NEC MultiSync EA192M LCD monitor review

NEC's 19in EA192M LCD monitor is aimed at large corporates and medium-sized businesses, and continues NEC's push to provide budget energy-efficient monitors.

Launched in December, there are three ranges in NEC's performance Eco displays – the E, EA and EX series – but only the large-screen models have a USB 2.0 hub.

All have Carbon Meter to track and control the monitor's carbon footprint. The E and EX series have the lowest power consumption, although the EA's Eco mode settings can reduce business electricity bills significantly.

The boxed system we tested contained the black LCD monitor, base stand, power, audio, analog video and DVI-D video cables, along with a setup manual and CD-Rom containing documentation, drivers and colour profile, and monitor setup program.

There's also a three-year warranty on this monitor as well.

No NaviSet support
The CD contains a copy of NEC's NaviSet software, which enables on-screen adjustment of monitor display properties. With this software, you can adjust the display properties using a Windows control panel rather than using the dedicated on-screen display (OSD) buttons.

But after our fruitless attempts to get this software to work, NEC told us this monitor does not support NaviSet.

Specifications
The EA192M weighs in at 5.5kg (12.1lbs) and is an active matrix, thin-film transistor (TFT) liquid crystal display (LCD) with an 0.294mm dot pitch, with a native resolution of 1280 x 1024 in 32-bit colour at an aspect ratio of 5:4.

NEC's EA192M is an LED backlit-type monitor giving a wider colour range than the older fluorescent backlit technology. It has an impressive 5ms response time, which significantly reduces ghosting when looking at video.

The EA192M has a 250 cd/m2 brightness (a measure of the light intensity produced by the monitor) and a contrast ratio of 1000:1 (a measure of the difference between the monitor's ability to display black and white).

There are three connections at the back of the EA192M: a standard analogue VGA connection; a DisplayPort connector (the next generation of monitor connections); and a DVI-D port supporting High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP).

There are also two audio jacks: a line-in jack to enable the one watt speakers, situated underneath the monitor screen, and another to allow headphones to be connected.

Setup
The black EA192M (also available in white) we looked at was easy to set up, and all the connections are routed through a cable tidy attached to the back of the monitor screen stand.

We connected our SuperMicro 7044A-82R SuperServer running Windows Server 2008 R2 to the DVI-D port, and our Labs Dell Optiplex 980 desktop running a 32-bit version of Windows 7 Ultimate to the standard 15-pin D-SUB analogue VGA port.

With the VGA connection, NEC's No-Touch Auto Adjust gives the monitor initial settings, which can be optimised using the OSD controls.

The screen can be adjusted to 110mm for height, tilted through -5º to 20º towards the user, and also rotated through 90º from landscape mode to portrait, although the actual screen image does not automatically change to reflect the monitor screen re-positioning, like some monitors can.

Users can also attach the monitor to a standard wall-mounted Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) wall mount arm.

Image quality
We used an evaluation version of PassMark's MonitorTest and ran through a series of display test patterns to check the EA192M's image quality.

The colour space (the standard range of displayable colours), when using the standard Red Green Blue (sRGB) settings gave authentic colours with the standard test images, and the actual image quality was very good. There was no banding or discernible colour changes when looking at smoothly changing colour gradients in PassMark's MonitorTest test patterns.

We also couldn't detect any LED bleeding (extraneous light escaping) from the EA192M's LED backlight, which shows as a bright shadow, especially on dark backgrounds, or image distortion on either analogue VGA or DVI-D monitor connections.

OSD button features
There are four on-screen display (OSD) buttons on the bottom right of the screen bezel, sandwiched between the ambient light sensor and the on/off button.

The first toggles the OSD screen menu, while the second is a four-way directional key (left/right, up/down) used for menu navigation. The third is the select button for toggling between the different monitor connections, and the fourth allows a menu-specific monitor settings reset and also toggles the Eco mode [see picture].

There's also a carbon meter giving users the ability to check carbon footprint (in kg/KWh) over time, and a multi-currency calculator to dish up energy bill savings in the right currency.

The buttons are easy to use and the four-way navigational button makes trawling the menu system easy. Such a button is needed as well since there are a lot of settings and suboptions on the EA192M.

Ambibright hardware light sensor
Ambibright is a hardware light sensor on the bottom edge of the screen bezel next to the OSD buttons, which detects the level of the ambient light and automatically adjusts the image view in conjunction with the auto brightness setting.

Power management
In power-saving mode, the EA192M draws less than 0.5W and a maximum power consumption of 32W, but it typically draws 23W.

The EA192M has a dual-setting ECO mode, which decreases power consumption by reducing the brightness levels. There are two modes, with ECO mode 2 able to reduce image brightness by up to 30 per cent to 16W.

The EA192M also has an intelligent power manager that can be set up using the OSD buttons, allowing the monitor to enter power-saving mode after a period of inactivity.

The EA192M is Energy Star 5.0 and TCO 5.0-compliant, and also certified to the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) gold standard.

Conclusions
A neat business LCD monitor, with impressive image quality, and all the connections required by business users.

However, there is no automatic transition to portrait mode when we switched the monitor round from landscape mode, and there's also no USB hub on the EA192M.