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Solarism Flex-View LM-1730 17in LCD |
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Written by Mikhail Ivanenkov
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Wednesday, 20 June 2007 |
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Page 2 of 3
My gaming preferences usually consist of 70% brightness/50% contrast. Office work (on a white background, as most applications tend to be) is blinding on anything above 50% brightness. In a dark room (such as nighttime LAN gaming), those settings need to be lowered even further. Although LCDs don't have "screen" refresh rates like CRTs, vertical frequency still needs to be set. The value here is 75Hz so be sure to set it in Windows (if it's at 60Hz you will experience flickering).
Now for the bread and butter, the screen itself. Sleekness taking priority, Solarism opted for a black casing, sure to match any colored system/office setup. Unlike many LCDs with stationary stands, the LM-1730's folds up for compactness. The stand portion has four rubbery feet for stability and to prevent movement. Vent holes are present at the top and bottom, though the upper front portion marks the location of the bulb and heats up more than anything. There are also a pair of cutouts on either side allowing for wall mounting. Seeing as how it weight less than 10lbs this approach is very real. You can even lay this monitor down on the ground and use it looking from the top, or the other way around.
Keeping in tune with aesthetic priority, Solarism strategically placed their power and video jacks at the bottom of the screen. This is very unobtrusive and keeps cables out of the way as much as possible. All that's required to reach the ports is tilting the screen backwards. Which brings up another interesting feature: the double swivel stand. Having two movable parts (as opposed to one found on many screens) allows for a wider range of motion and more possible configurations. In the picture above the second swiveling part (the "arm") is bent inwards completely.
In order to create an entirely "bare" appearance on the front, the LM-1730 has its buttons placed on the right. At the very top is a status LED: green when the monitor is on, red when it's in standby (also accompanied by a small "no input signal" logo onscreen). Next comes the power button. Below that is the menu, used to bring up [the menu] as well as select any sub-divisions therein. Use the up/down keys to navigate/adjust settings. When in menu mode, the auto button is used to exit the current selection and return to (or exit entirely) the main menu. When in normal mode this is a quick way of auto adjusting (same thing as setting to default).
Although placement is ideal and easy to learn by touch, this is also one of the screen's major shortcomings, at least in build quality. Maybe it has to do with the fact that everything is laid out on one strip, but it doesn't seem like there's a set pressure that's required to activate a particular button. In other words, sometimes a light tap will activate the selected key; other times you'll have to press quite hard several times to elicit any response. For a number of reasons, I've had this monitor (and have used it on a daily basis) over the course of several months without review, until now.
In that time I noticed my "up" button (and others to a lesser degree) to vary greatly in required pressure. At first I had to press really hard. Every now and then you have to press around the button a bit instead of directly on it. After a couple months I assumed it broke-in as I could now tap it ever so slightly and attain the desired setting. But just the other day I was once again unable to get anything out of the button. After about 5 minutes of continuous pressing and a few expletives, it worked. Apparently I'm not the only one with this problem, and thus Solarism has some work to do in this area.
Although I briefly touched on the monitor stand, this is one particular aspect of the LM-1730 that I find incredibly useful. Because of the sturdiness of both hinges, the screen will stay put in almost any position, thanks to adequate balancing weight in the base. The downside is that you have to use both hands to adjust the screen. Another flaw I noticed is created because single hinges (as opposed to preferable double hinges) are used: when typing harder than usual the screen tends to shake a bit. If you have an inkjet printer on the same desk you can forget about doing any work because it shakes entirely too much.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 27 June 2007 )
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