Application Analysis

The core of our LCD benchmarking comes from real application analysis. We play with a lot of monitors and it gets easier for us each time to pick out problems with an LCD just by using the right application. Here are a few quick looks at some demanding full screen applications. We already ran ColorVision's OptiCal software, so all of our monitors are calibrated and adjusted to the same curves.

High Definition Video – As always, we played the WMV9 1080p version of Coral Reef Adventure to test our monitor’s ability to play high definition video. Like the Dell 1905FP, this monitor is not really suited for widescreen full motion video, but we were a little more concerned with the colors on the display anyway. Again, the SyncMaster falls short of the Dell 1905FP – the colors seem close, but just not right.

The Matrix Reload, The Matrix – We use the Matrix series to test full motion video on our LCDs. Since the Matrix isn't the best movie to test color reproduction, we typically only look for motion blur on gray-to-gray transitions or other imperfections in the signal. Response time has virtually no effect on a full motion video, and not surprisingly, we didn’t notice any problems here. The unusual color choices in most of the movie did not feel off balance either, but this is partially due to the lower resolution of the movie. Video playback was just fine.

World of Warcraft – As we mentioned earlier, we were a bit skeptical about the actual impact of low response time. After several hours of extensive testing and questing in WOW, we were finally converted. The display did not have as many of the “wash out” problems found on the Flatron L1980U, but motion blur was more or less non-existent. We still notice the difference next to a good CRT, but the blur is less noticeable on the SyncMaster 915N when compared to the Dell UltraSharp 1905FP.

Max Payne 2 – The extreme light and dark transitions in Max Payne still provide us with the sufficient criteria to benchmark transient response time; specifically, we can focus on the light and dark extremes. Max Payne proved a good test for us to detect motion blur again; whenever we rotated the camera, we could just barely detect the tell tale signs of the additional blur. Granted, compared to the 1905FP, this is a significant improvement.

Halo, Unreal Tournament 2004 – Halo and Unreal Tournament 2004 proved to be a real mixed bag as far as game play is concerned. The dimmer levels of Halo seemed playable on the SyncMaster, but some of the well lit, outdoor arenas on UT2004 were a bit muted. Using some color correction techniques in the OSD, we could usually compensate for the washed out effect, but we obviously would not want to do this for every game/level. A software interface for the OSD would go a long way here.

Color Depth – Using several colorful images, we scrutinized several monitors and compared their color depth, wash out, contrast, etc. We can look for subtle differences within images under a multi-monitor display. Under these careful circumstances, the flaws of the 6-bit display are demonstrated fairly easily; multicolor text looks jagged and incorrectly shaded, and hard edges are unnecessarily anti-aliased. Below, you can see one example of these tests (the top image is the raw PNG, the bottom left is the Samsung 915N and the right is the Dell 1905FP).

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