Sony X-Black

[Fr0dders]

some1 at a LAN i went to had a previous generation sony x-black monitor (A SDM-HS94P to be precise) now it only had a 500:1 contrast ratio and 400cd rating but i remember the colours looking incredibly bright. Im told the that candle rating just reflects the strength of the backlight, not how the colours look.

ive got my philips 20" and thats supposedly 800: contrast ratio, and put side by side with my old iiyama which was 450:1 contrast ratio the difference is amazing. But then again my 450:1 iiyama looked pale in comparison to this 500:1 sony.

but the philips isnt nearly as good as i remember the sony. Is this rose tinted spectacles, or is this down to the xblack technology ?

and the second question, would the glossy surface on the NEC produce a similar effect to that i remember of the Sony.

 

[Baddass]

well the contrast ratio and brightness doesn't really have that much impact on colours, although it can effect is sometimes. The brightness on modern screens is often too much anyway, and with ratings common of around 500 cd/m2 nowadays, this is way to bright for real use. The contrast ratio just shows the difference between this brightest white and the darkest black, so the higher ratings generally indicate a good black depth nowadays as well. X Black is supposed to help improve brightness and Sony do use dual flourescent lamps to help improve brightness and the X Black technology (filter) is marketed as being able to improve colour quality and brightness since it removes the old AR style coating and filters the light / colours more efficiently (according to marketing )

Have a look at details on it here: http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/advanced.htm

 

[Fr0dders]

so would the NEC glossy coating have an effect similar to this

or is it completely different ?

 

[igors]

so would the NEC glossy coating have an effect similar to this
or is it completely different ?

NEC is calling this "OptiClear coating". In essence, yes ... it should have probably similar effect, but really not sure how to compare them as Sony is probably using different version of the screen coat.

 

[ajgoodfellow]

Yep - it's becoming fairly common now. You'll notice that some of the new laptops now have glossy type screens, all to give the same effect. I remember the first time I saw the Sony X-Black screen - it was rather impressive to say the least!

The Xerox XA7-19i also has a glossy front (although not as reflective as the Sony).

As an aside the current gen HS-95P isn't a good monitor for gaming, despite it's quoted response time. The panel type used is very slow leading to very high latency readings

 

[caff]

I used to have a Sony HS-95P with X-black - it was terrible for games as mentioned above.

The colours are very 'WOW!' but in actual fact it was a terrible representation of the spectrum - I could never find a natural colour scheme. Most of the time still images (e.g. desktop apps) looked ok, but when viewing photos the colours looked too saturated and imbalanced. Changing the backlighting and brightness of the screen seemed to skew the colour palette too, which isn't right - it should only affect the brightness, not the RGB ratios.

I'm using an Eizo now, and the quality is much better, but then again I paid a kidney's-worth for it.