIR and $16.64 shipping at Newegg
I've seen three Soyo 24's, two bought in TX and one in NV- all three still running strong. 70% failure rate seems unlikely to me.
 
I read the whole thing, appreciate the nice review but I'm not going to lie - pictures would have helped alot.
 
I've got two of the Soyos right now, no problems with anything. No bad/dead pixels, no sparkles, no lines, just a great LCD for a ridiculous price. I was also able to get $30 off both, which made it an even better deal. I've had one for one month and the second for two weeks. Using the DVI cables that came with other LCDs, so nothing that's high quality. I'm using the Soyo DVI cable with a Dell 2005FPW, working fine. I really wonder if a lot of the issues aren't just bad cables, bad drivers, and/or bad compatibility. I recently had a 20.1" Starlogic widescreen LCD that refused to work over DVI on any Intel GMA graphics and flashed repeatedly when on an ATI x1300. Same screen worked fine on Nvidia 6600 and 7900GS cards or when using the VGA connector.

Only things I don't like on the Soyo are the OSD and the big logos on the bezel. Neither are big deals, although I wish it was easier to switch them to the VGA input when I'm working on another PC. I miss the buttons right on the front of the 2005FPW.
 
widefault said:
I've got two of the Soyos right now, no problems with anything. No bad/dead pixels, no sparkles, no lines, just a great LCD for a ridiculous price. I was also able to get $30 off both, which made it an even better deal. I've had one for one month and the second for two weeks. Using the DVI cables that came with other LCDs, so nothing that's high quality. I'm using the Soyo DVI cable with a Dell 2005FPW, working fine. I really wonder if a lot of the issues aren't just bad cables, bad drivers, and/or bad compatibility. I recently had a 20.1" Starlogic widescreen LCD that refused to work over DVI on any Intel GMA graphics and flashed repeatedly when on an ATI x1300. Same screen worked fine on Nvidia 6600 and 7900GS cards or when using the VGA connector.

Only things I don't like on the Soyo are the OSD and the big logos on the bezel. Neither are big deals, although I wish it was easier to switch them to the VGA input when I'm working on another PC. I miss the buttons right on the front of the 2005FPW.
Click to expand...

Now some less pessimistic voices finally surface. Where have you guys been while the rest of us newcomers to Soyo land sit here thinking we've just bought a $300 turd? :p Thanks for the input, I may not be so quick to give up on the Soyo.......

PC Surgeon said:
Does the westy have the slight gloss to the screen like the soyo?
Click to expand...

From what I can tell, the westy is a little less glossy, which is fine by me. What's the glossy thing good for but being harder to clean?

taylorwilsdon said:
I read the whole thing, appreciate the nice review but I'm not going to lie - pictures would have helped alot.
Click to expand...

Agreed. Bad timing............All I can say is this. If I can boil it down, the westy is better at displaying dramatic darks, and dramatic whites. Images really bounce off the screen. This comes at the expense, sometimes, of overall dark area definition.

The more I play with different movies and such, the more I am beginning to find that the Westy has quite a bit more dark limitations than I first realized in test patterns and initial videos.

To be quite honest with you, the Soyo is starting to seems to at least be more consistent in picture quality from movie to movie, to picture to picture, etc...........

I'm no pro, so a big grain of salt is advised.
 
My second Soyo is damned hard to beat. You can say this is a glowing review. I mean this is the best LCD picture quality I have ever seen. Colors are so much better than my LG 22" L226WTQ. It literally blows it out of the water, I almost feel bad for selling it for $250 because it can't hold a candle to this Soyo ($300). The brightness is overwhelming in good terms. Gaming is much more "CRT like" than a TN panel. There are a few drawbacks, I see a bit of tearing but not a whole lot. I'm on the fence about returning it since this has been a stellar deal.

I wonder if I have to deal with Soyo if my monitor goes out after the 14 day window if I bought the service plan? Anyone know?
 
PC Surgeon said:
I wonder if I have to deal with Soyo if my monitor goes out after the 14 day window if I bought the service plan? Anyone know?
Click to expand...

This is one of my great concerns. Hopefully someone might have an experience to share about how well Soyo is about living up to their warranties.
 
In what has become a large list of contradictory statements from myself, I intend to take a major reversal in my assessment of these two monitors. The last 6 hours of testing really makes me certain that I was very wrong in my statements about picture quality on the Westinghouse. (Like I said, I'm not a pro...........mistakes were bound to happen in initial tests)

In some different movies I watched (uncompressed MPEG-4), It became clear that the Westinghouse really does have some very serious problems displaying dark images with great definition. In some movies, everything looked like some murderous mafia scene. For this, there was no perfect cure. The best results I got from the Westinghouse involved giving up on the monitor's adjustments, and instead using the Nvidia overlay enhancements. This fixed a lot, but the Westinghouse was then very inconsistent from scene to scene.

Through a bit more tweaking on settings (without use of software or driver enhancements), I was able to get the Soyo to surpass the IQ of the Westinghouse in just about everything. Color test patterns, games, movies, you name it. the Westinghouse was getting beat by the soyo......................As PC Surgeon said, the soyo was achieving very CRT like results.

So I guess, a few more hours of testing has changed a lot in my eyes. I really have no choice but to hang on to the Soyo, and hope it doesn't let me down. And if it does, I'll have no choice but to try another soyo. The $300-bandit lives on
 
Rock&Roll said:
In what has become a large list of contradictory statements from myself, I intend to take a major reversal in my assessment of these two monitors. The last 6 hours of testing really makes me certain that I was very wrong in my statements about picture quality on the Westinghouse. (Like I said, I'm not a pro...........mistakes were bound to happen in initial tests)

In some different movies I watched (uncompressed MPEG-4), It became clear that the Westinghouse really does have some very serious problems displaying dark images with great definition. In some movies, everything looked like some murderous mafia scene. For this, there was no perfect cure. The best results I got from the Westinghouse involved giving up on the monitor's adjustments, and instead using the Nvidia overlay enhancements. This fixed a lot, but the Westinghouse was then very inconsistent from scene to scene.

Through a bit more tweaking on settings (without use of software or driver enhancements), I was able to get the Soyo to surpass the IQ of the Westinghouse in just about everything. Color test patterns, games, movies, you name it. the Westinghouse was getting beat by the soyo......................As PC Surgeon said, the soyo was achieving very CRT like results.

So I guess, a few more hours of testing has changed a lot in my eyes. I really have no choice but to hang on to the Soyo, and hope it doesn't let me down. And if it does, I'll have no choice but to try another soyo. The $300-bandit lives on
Click to expand...

Thanks for the update. It would be good if you would adjust your original post for those who only read the first post :)
 
thanks for the reminder....updated.

Again all, I truly apologize for not having my camera nearby to show you all visually. It will be some time before i have the camera nearby, and by then I will no longer possess the westy. If my word is worth anything, by the time I got done testing, there really was no doubt which monitor had better color, which means a lot more than input options to me.

One thing I kept forgetting to mention.....the Westinghouse is advertised everywhere as a 1000:1 contrast panel. On the box is says 700:1.......:confused: Judging by the color performance, I'd say it is NOT 1000:1.
 
Might have to try it. In my experience, when the I see colors being more vibrant from one setting to the next, I check some color scales ot make sure I'm not over-saturating, therefore killing the effective color range of a display. Saturation isn't 100% bad, but over-saturation is kind of like listening to music in simulated surround sound. For the first few minutes is sounds cooler, like this music is more alive, until a little bit later you realize everything your hearing is way out of focus and poorly reproduced.

I don't mind a tiny bit of over saturation just to keep things form being absolutely flat looking. It seems the soyo is currently giving me a very nice mix of having a really good color range, and providing just enough saturation to keep things pretty lively, not anemic. These panels are pretty damn nice.
 
I bought my Soyo during the second sale at OfficeMax. I have ran every image test I could think of or find from the various threads etc. I am extremely pleased at this point.

I have seen a lot of people reporting failures and I do believe mine runs a bit hotter than I'd like. I'll probably mod a fan to put back there to pull air off the top.

It's got an impeccable image and it beats or is equal to any of the screens I have at work.

I haven't bought an extended warranty yet. I may go the Square Trade route.

One other thing I should mention that I forgot to.

I recently had a friend purchase one of these as well. His was in same condition and is working fine too. He's been running it 2 weeks. I set the monitor up at my house tweaked it and gave it back. This is not to downplay problems. I just seem to have gotten lucky so far.

I hope "knock of particle board wood" mine lasts a good while.

Of all the complaints I have read of I haven't seen anyone yet that actually tried Soyo's warranty. I'm curious if it's horrid.
 
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