November 9th, 2000
LaCie 19-inch Electron Blue Introduction and specs This monitor's target public is largely digital content creators. The unit, also available in 22-inch, has a Diamondtron flat screen. The Diamondtron technology was developed by Mitsubishi once Sony's Trinitron patent expired. It gives a flat screen with sharper display and minimal distortion. The monitor has an 18" viewable area, a horizontal scan range of 30-108 kHz and a vertical scan range of 50-160 Hz. It connects to a Mac or a PC and to both 100-120 or 220-240 power supplies. Its dot pitch is 0.24mm. Its maximum resolution is 1600x1200 at a 75Hz refresh rate. It comes with an internal USB hub.
Installation After unpacking the monitor, all we had to do was to connect the 15-pin cable from the monitor to the Power Mac and everything was ready to go. We pressed the two units' power buttons and we were set up. The monitor was fully calibrated already and we selected the appropriate ColorSync profile (electron19b) for color synchronization. Then, we adjusted the screen to our favorite resolution (1152x870 at 75Hz) to complete the setup. The unit looks great in an original way without having had to resort to copying the iMac or the G4. It has its own style with the dark blue color characteristic of LaCie products. Unlike the other alternatives to beige, this one looks classy. An Apple Studio Display would probably match slightly better with our tower for looks, but this monitor already helps to make any Blue & White G3 or Graphite G4 a great looking work station.
Documentation The monitor comes with a full manual in... English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. This clearly shows LaCie's usual sense of internationality. There were a few translation quirks in the other languages but the information is easy to read and understand. Kudos to LaCie for the great effort.
Controls The monitor offers buttons below the screen to control everything directly. The on-screen controls look horrible, though, reminding us of an Atari or Coleco game station we used 15 years ago though no other manufacturer we know of has yet done better. They did help to correct minor problems with the screen's border adjustments since they were slightly curved, though you have to focus on the borders for a few moments to find relatively little problems. The monitor's factory settings, for contrast and other controls, were just fine to us.
Quality of colors The central part of any monitor's use is its ability to display great colors. In short, this unit amazed us. We made sure to go everywhere we could to compare the monitor's colors to that of an equivalent 19" Sony, a ViewSonic and we also looked at 17-inch Apple Studio Displays. After careful observations with the same elements displayed, we found that although Sony and Apple made great monitors, the Electron beats them. The colors are sharper and crisper, more vivid. They just looked better, especially when using desktop pictures high in colors. An element that helps to achieve such vision is that the monitor comes with a hood that you place on it with sticky velcro pads that keep it in place. It does not ruin the looks of the unit and helps you to see great colors without any sun or lighting interfering. You can see it in the picture at the top of the page.
19 Inches! If you have never used a monitor as big as 19 inches or more, you are truly missing something. Even with the relatively low 1152x870 resolution we used, we felt a huge difference when comparing the limitations of 640x480, 832x624, or even 1024x768 settings. It was possible to align ICQ and AOL Instant Messenger one below the other in the right part of the screen. In the left, we have the chance to alternate between our main e-mail window or a couple of 620 pixels-wide browsing windows somewhat covering each other.
Playing a DVD One great experience with this monitor was to watch a rented DVD. The display performed flawlessly to offer great quality video, whether close to it or at the same distance as when watching TV.
Conclusion This monitor is an excellent value. It displays colors better than most of its competitors, has excellent sharpness and screen geometry, its hood protects it against stray light, it looks great and it supports 1600x1200 resolution at decent refresh rates. It might seem pricey (around US$669) when compared to the lowest end 19" monitors out there, but it is well worth the money. LaCie's target audience is largely digital content creators. For a power user or someone whose revenue depends on quality print or video, this monitor is definitely an attractive solution. With ColorSync support, this one is hard to beat.
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