| Planar PX2611W 26-Inch Widescreen LCD Monitor |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Monitor | HDTV | ||||||||
| Written by Jonathan Jessup - Edited by Olin Coles | ||||||||
| Wednesday, 18 July 2007 | ||||||||
Page 5 of 6
Physical Characteristics: PX2611WAll the plastic is near black. The display has narrow, smooth plastic borders around the image area. The word "PLANAR" is in dark grey in the top middle and the model number PX2611W is in dark grey in the bottom middle. I find the overall design style of the display to be to my liking. The swivel function works well, has a lot of movement and works where the base meets your desk. So, if you swivel it far to the left or right, the monitor isn't at risk of falling over. The stand has four large rubber feet. The base connects to the main panel unit via a double hinge. There isn't much movement in raising and lowering, maybe two inches. The panel can be tilted quite a bit. Tilting it back you will hit a much stiffer tilting zone after about five degrees back. I'd like to see that stiffer boundary moved back more but I think it will work for most people just fine as it is.
The only light is a green power light that turns amber when on power saving mode. On the rear of the display, is a nice physical I/O power switch and a big PLANAR tastefully embeded into the plastic.
The top of the back side of the unit has grills across the length to let heat quietly escape. It gets warm, but not hot. Four female USB 2.0 ports are on the left side of the monitor, out of direct view but not hard to reach, about a half inch back from the edge.
The front of the display has six buttons in the lower right corner: AUTO, SOURCE, EXIT, MENU, the four directional controller button, and a power button. No button is back lit so if your room is darker you might need to search a little. The two most used buttons are next to each other, the MENU and the controller button and the latter is much bigger so that helps in determining which one in the dark. AUTO doesn't seem to do anything for me. The manual has conflicting words in the description "Hot key for manually auto adjusting the display." The SOURCE button is a toggle button to switch between DVI-D and VGA video source. EXIT properly exits from the on-screen menu.
MENU brings up the on-screen configuration menu where you can configure many things with the monitor. These include:
Display sub menu: DV MODE (TEXT mode is default and recommended); BRIGHTNESS;CONTRAST;SHARPNESS;AUTO CONTRAST
Screen adjust sub menu: EXPANSION MODE; LEFT/RIGHT;DOWN-UP;CLOCK;PHASE
Color sub menu: 9300K/7500K/sRGB/USER
Tool sub menu: DDC/CI;SIDE COLOR;RECALL
OSD sub menu: LANGUAGE; OSD LEFT/RIGHT;OSD DOWN/UP; OSD TURN OFF; RESOLUTION NOTIFIER
Information sub menu: Displays what video input port is in use; current resolution; current refresh rate; and a version number.
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