Is Solarism’s Future Looking Bright? – THG.RU

Introduction

The article first appeared in Tom’s Hard News email newsletter.

The Solarism LM1503 15″ LCD panel display boasts one of the brightest pictures in the business: 800cd/m2 (or 800 nits), and it certainly shows when you first turn it on. Solarism is proud of their ABT (advanced brightness technology), and other LCD manufacturers are also beginning to offer brighter panels. The LM1503 also features a fast response rate – so fast that it can be used as a television video display if you want to connect a VCR or DVD player. While being one of the brightest LCDs on the market today, the LM1503 isn’t perfect.

Specifications

How We Tested

We tested the LM1503 using a P4 1.8Ghz system running Windows 2000, and equipped with an ATI Radion200 AGP graphics board with 64MB (which has a 350MHz RAMDAC). Like other fixed-resolution 15″ LCDs we had to run the LM1503 at 1024 x 768 at 60Hz. Note that the monitor does support lower resolutions down to 640 x 350, however most people would never use these settings. For our tests, we used DisplayMate Multimedia Edition v2 (www.displaymate.com).

Test Results

The monitor comes with a sparse but clear 34-page manual (half in English half in Spanish). It also comes with a 15-pin D-sub cable, a sound cable, and the power supply. There is no software to install and Windows Plug-and-Play had no trouble recognizing the monitor immediately. Setting up the monitor was quite simple. We connected the monitor using a standard 15-pin D-Sub cable and the external 12v DC power supply box, and that was it. Fire up the computer and a brighter-than-usual picture appears right away.

The LM1503 has a multitude of connections on the back that include: a 15-pin Mini D-Sub connection; S-video; two composite video inputs; DC power input; mini plug audio input; and four RCA audio inputs (two each for left and right channels).

On the front of the panel are the controls for the on-screen display (OSD). Located just below these controls are the on/off button and a headphone jack. The OSD features four simple menus, and their navigation and selection is simple.

From the Monitor Function Selection Menu you can select the auto adjust feature, which sets or resets everything to provide optimum picture. You can also adjust the brightness and contrast, the clock frequency, phase, horizontal position and vertical position of the image. Clock frequency is used to fine-tune the display to match the graphic board frequency, if necessary. (Adjusting the phase seemed to have no effect on the display.)

The Tools Menu is used to select the video input you wish, adjust the speaker volume, mute the audio, or reset everything to factory defaults.

The RGB Adjusting Menu is used for selecting color temperature (9300K or 6500K are provided as defaults), or adjusting individual red, green, and blue colors.

The OSD Function Selection Menu is used to exit the on-screen display or to adjust its horizontal position, vertical position, and time out (up to 30 seconds). You can also apply moirй reduction via the OSD Function Selection Menu (although it seemed to have little effect in our tests).

Overall, the OSD was easy to use, if somewhat limited in the number of controls. Then again, there aren’t that many things that you should need to adjust on an LCD display.

Performance

We ran through the complete set of calibration and test screens provided by DisplayMate, and, in general, the LM1503 performed quite well. As shouold be expected with any LCD, there were absolutely no geometric distortion problems whatsoever. Brightness and contrast were quite good, although balancing them was a bit tricky. The pixel response rate was exceptional for an LCD. We noticed no smearing or trails during any of our animation/ motion tests (or while playing games or watching videos). The built-in speakers are nothing to write home about but they aren’t terrible, either.

The main problem we found was a general brightness inconsistency, particularly at the edges. The effect was most noticeable along the right edge of the screen and at the upper left of the display.

This shot of a blank (salmon-color) screen shows the slightly uneven intensities in the upper-left corner and along the right edge of the display. We should mention that the brightness inconsistencies seemed to diminish after we had used the monitor for a few days, but never completely went away.

Also, while color reproduction was generally quite good, we detected some unevenness in some of our test screens.

Note the green set trails off earlier than the other colors. This indicates a less-than-perfect color balance.

Here you can see that, when the same screen is slightly overexposed, the blues are not as intense as the reds.

Because of the variations in intensity and the slightly unbalanced color reproduction we can’t give the LM1503 LCD monitor a perfect score, but we should point out that most LCDs have similar problems (or worse).

Conclusions

The Solarism LM1503 is an exceptionally bright LCD monitor with better-than-average response rates. This means that you should have no problem viewing animations or playing games. Compared to other LCD monitors, the LM1503 also has better-than-average color reproduction – although not as good as a comparably priced CRT. While we couldn’t recommend this monitor for serious video work it should be adequate for watching the occasional DVD.

Solarism’s ABT (advanced brightness technology) certainly seems to live up to its claims, and does provide one of the brightest pictures available on any LCD. If you are in an office environment with lots of lights and windows, then this is the monitor for you.