Review: LG Electronics' E1910P monitor

LG Electronics' E10 business monitor range consists of two models: the 19-inch E1910P and the 22-inch E2210P. We tested the E1910P model.

LG says the E1910P delivers a 40 per cent power reduction, due to its LED-backlit screen. It says the monitor has a 25W power consumption, compared with around 43W for conventional backlit LCD monitors, and that the E1910P complies with EPEAT Gold environmental standards, encompassing the Energy Star 5 rating.

The E1910P has a standby consumption less than 0.2W, and a power off mode consuming less than 0.15W.

Specifications
The E1910P weighs in at 3.5kg (7.7lbs) and has dimensions of 409 x 210 x 372mm [see picture].

It's an active matrix, thin film transistor (TFT) liquid crystal display (LCD), and is a standard twisted nematic (TN)-type panel, rather than the more expensive but better performing in-plane switched (IPS) displays.

Nematic twisting refers to how the liquid crystal twists allow different light intensities to represent image pixels.

The E1910P has a claimed 5ms response time and a 250 cd/m2 brightness rating at its native resolution of 1280 x 1024.

There are just two connections to the E1910P: a standard analogue VGA connection and a single-link DVI-D port supporting High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP).

There is no DisplayPort connection, no USB 2.0 hub, no speakers and no audio jack for external speakers.

The base is detachable, allowing users to attach the monitor to a standard Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) wall-mount arm.

Setup
The black E1910P model was easy to set up, and all the connections are routed through a cable tidy attached to the back of the monitor stand.

The detachable base keeps the monitor steady if untouched, but we found it only requires a knock to the screen to set the monitor rocking for a couple of seconds.

We connected our Dell Optiplex GX280 desktop Labs system to the E1910P's DVI-D, and the standard 15-pin D-SUB analogue VGA port to our Dell Optiplex 980 Labs desktop system.

The screen can be adjusted 110mm for height and tilted four degrees away from the user and 16 degrees towards the user.

The base allows the monitor to be adjusted by rotating about the vertical axis, whereas most monitors require the user to position the screen for optimal viewing.

We could also rotate the screen through 90 degrees from landscape mode to portrait, but the actual screen image does not switch automatically to portrait mode to reflect the screen re-positioning.
 
CD applications
The monitor comes with a CD containing a user guide, monitor drivers and colour profiles for both E-series monitor models – the E1910P and the E2210P – and the
FortePivot application to allow switching between landscape and portrait modes [see picture].  

We installed the monitor driver, the colour profile for the E1910P and the FortePivot application. FortePivot puts an icon on the taskbar, which can be used to manually rotate – via a mouse click – the monitor image in 90 degree increments, allowing users to switch to portrait mode without having to go into the graphics settings to achieve the same result.

Flatron Engine
The Flatron F-Engine is a hardware processor integrated into the monitor's internal circuitry for enhancing image frames before the monitor displays them.

Users can check how the Flatron Engine-enhanced screen looks by activating the feature through the on-screen display buttons (OSD) (see below), which shows a vertically split screen – half with F-Engine enabled and half without.

Image quality
To check the E1910P's image quality we used an evaluation version of PassMark's MonitorTest – a suite of standard monitor test patterns designed to show any problems with display quality.

Using the standard sRGB colour space gave decent colours when matched with our standard test images. Colour gradients changed smoothly and image quality was good, especially given the price of the system.

Switching on the F-Engine setting did give more vibrancy to the image, and both analogue VGA and DVI-D also showed no image distortion or major LED-bleeding we could detect.

OSD features
As with most OSD buttons, every vendor has its own way of doing things, and LG is no different in this respect. There are six buttons, including the on/off button situated on the screen bezel at the lower right.

Pressing any of the five buttons pulls up the main OSD menu giving five options –  Menu, Mode, Auto, Input and Exit.

The Auto, Input and Exit buttons just require a single press; Auto adjusts monitor image size, colour, brightness and other parameters automatically, while the Exit button quits the user out of the OSD. The Input option switches between systems connected to the DVI-D and analogue D-Sub connectors.

When pressed, the Menu and Mode options bring up sub-options navigable with the five buttons.

The Mode option toggles LG's Flatron image engine and a selection of photo effects. For example, the screen can display in black and white and sepia, and there's also a Gaussian blur setting, which LG says gives a "colourful and smoother image". When the F-Engine technology is enabled users won't be able to set colour spaces manually.

Pressing Menu gives the main sub-options, allowing more advanced control over image quality. Users can change the brightness, contrast and sharpness, and monitor colour temperature manually, or with preset values. The gamma ratio can be set here as well, and has three presets.

There are no settings in the OSD to deal with any type of auto power management.

Conclusions
A good, basic business monitor with just a standard analogue and DVI-D connection. The image quality is good for the price, but is improved by turning on LG's Flatron Engine image-processing technology.