Introduction
Purchasing a monitor is not a matter to be taken lightly. More so, now then ever before, with different offerings from manufacturers that can blow your mind. Make the wrong choice and you will soon be at your local GP complaining about headaches, fatigue and eyestrain. Choosing a monitor is not about the best dot pitch or the size of the image, it's about you! When you next purchase your system, or upgrade your monitor, be sure to physically check out the monitor, your eyes will soon make the choice for you. The single largest trap to fall into is the one in which you are advised by the salesman to invest your hard earned cash on a faster PC, and to skimp on your monitor, keyboard and mouse. Don't go there!

LCD panels differ from CRT in the way image is presented to us on the screen. LCD panels have a fixed number of liquid crystal cells and display only one resolution at full-screen size. There are no convergence problems with LCD panels, because each cell is switched on and off individually, as opposed to CRT screens, which rely on convergence from electron guns for clarity. LCD panel to not suffer from flicker or resolution problems like their counterparts, a panel set as 60Hz will be as steady as one set at 75Hz as the LCD cells are either on or off. This is why when you first feast your eyes on an LCD panel the sharpness of the image and text will take your breath away, and send buying signals to the salesman standing next to you.

All is not perfect however with LCD panel technology, as a rule of thumb on a 1024 x 768 monitor, there are three cells (red, green and blue) for each pixel which would amount to 2,359,296 cells. Is there a chance all of these cells may be perfect? Highly unlikely, as some will be display 'bright'(ON) or 'dark'(OFF) cells. This will be dependent on your eyesight, as no salesman will be able to advise you. The flaws occur because each panel has to complete the production cycle before any flaws can be highlighted, one of the reasons why LCD active-matrix panels are expensive to buy. The LCD panels are lit by fluorescent tubes that line the back of the unit, and occasionally you'll see ghosting or streaking where a large image will have a different colour shade at opposite ends, you'll notice brighter lines in some parts of the screen than others. Those readers who own a notebook will know exactly what we mean.

So, what is it going to be CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) or LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) technology based monitor? Well, the CRT has been with us since 1897, but don't let that put off, the latest FD (Flat Display) CRT's are superb in quality, and prices of these CRT's have dropped dramatically and made them a tempting buy. Wait for it, at the other corner is LCD based monitor's, they look great, feel good, hardly take up any power, and are massive space savers. Sorry we forgot to mention the price, which is slightly more expensive. To be precise about six times the CRT offerings. As a guide a 19" CRT with FD (Flat Display) will set you back about £365.00 plus VAT based on street pricing, and at the other end of scale the LCD 18" will set you back around £1800.00 plus VAT. Mind you the 18" LCD monitor does have an image area of 18", while the 19" CRT will as a rule of thumb be around 16.8", so you are getting that little extra for your money.

Iiyama has an enviable reputation of manufacturing excellent quality colour display products, and maintains a high market profile in the UK. Not so long a ago, monitor reviews that included an Iiyama product, were destined to win an award, for a short while it was clearly first choice for many PC magazine editors. Iiyama has seen this privilege eroded as more and more of its credible competitors have launched new technology-based products with competitive pricing grab the spotlight. Iiyama still remains one of the leading monitor manufacturer's in the UK. We decided it was time to bring you the superb Iiyama Pro Lite 46b 18" LCD monitor.

How we carried out our test
Our testing was based with business and professional users in mind, with emphasis on Set-up and ease of use. The testing was carried out using Displaymate (www.displaymate.com), which has the ability to generate hundreds of test patterns designed to highlight any flaws in monitors. The resolution we tested under was 1024 x 768 at 16bit colour depth and 72Hz vertical refresh rate. Rather than having a definite result at the end of the testing, each pass or failure is more susceptible to the opinion (or eyesight!) of the person actually doing the review. We tried to achieve some consistency by getting opinions from three different people for each test so it wasn't just down to one individual.

Test system specification
CPU:	Intel Pentium III - 550Mhz - 512k - 100FSB
Motherboard:	Abit BE6-II - BX Chipset
Memory:	64Mb SDRAM PC100 - 7ns
HDD:	Quantum Fireball LCT10 - 20.4GB UDMA66 5400rpm
FDD:	3.5" 1.44Mb - Panasonic
CD ROM:	48 x Creative
Video Card:	Diamond Viper 770 AGP 16Mb
Sound Card:	Creative PCI128
Modem:	Diamond Internal 56i SST Soft Modem
Keyboard:	Keytronic
Mouse:	Ms Mouse Defender - 2 button

Setup
This part of the test determines the fine image sharpness, colour scales to ensure sharp reproduction on the monitor, black and white levels are set correctly, testing for glare and specular (mirror-like) reflections, brightness and contrast controls are set correctly, and checks the colour level intensity.

Geometry & Distortion
The test checks to see whether the brightness and contrast controls are set correctly, and determines the monitor's black-level and white level.

Sharpness & Resolution This uses finer detailed images to check the monitor's capabilities in showing more definition by displaying very fine horizontal and vertical lines on the screen.

Colour & Greyscale
The colour and greyscale tests are pretty much as they sound by displaying all main primary colours and their derivatives. They also have totally contrasting colours, such as black next to white, to show any signs of streaking or ghosting on the screen.

Iiyama Pro Lite 46b
Iiyama manufacter's superb CRT and LCD based monitors, and have been in the UK for as long as we can remember. If the next time you purchase a new system, don't be too surprised if an Iiyama monitor is a standard issue, or an optional extra, many PC Manufacturer's select Iiyama as part of their monitor configuration for their systems. The model Iiyama sent us was the Pro Lite 46b, an 18.1" LCD monitor with USB and speakers as standard, weighing in at ?????5kg's. Iiyama it seems takes it packaging seriously and has clearly tried to reduce transit damage by providing a double strength carton, with excellent internal design to ensure very little or no movement of the unit while in transit. Once out of the box, connectivity is a simple task with the supplied USB and mains cable. Unfortunately, connecting the USB cable to the USB socket proved a little adventurous, the socket is shallow and gives way to uncertainly as to whether a connection has been made, no problems were encountered whilst reviewing the product, the cable stayed in it's socket. The user manual is simple to follow and adequate, it is accompanied with a Display utility disk, Stereo jack cable, Lint free cloth, and Portrait's Pivot software.

The Pro-Lite takes up hardly any space in comparison to its CRT counterpart. The on-screen menu is easy to use with all the main functions included and setting up is aided with a neat utility entitled "Test.bmp", a bitmap file that helps you to set-up the monitor colours, resolution, and a host of other display attributes, ensuring optimum viewable image and resolution. The Pivot software once installed allows 90-degree movement of the screen from landscape to portrait, the transformation of the screen mechanically was very smooth and was excellent in operation. Sheer magic! The Pivot software settings are accessible via the 'Screen Properties' or the desktop 'Pivot Icon'. The USB supplied consist of 1 upstream and 4 downstream ports, and allows you to connect any USB based peripherals in the future you may decide to buy, this option is an important saving for the future, as USB becomes more popular, this saves you the need to purchase a USB hub and have all your cables neatly tucked away at the back of your monitor. The inbuilt speakers are adequate, microphone socket serves it's purpose, audio and video in and out all function well and are nice touches to round off what is clearly a well thought out design with integration being the focal point.

Viewable image is an important factor, as the image displayed is reliant on a decent backlight, viewing a monitor from acute angles can distort the image. In this area the Pro-Lite does not disappoint with a viewable image of 150(h) x 140(v), this combined with a .28 pitch size and a maximum resolution of 1280 x 1024 puts the monitor in a class on it's own.

Our evaluation unit had no visible pixel defects, indeed displaymate could not fault it in any way, except in two areas; firstly, the monitor had a rather disconcerting interference which manifested itself as a fine line which travelled through the screen from bottom left to top right. We checked all the obvious settings and removed any potential causes of magnetic flux, but we could not make it disappear. Secondly the backlight was slightly uneven in the bottom left corner, thus failing our background interference test. Our swivel test for the Pro Lite was a dream, swivelling the monitor was smooth in all directions and could be achieved without the feeling that the monitor was about to topple over. This being down to its superb design having a substantial base with good weight distribution. The text and image reproduction of the monitor was one of the finest we have seen. It is no small feat to get 33 out of a maximum of 34 points.