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Usage & Performance

We have broken up the usage and performance into two parts because the 173MW is a multi function device. We take a look at how well it performs as a computer monitor and how well it performs as a television display.

The default color calibration was a bit off. As we covered before, the MagicTune colors were not very accurate and even after calibration, whites had a definite blue tinge to it. Switching to sRBG mode cleared things up nicely.

The OSD on the 173MW was excellent. In fact it was the fanciest OSD I have seen on any monitor and it would rival a Windows based utility in terms of looks. Navigation on the OSD menu was quite pleasant with the remote but it was a tad clunky playing with the buttons on the front of the LCD. The four horizontal buttons were a bit difficult to manipulate as it was not really intuitive which button was going where.

The higher pixel pitch was subtle but definitely noticeable when moving from the 172x to the 173MW especially with a white background. There is a slightly perceptible grid-like pattern on the MW that is not an issue on the 172x. The brightness and viewing angle is also drops off a lot quicker than the 172x. There is a large color contrast that results in the screen looking like it is colored differently after a certain point is hit. The result is that the far side has a brownish look while the near side stays a white color. This makes the 173MW unsuitable for use unless the viewer viewing the screen at perpendicular angle.

In desktop mode, the 1280x768 resolution is definitely better than 1024x768 but like we mentioned, the MW technically only has 75% of the desktop area as compared to a regular 17" 1280x1024 LCD, however for things like web browsing the missing height was not sorely missed. As someone who has a lot of applications and windows open, the horizontal span is a lot more important to me and even 1280 is not really wide enough. 1600 is the general minimum that I prefer as I find that it lets me tile windows a lot more efficiently. For those involved in desktop publishing this might be more of a concern but as far as standard desktop apps go, the missing space did not particularly bother me. This may not be the case for coders or any other person that needs to display and scroll through a lot of text. I am not going to harp on this point anymore but be aware that the height is the same as that of a 1024x768 display and if that is a limitation that cannot be worked around, this would be a monitor to avoid.

One of the cool things about having a TV tuner and multiple inputs on a monitor is the ability to do PIP and the 173MW does this marvelously. Many different sizes for the PIP are supported from a small window to a couple different ways of doing a 50/50 split of the screen. The only complaint about the PIP mode is the inability to move the PIP window; the PIP window always appears on the right side of the screen. The picture quality of the secondary sources on the PIP is good and it is my feeling that most of the extra inputs that the 173MW takes will be used in conjunction with PIP and the reasons why this is will be covered further on in our evaluation.