First post!
I got this monitor about a month back for $270 off craigslist. The guy even had the warranty card!
Yes, the blacks aren't totally black, and there's the problem with vertical angle if you don't sit up straight, but you know what? For $270, I can live with that. Half of the time I just watch anime or play games with 360 controller on my bed, and it's pretty crisp. The biggest concern is that the monitor is overly bright on default setting is quite straining on the eyes, which doesn't really take long to change. The only problem is I like my monitors bright and end up hurting my eyes after a few hours of gaming, but that's really my own fault.
Regarding no DVI output, they include a HDMI->DVI cable (my old 20" only came with a VGA). I have not noticed any ghosting playing Fallout 3, which I consider to be a fairly dark game. I do sit up straight while gaming, which I'm going to guess is not the norm, so that might be where the problem is stemming from. The black probably isn't as dark as it should be, but again, for $270, I can live with that. The vertical viewing angle adjustment does suck though, only like 10-20 degrees. You can swivel it left and right more than that, for what it's worth.
All in all, stealing from a conclusion I read off some random blog: You get what you paid for, which isn't always necessarily a bad thing. For $300 ($270 in my case), you get an absolutely gigantic monitor that's cheaper than most 24" monitors with better contrast, colors, panel constructions, etc. To put things in perspective, 28" is 37% more viewing area than a 24" and almost double the viewing area of my old 20" monitor.
I can live with that.
edit: regarding color settings, I find that software calibrating it via my CCC works better than just adjusting the factory settings. However, as you have probably guessed from above, I really don't care about anything other than the fact that this monitor offers me 28" of real estate, so I'm not sure if I'm losing any details by software-calibrating the monitor as opposed to hardware.
Originally posted by: apexi350z[/i]
Anybody know about the quality of this particular model of LCD?
Here's what you need to set the display (my setup):
Brightness 65
Contrast 70
Red 70
Green 70
Blue 64
=============
Seconded. Before I used CCC I had pretty similar settings. 60/80/76/77/72 I believe. Like I said earlier, though, I like my monitor bright, but it's really bad for the eyes in the long run so you probably want to go with his settings.
edit2:
The only other "negative" is that this monitor has virtually rendered my 20" useless in a dual monitor setup. I tried to set the 20" further back, but the viewing area seems so much smaller now that I'm used to the 28" the only thing I use it for is for Foobar and Sidebar gadgets.