Westinghouse L2410NM

Reviewed by: in_awe

Duration of ownership:

Strengths: Bright, great colors, many inputs, MVA panel, HDCP, cheap price

Weaknesses: Buzzing noise, awkward contols, blue screen instead of low power mode on HDMI connection, weak stand, blacks a bit muddy

Overall Evaluation: Out of the box this monitor is blindingly bright. Once you turn the brightness down to a reasonable level, you'll find a monitor that's very crisp at higher resolutions, with beautiful colors. Mine doesn't have any screendoor issue or dead pixels like some others have reported. I haven't noticed any ghosting either, but I'm not an FPS junkie. The blacks are a somewhat muddy, but bumping the gamma up a little bit mostly compensates for that. HDMI input, especially at the native resolution, looks perfect on this monitor. VGA input looks just as good. 720p and higher via component look great as well. 480i and 480p via component look OK... usable, but not exceptional. I didn't expect high end scaling circuitry for this price, though. I haven't used the S-Video or the composite connections yet or the built-in speakers, so I can't comment on the quality of those. Power consumption isn't too bad. With brightness set at 36, mine uses about 55 watts. The stand that comes with the monitor is pretty flimsy. Bumping your desk will cause the monitor to wobble quite a bit. When I adjust the tilt the screen always seems to end up higher on one side than the other, requiring further fiddling. At some point I plan on replacing the stand with a better one, so this isn't a big deal to me. The controls are on the right side of the monitor and are very awkward to use. Once you have their order memorized, changing a setting consists of counting from the top or bottom button with your fingers until you find the right one, then doing the same for the next button you have to push, etc. It's very annoying at first when you are spending a lot of time adjusting settings. When connected via the HDMI connection, the monitor will go to a blue screen instead of low power mode when your computer tells it to power down. This means that you'll have to remember to turn it off manually whenever you step away from your computer for a while. It goes to low power mode correctly when connected via VGA. By far the most annoying quirk of this monitor for me is that when you lower the brightness below 98, it makes a continuous buzzing noise. If your PC is fairly quiet and you sit within five feet or so of the screen you will definitely hear this. If your PC is loud, you always have music or something playing, or you sit further away from the screen then it shouldn't be a problem for you. Overall, the low price and beautiful picture of this monitor make it worth living with the quirks for me. If you are able to pick one up for $400 or less I would definitely recommend it. If your budget is higher than that then I'd lean more towards a Samsung 245T, Benq FP241W or other higher end monitor.