Testing

To test this monitor I ran several image quality tests on it along with some FPS action to test for any ghosting. I also took some pictures of the HC174DP at different angles to test the extent of the viewering angles.

Firstly I watched a few short clips of several movies to see the quality of the pictures during playback. The HC174DP performed very well here, displaying nice rich colours and no banding whatsoever throughout the clips.

I then ran several 3d benchmark programs including 3dMark 05 and 03 to test the image quality and the monitor's contrast. The monitor performed adequatly here, but its low relatively low contrast ratio lets it down a little as it struggled to show the extreme dark and light areas very well. The HC174DP could also benefit with having a slightly higher brightness as the lighter areas seemed dimmer than on more epensive models.

The FPS game I chose to test the monitor with was BF2142 as this game involves some very fast gameplay on foot and it is enhanved even more when flying the gunships. The monitor showed no signs of ghosting throughout this test, but that can be expected of its perfectly acceptable 12ms refresh rate.

The viewing angles on the HC174DP are not the best, however they are not so horrendous as to make it hard for the one person using it to get annoyed. The problems with the viewing angle only become apparent when looking at extreme angles horizontally. Looking from the top down it is not too bad and it is easily possible to stand up and work, though everything darkens quite a bit. However, the main issue with the viewing angles of this monitor comes from underneath. Normally this would not be a problem as not many people view monitors from underneath, however this monitor is designed to be wall mountable, and if you put this monitor much higher than desk height you are going to find the quality of picture extremely reduced.

Sound Quality

The speakers are quite poor quality, but that is something that is quite universal about built in speakers. The bass is tinny and very very quiet and the high frequencies are a bit strained. For just basic window sounds they do the job ok but for anything else (music or immersive games), you will need some better speakers or headphones.

Cost

For what this monitor can do the cost of this monitor is relatively low. The best we could find was for around the £125 mark which is a perfectly acceptable price for a monitor with these features and specifications.