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Usability

The menu controls have been relocated to the underside of the screen. This adds to the simplistic and contemporary style to the monitor. This results in a cleaner looking monitor. Although the button placement is attractive it feels awkward to have the buttons on the underside of the bezel. This was magnified with the issues I had with the stiffness of the hinge; when the bottom hinge is all the way down, I had to wedge my fingers in there to use the buttons. There is definite tactile feedback on the buttons with a slight click when depressed.

The OSD is fairly intuitive with the usual settings of brightness, contrast, color adjustments, white point, picture position amongst a few other settings. Of particular note, the 172x has a feature called MagicBright, which automatically adjusts brightness depending on the intended use of the monitor. The available settings are User Controlled, Text, Internet and Entertainment. Text, Internet and Entertainment get progressively brighter. The Auto button automatically tries to adjust fine course and position when using an analog signal.