Mitsubishi DV172

Innovation in technology is a grand thing. Without it, we'd all be stuck with blurry TFT monitors that totally sucked when gaming. Not any more. Thanks to the release of 16ms pixel response time TFT monitors, flat panel screens are now officially cool.

Innovation in technology is a grand thing. Without it, we'd all be stuck with blurry TFT monitors that totally sucked when gaming. Not any more. Thanks to the release of 16ms pixel response time TFT monitors, flat panel screens are now officially cool. The Mitsubishi DV172 is the latest of these beasties to get a run in the Atomic labs, but can it match the beauty of the Hitachi CML174SXW we wanted to procreate with last month?
 
The moment we opened the box we had a complaint with the bezel design of this monitor -- it just doesn't look as attractive as many other TFTs. However, the actual screen quality compares favourably (if not in its favour) with the Hitachi model. You're going to need a dark pair of sunnies to view this monitor, as its 500:1 contrast ratio and 260cd/m² brightness make it incredibly bright. This 500:1 contrast ratio is superior to the CML174SXW, which is rated at 400:1. Both monitors have an identical pixel size of 0.264mm, and run at a native resolution of 1,280 x 1,024, which is the sweet spot for owners of high-end video cards such as the RADEON 9700 PRO and GeForce FX. Unfortunately, the display looked woeful running at 1,600 x 1,200, with much distortion of the onscreen text and images.

We gave the DV172 a quick bash in DisplayMate, and it passed all the image quality tests with flying colours, bar one. Its dark-grey scale test only scored a 7/10, as the darker greys tended to merge into the black background. Other than this small complaint, the DV172 was visually impressive: the colours were brilliantly vibrant, while pixel accuracy was similarly breathtaking.

As soon as the snoozey DisplayMate benchmark was out of the way, we couldn't resist firing up a few games and DVDs to bask in the glory of 16ms pixel response times (12ms power up, 4ms power down). And once again we were blown away by how much of a difference this low response time makes.

Games looked absolutely crisp and clear, with only the slightest hint of blurring in fast, bright games. For most games, you won't even notice you're playing on a TFT. DVD quality was likewise perfect, perhaps even slightly more impressive than the gaming performance.

If there was ever a time to seriously consider upgrading to a TFT monitor, that time is now. And at a hundred bucks cheaper than the Hitachi, we have no choice but to give the DV172 the big thumbs up.