Welcome to my user review of the new 90 series flagship from NEC, the LCD2690WUXi. The review is a work in progress; updates are noted in the comments as I make them, so if you wish to see "what's new", please check there. I began this review the day I received the 2690, but I'm still learning more as time goes on and I explore its features.

Last update was made on: Saturday, 10 Mar 2007.

Information from end users (especially gamers) regarding this panel has been incredibly scarce in the few weeks following its release, making the purchase of one of these rather expensive panels seem like a gamble. We know from the reviews at BEHardware and Les Numeriques that this display is capable of very accurate and wide color reproduction; I'll touch upon the subject in this review as well. The big burning question for many of us, in light of the scare we got from BEHardware, is: How does it hold up in fast moving games?

We'll get to that. First things first.


The order:

I ordered my panel through Provantage, a US online shop. I got a very competitive price from them (relatively speaking) and dealing with them was pretty smooth. My unit had to travel from a warehouse in Tennessee to Provantage in Ohio, and on to me from there. Provantage reinforced the carton with extra cardboard for the last leg of the journey; I'm grateful for this, as FedEx had poked a slightly alarming hole in the original carton while they were handling it.


The package:

The box for this thing is BIG! It comes fully assembled, and there is lots of empty space around the monitor inside. Whatever FedEx poked my box with didn't manage to contact the display. It comes in a very large antistatic pouch the size of a trash bag, with an additional shroud of foam cushion inside of that, and the usual styrofoam endcaps top and bottom. Shipping weight was 40 lbs/18.2 Kg; the monitor itself weighs 27.8 lbs/12.6 Kg.


Setting it up:

This was all quite straightforward, as you'd expect. Power cable, DVI cable, and there you are. The base is made of die cast metal with a plastic outer coating, and it has a "Lazy Susan" built into it for swiveling. The stand's height adjustment feels reasonably smooth and properly tensioned/weighted for the screen. The portrait/landscape pivot has very good stops built into it to let you know that you've reached the proper angle, and to hold the display there. The screen tilt pivot doesn't feel 100% smooth through its full range of travel, but I'm not likely to make that sort of adjustment often. The plastic cover for the cable management area in the back felt a little thin, and I had to fumble around a bit to line up its hooks before locking it into place.


Turning it on, soaking it in:

Wow. Straight out of the box, this thing is... BRIGHT it comes to you with the brightness set all the way to 100%. It's so bright that it leaves imprints on your retinas. The colors... at first they appeared oversaturated, cartoony and a bit too red. (Note: after having spent much time with and calibrating this display, it's clear that the color discrepancy was with my aging and ailing CRT (and my poor eyes) and not with this new unit.) I've set the panel's Auto Luminance to 3, which turns the brightness adjustment into an estimate of Cd/M² output and supposedly stabilizes color and contrast at different brightness levels. It seems to be working with the brightness set to an estimated (and eye pleasing) 120 Cd/M² and contrast set at the default of 50. Overall, It's very lively, very vivid and seems to be well behaved - I can see no banding, jumping or tint anomalies in gradient patterns.

The OSD is your usual NEC fare; a set of tabs that you select with the left/right rocker button, and options within that you select with the up/down rocker button. The display automatically reorients the 2 rocker buttons when the display is flipped into portrait mode. The tactile response of the buttons is nice and snappy. My only complaint here is that I'd prefer to have power and input buttons with a different texture than the others. It's not too hard to avoid accidentally hitting the power button, as it's positioned to the left of the power LED; but reaching for the display's controls in the dark and accidentally choosing the input button is a minor bummer. Fortunately, once you have the OSD active, navigational aids show up on the screen next to the buttons in order to guide you through the darkness.

Powering up the display by simultaneously pressing the input and power buttons for a second or longer puts the display into advanced OSD mode. It will remain in that mode until the next time you power down the display. This display has one of the most comprehensive sets of advanced controls I've ever seen!


Initial quality, service and support:

Not 100% perfect. I have one stuck sub-pixel on the left edge of the screen at about the centerline. It only shows up against black, and appears to be green. Maybe blue. It's not particularly noticeable due to its position. There's a bit of discoloration along the top edge of the LCD surface due to pressure exerted by the bezel. It seems as though the LCD panel is not secured inside the bezel along the top edge. I discovered that I can shift the LCD panel around a very tiny bit - just a fraction of a millimeter - by "massaging" the panel with slight hand pressure and a cloth, and I was able to greatly reduce, if not eliminate, that pressure spot by doing so. The panel appears to be firmly secured across the bottom edge and there are no pressure anomalies to be seen there, so it looks like I've identified a manufacturing defect with this particular unit.

Update: I talked to NEC tech support - The bezel pressure and looseness issue is definitely not normal; since my 2690 purchase is still inside of 30 days, they will be replacing it with a new 2690 via DOA clause (all freight covered) once they verify my invoice. I'll post further updates as they come. (Readers outside of the US - Please note that your DOA warranty period may be 14 days vs 30 - please check with your region's NEC headquarters to verify the length of your DOA coverage.)

Update 2: Invoice was verified. There was one problem with Tech setting up my exchange and RMA, however - the 2690 hadn't been entered into their SAP database yet! This issue required some communication between NEC Tech and Corporate to resolve, but it was done in a timely manner, ie. the same day. I received a return call from NEC tech to let me know the issue was solved, and we completed the setup of my advance replacement, MRA number and shipping label to return the faulty unit. The replacement will ship out via 2nd day air (at no cost to me) and this should take place on Monday the 12th of March. It may have been able to go out on Friday if it weren't for the database snafu, but at least that was addressed in a timely, professional manner (and it shouldn't happen to anyone else returning a 2690 now).


Features - Colorcomp and more

Ambibright: I'm probably sitting a bit less than the ideal distance from the display - my current desk was designed with a cubbyhole for a CRT and the 2690 is a bit too wide for this. That's not the 2690's fault; it's been time for a new desk for a while now. But the net effect is that the Ambibright sensor picks up all of my movements and interprets them as ambient light changes, causing variations in brightness as I sit and look at the display. Because of this, I have the feature disabled for now. I may re-evaluate it once I swap out the desk for one that's more ideal for a large LCD.

Colorcomp: The idea behind this feature is to compensate for deviations in the white level that may occur across the display surface. Each display is factory tested and programmed with its own unique data table for this function. I tested it against pure white, but couldn't see any difference - perhaps the display is still set too bright, and the difference is more discernible at a reference luminance level. On the other hand, black uniformity was noticeably improved by Colorcomp.

Expansion (scaling): Scaling works mostly as you'd expect it to. Custom scaling is an interesting thing; it allows you to define your own scaling proportions for a resolution if you wish. It's also supposed to allow you to scale from the top left of the screen as well as from the center, but this didn't seem to be working - I could select top left in the menu, but the image stayed in the center.

I now have some drivers for my 8800 with a properly working scaler function that doesn't "lock" my 2690's scaler. Scaling over DVI is functional in all 4 modes.

I got the 2690 hooked up over VGA for some more tests. As with DVI, all modes tested successfuly.

Scaling over the DVI-I port in analog mode looks a bit messed up. The image is off-center and somewhat cropped. Maybe there's an adjustment I'm overlooking - I'll dig into this issue further at some point.

Scaling isn't a global setting with this display; every new resolution you select will default to "full", but when you switch back to it from something else, it will appear in whichever expansion mode you last selected for it. The left top positioning option in custom scaling didn't appear to be working here either. In any case, despite a couple of glitches I observed, the scaling implementation on this panel seems to be more robust than average.

Some more thoughts on custom scaling: One of the many reasons why I became interested in the 2690 is this feature. I maintain a legacy machine for playing classic game titles, and some of these are 320*200 native DOS titles. Simple math tells you that 320*200 is a 16:10 resolution, but the graphics in old games were designed so that they looked properly proportioned when the resolution was "squished" onto a 4:3 CRT screen. Custom scaling allows you to approximate that "squish". The 2690 actually displays 320*200 and some other older DOS resolutions as 720*400, which is roughly 16:9... still in need of squishing... but a setting of 3.00x vertical and 2.22x horizontal scaling gives you an almost perfect 4:3 viewport for your old game. Nice!

One more note - the panel comes with "side border color" (the bars around your scaled res) set to 11.8%, which is a dark grey. This seems like an odd choice. I set it to 0% right away. It was somewhat useful during testing, but in general use I found black much more preferable.

Overdrive: This does sharpen up moving images, but in some cases produces a slight afterimage ("ghost") as a penalty. I tested Overdrive with games, 1080p WMV HD, DVD and PixPerAn. Games have their own discussion area to follow. Movies didn't seem largely affected by it. PixPerAn was one situation where I could really see a difference with Overdrive. It aligned the flag and staff better in the flag test, it allowed for a tighter gap in the chase test and it sharpened up the text in the readability test. The little car's details got a bit clearer, but it developed a noticeable ghost in the process.

So yes, it works but is it vital for the WUXi gamer? Can the panel only reach acceptable speeds by turning it on? Does it introduce too many ugly artifacts? Let's begin the discussion of that topic...


Gaming:

I'll cut right to the point. This panel is no slowpoke!

I'm not going to say that Vincent @ BE didn't really see what he saw when he tested this display, but I have to wonder if his test is meaningful in light of what a human eye can actually detect. It's also not clear whether Overdrive was enabled on his sample, which really should be the case if one is going to make a valid comparison of the 2690 to panels that are specifically tuned for gaming.

This won't be a deep scientific analysis; I don't have a lab. It's just an explanation of what I see. I examined the panel's behavior under 3 proper widescreen games: Half-Life 2: Episode 1, Oblivion and Quake 4. I'm using what I remember of the visual anomalies present in these games when I played them on the Gateway FPD2485W as a reference.

The chief problem that the Gateway had in games was off-color smearing, on both leading and trailing edges of objects against contrasting surfaces. I was dreading that I'd still see this on the 2690, and hoping that it would be at least minimized. This behavior is usually the result of poor Overdrive implementation. Since the 2690 is a professional grade display, one would hope that the Overdrive implementation has much better behavior than this.

Well, it does. Smearing is nowhere to be seen!

One particular benchmark that I decided to use is what I'll call the "chest test":



This is simply a chest in my Oblivion character's house. The chest is used as an alchemy stash (hence the ingredients on top). The character who owns that chest is a very fast runner. On the Gateway, whenever this character would run towards or backpedal away from this chest, the afterimage of the ingredients (especially the pile of salt) would leave a rather large smear upon the darker chest, and vice versa to a degree. This was just the worst instance of it that I saw on the GW - it certainly did it elsewhere.

Repeating this "test" on the 2690 produces virtually no smear at all with Overdrive.

In every game that I played, I felt that image integrity was quite high. There was a bit of motion blur on textures, edges also to a slight degree depending on movement speed, but overall I thought objects and actors retained their composure very well. Overdrive does help tighten things up a bit; slower action games may not require it at all. The panel holds up quite well without it when there's not a lot of really fast action. You'll probably prefer to turn it on for playing a fast moving shooter or driving game, but keep in mind that most "gaming panels" are overdriven by default; so enabling Overdrive on a 2690 for gaming should not be seen as a crutch. Overdrive smearing artifacts are nowhere to be found when it's enabled; ghosting is not commonly found and slight when you do. The implementation seems to be well done.

Another example for you, that you can look at on your own screen - Prad.de's well known Ghosting Test. What I see on this panel with this test is quite comparable to trails produced by medium, perhaps medium-long persistence CRT phosphor. Overdrive reduces it by a hair, but adds a bit of an afterimage just like it did with the PixPerAn car.

Whew. I don't know about you, but I'm both relieved and pleased.

Update: A couple more days in now, and I've looked at more material. I'm still pretty happy with the panel's performance. I've seen a couple scenarios in which I can detect a bit of "bleed", or motion blur on an object that's more pronounced than the blur of other onscreen objects, due to the color of the object in question - usually a bright orange or red (example: the doll lying in the playground in the intro chapter of HL2). Still, the overall level of visual glitches I'm seeing is very low.

Update 2: I've now had the 2690 for a week. Most of what I've been playing are first person games, with a bit of Freelancer thrown in to try out its widescreen tweaks. I still haven't encountered any really serious violations of image integrity while gaming, just what I described before: There's some motion blur, more evident in certain situations than others, but none of what I'd call "serious" forms of image decomposition such as obvious ghosts or smears that can really ruin one's immersion level.


Calibration:

First, a foreword and a bit of disclosure. I have a copy of the SpectraView II software that allows for calibration of this display via its internal 12 bit LUTs (look-up tables). I received the software at no charge compliments of NEC; not explicitly for the purposes of this review, but that's what led me to have it. Some folks at NEC caught wind of my review; they offered me a free copy of the software in recognition of my time and effort and for giving the display some exposure to the WS gaming world - a market that they certainly welcome having for the 2690 if there is interest.

I don't want to assign ulterior motives to NEC here in this blurb - I accept the gift in the spirit that was stated - though it certainly may behoove them to have SpectraView calibration results published to the web for only the cost of one copy of the software. WSGF is an independent site; it's not the sort of place that wishes to host a lot of sponsored review content, or get embroiled in "guerilla" or "viral" marketing schemes. It strives to be an unbiased place for information from end users, and for end users. In wanting to preserve that spirit, and seeing the grey area, I consulted with the WSGF leadership team before publishing the information that follows. It was decided, in light of the circumstances, that more information for the users of the site is better than less - and after all, I did buy my 2690 with my own money, and NEC provided the copy of SpectraView by their own volition and with no strings attached.

Finally, and for the record, I'm not an NEC employee or hired agent - I'm a WS gamer who happens to like their stuff, and I decided to come here and talk about it by my own impulse.

Now that we have that out of the way let's move forward.

A primer, for those who would like it:

The idea behind calibration is to ensure that displays are "standardized" to a certain set of output characteristics. It's important in the fields of graphics and print work, because what you see on your screen needs to match what your coworker sees on theirs, or what comes out of a printer or press. It can also reduce or eliminate bad behaviors that a display might exhibit when fresh out of the box, such as banding, bleeding or tinting.

SpectraView doesn't work quite the same way that conventional calibration software does. The 2690 has "programmable" modes that are selectable for color and gamma adjustment, and SpectraView works exclusively within those modes to calibrate the monitor's settings internally. The monitor has color look-up tables (LUTs) built within it the same way that your video card does, but the 2690's are 12 bits rather than a typical video card's 8 bits.

32 bit color is comprised of four 8 bit channels: Red, Green, Blue and an Alpha channel that carries transparency and overlay information. This is how we derive the 16.7 million number that we associate with 32 bit color - 2^8 possible values each of red, green and blue which gives us 256^3 which equals 16,777,216. With 12 bit color channels, you get 2^12 possible values each of Red, Green and Blue - that's 4096^3, or 68,719,476,736(!).

So... if your video card can only pump out 16.7M, why would you want the monitor to store 68.7B? There's a good reason. LCD monitors, just like CRTs, at the end of the day are analog devices. They rely on cold cathode backlights that may not illuminate consistently from one set to the next. The crystals inside their liquid matrix may not twist exactly the same way they do on another panel sample due to slight variations of electrical resistance in the circuitry, or variations in the viscosity of the liquid. Your video card, on the other hand, is a purely digital device provided you are using its digital (DVI) output port. It's usually never "wrong", but your display usually is to a degree - for the reasons mentioned above, among others.

Standard calibration techniques rely on adjusting the monitor's output to some degree, and then adjusting the video card's output to perform the rest of the correction. But if the video card is already "right", aren't you causing it to be "wrong" by fiddling with its output?

Yes, you are - the net effect when it's applied to the adjustments made to the display comes out mostly "right", but some of your 16.7M shades of color are likely to get lost in the translation. A monitor with this broad 12 bit look-up table of its own doesn't need to have a video card compromise its "rightness" for the monitor's sake - it can simply select that set of 16.7M shades of color from its library of 68.7B that most closely approximate what the video card is trying to display.

Sure sounds like a better way, now let's see how it actually turns out.

For testing purposes, I used a fairly standard group of settings: Target color temperature of 6500K, Gamma of 2.2 and a desired maximum luminance value of 120Cd/M². Contrast was left at its default value of 50 and black level was left at its default of 128. Colorimeter used was a GretagMacbeth Eye One Display LT (physically identical to Eye One Display 2 Pro, but comes with "express" version of software). I decided to use this opportunity do do some further testing of the 2690's Colorcomp feature as well. Let's begin with results obtained without Colorcomp.

Here's the summary tab:



The main bits of info to see here are the color temp level (white point), the black level and the max luminance level achieved, plus the resulting contrast ratio. Contrast is relative to the chosen luminance target level and the resulting black level - had I chosen a max luminance level closer to the display's max of 400 cd/M², I would have had a higher resultant contrast ratio... but also a poor black level, and a display that's too bright to use in a relaxed light setting such as I have here in my computer room.

On to the measured color gamut. This is the measure of the color space visible to humans that the display can reproduce:



Yes, she's sure got some gamut. We already knew that, but it doesn't hurt to show it off some more.

The Gamma curve. This determines how smoothly the display can show transitions from black or very dark colors, through the midrange and on to white or very saturated colors. Strict adherence to the target curve is the goal:



I'll let that speak for itself.

The Delta E. This is the measure of how accurately the display is reproducing requested colors. Lower is better, and ultimately we'd like Delta E values of 1 or less through all colors and luminance levels.



I want to cross check this with Gretag's Eye One Display 2 Pro software. Not that I think SpectraView is lying - I'd just prefer to show something more granular along with this chart, because it doesn't break the Delta E down into individual color ranges. But still... a good result.

OK, now we'll look at it again with Colorcomp enabled at level 3.

Summary:



Gamut:



Gamma:



Delta E:



The differences with Colorcomp toggled are well within the range of statistical noise. Still, I found it useful to post both sets of charts since Colorcomp is a key feature of the product line, and I do feel that it enhances uniformity of the display surface to a degree. It appears to have little to no negative effect upon accuracy, so I recommend using it.

Well, those are the results. Once again, I'd like to cross check with another calibration suite for more granular info. Maybe I'll go ahead and spring for the Eye One Display 2 Pro package, even though it's a bit redundant - but I'd really like to measure the SpectraView results through another application for the sake of being scientific. I'd also like to see some before/after readings - SpectraView only provides you with "after". However, it's incredibly easy to use - you select a target profile or make one of your own, position the colorimeter, then go make some tea. By the time you return with your hot cup of tea, it's finished and is waiting for you with the result charts.

Anyhow, why should a 2690 gamer care to spend additional money to calibrate their display? I won't proclaim whether you should do it or not - a copy of SpectraView II and a suitable colorimeter will set you back at least another US $300 on top of what you paid for your 2690, but there are some benefits to gaming on a calibrated unit. Improved black levels are one benefit. You can see that the result I achieved is nothing like a CRT, but 0.26-0.27 still quite nice for an LCD. I fired up Thief: Deadly Shadows for some A/B comparison against the factory-set Native profile and 2.2 Gamma settings. Blacks did get richer while retaining detail. This appeared to have more to do with color settings than gamma settings though. Some of you out there may also just have a penchant for seeing a game's art content analytically. This could be for the worse as often as it's for the better, but a "gameophile" may appreciate this nonetheless. Some games, ones with good art to begin with, may appear richer and smoother. With lower quality or older games that use lower color depth/fewer color shades in the artwork and/or lots of texture compression, the calibrated 2690 may reveal posterization effects and texture compression artifacts. The 2690 actually does this to a degree before you calibrate it; it's a very "revealing" display indeed.

SpectraView also allows you to create custom "target" profiles as you wish, and once you've performed a calibration cycle for that profile, you can choose it in the software and it will be uploaded to the display. This is helpful if you want to have different white points, luminosity levels, etc. for various applications, though it does take the display about a minute to adjust to a new setting.

Side note: Props to Zebo for lending me his Gretag colorimeter - before he even cracked open the box himself!

Side note 2: Calibration has even further reduced the anomaly on the top center/right of the screen that I've pointed out. Interesting...

Side note 3: SpectraView calibration forces Auto Luminance to the setting of "1". It also reduced the display's "estimate" of 120 Cd/M² to 50Cd/M² to achieve the calibrated 120 Cd/M² target. The display definitely seems to be retaining good color levels despite these changes being forced.

Calibration tips: I'm not a whiz at this stuff (still somewhat of a newbie) but I found that the calibration settings I used for testing, while being fairly "standard", looked a bit too cool and dark on my display. I did a bit of testing and discovered that the native white point of my 2690 is just about 6000K - a bit "warmer" than 6500K. The native gamma setting seems to be pretty close to the standard 2.2 curve. I defined a new profile with 6000K white point, 2.2 Gamma, and a bit more luminance - 140Cd/M². Much better! Warmer, brighter, a bit more "punchy" but still with good black levels and color accuracy. Contrast and black levels were left at default.

If you get a 2690 of your own and don't yet have a calibration kit, try these settings out and see how they look:

- Set Auto Luminance to 1 or 3.
- Turn Colorcomp on and set it to some value (1 through 5 are available, higher values may suppress luminance more but 3 works well).
- Leave Color Control set to Native.
- Set Gamma to 2.2, or download GammaComp for free and let it do its thing - try it and see if you like it. Reset the display if it messes things up.
- I found 150 Cd/M² to be a comfortable brightness setting when I first got my 2690, and the 159 that was chosen by SVII to approximate an actual value of 140 isn't too far from that. Try 150-160 and see how you like it.
- I've never touched the contrast control and don't really sense the need to do so, but play with it if you want.
- Black level adjustment - see next section. I prefer the default.


Black levels:

No panel produces a true black; this one is no exception, but as seen above, the 2690 can make an effort with some good tuning. There is a black level adjustment that increases blacks (by lowering the value) and vice versa. It defaults to 128 and ranges from 0-255; it does indeed deepen the amount of black, perhaps through some sort of shuttering algorithm. It's very sensitive and should be used sparingly to emulate pitch blackness, as only a couple notches of downwards adjustment will crush contrast levels quite a bit, especially at lower luminance levels.

Pixel granularity:

What can I say, it's 0.287 mm pixel pitch. This may turn some people off of this panel. It is visible close up and produces a very fine screen door, but you probably aren't going to be sitting that close. I'm positioned about 2 feet/half of a meter from the panel and at this distance I cannot see pixels, but there is definitely some aliasing evident with onscreen objects and fonts. This (for me) is offset by the increased size and clarity of what's on the screen. I've been typing away at this review now for a good chunk of time, and my eyes feel good. I don't need or use corrective lenses, but I'm in my late thirties and my eyes tire more quickly than they used to. Since I'll probably be using this panel into my forties, the clarity and lack of eyestrain counts as an ergonomic plus.

A quick comment about 26" vs. 24": 24" is a satisfying amount of screen, but this bit of extra panel on the 26"... it's definitely noticeable and fills the field of vision a bit better. If you can accept the pixel pitch, you'll want the 26". Worth the extra money over a 2490 IMO.


Video playback:

A tad grainy - again, it's the pixel pitch. Despite this, the definition and detail I saw playing 1080p WMV HD such as Step Into Liquid was fantastic. I caught myself getting lost in the tiny ripple patterns on the water surface as the spray that was hitting it was filmed from underneath.

DVDs... this format is outliving its usefulness, IMO - it can't keep up with modern HD displays, especially not ones as analytical as this one. I watched a bit of LOTR: Fellowship. The pixels kept up with small, rapidly moving objects such as the soldiers in the wide shots of the opening battle scene (same kind of prowess as I saw in games), but MPEG compression artifacts were evident all over the place. I'm not really sure what this "twinkling" is that reviewers describe and complain about so much. If it's the same thing that I'm seeing and describing as compression artifacts, then don't blame the display for showing what is really there. It's like listening to bad MP3 through a good sound system. Garbage In, Garbage Out.


Final Grade:

I'll reserve judgement as far as anything truly "final" goes until a couple of outstanding issues get resolved - most importantly my exchange; I'll have to perform a quality inspection of my replacement panel and sum up my evaluation of NEC support once the matter is closed. I also want to look further into the DVI-I analog scaling issue before declaring it broken. But the grade will most likely be a good one. The 2690 is a robust, versatile and well thought out professional grade display that lends itself very well to more "playful" uses.

============

Per Tamlin's request I've taken a few pics. Fair warning - they didn't turn out so well. My digicam stinks and so do my photography skills. They do not do this display justice; not even close.

Desktop with advanced OSD and navigation markers visible.
Far Cry pic 1
Far Cry pic 2
HL2:E1 pic 1
HL2:E1 pic 2
Oblivion pic 1
Oblivion pic 2
Oblivion pic 3

Thanks for reading! Be sure to take a look at Tamlin's 2690 review here at WSGF as well as Aquila76's 2690 review. WSGF is quiclky becoming your one stop 2690 review shop!

Nice! I'm a bit relieved too!
Your reflections towards gaming with this vs. the 16/6 ms (BtW/GtG) Gateway expecially!
I've read about the image capablities of the screen and the testing thereof, so the screen should be able to press the most out of a game colorwise. Speed could have ruined the whole experience though and fortunately the screen is responsive enough.


A good LCD should bring out all the uglyness of a bad codec. Thats a good thing in my book depending on why of course. If the flaws are from the viewing material and not the screen itself, it proves that it can bring out the finer details, which again means quality.

Can't wait to get my hands on this screen!

Can you take some ingame pictures of the screen?

Edit: Bummer with the scaling though. I would really like to hear how it scales in non-native resolutions.

As soon as I can get my digicam to behave, i'll take some game shots. HL2:EP1 looks fabulous. Oblivion - I'm running Qarl's pack #2; I have pack #3 but haven't installed it yet. I'm thinking that the author of Natural Faces should get one of these displays - it reveals a bit of ruddiness and posterization in the facial textures.

I'm really liking this 2690!

Great review Pain and I'll have that colorimeter to your house by weeks end:)

Sorry to hear you got a poor sample, hopefully you can massage the stuck green out and backlight goes away. From what I've gathered bleed is simply a case of the panel pushing too hard on the plastic/metal case it's housed. The good news is materials do stretch over time with heat and cooling LCD will do - explaining disappearance of some GX2 owners bleed over a week or two. Nevertheless $1600 later I'd expect perfect....


-using my TN laptop in a Hotel room - so envious

Heya Zebo

I'm not too worried about the subpixel. If the backlight issue remains, I can tell NEC that it's interfering with my "serious work"

Thanks again for the lend of the Gretag. You're helping me to help tell the "real" world about this yummy panel.

Time to update my AT sig... "2690WUXi Owner"

Well, well, well .... As I expected, this monitor is capable of gaming in high definition colour. Thx for the nice write up Painman

It's not surprise for me that gaming experience is much better than with your previous Gateway S-PVA panel. Even with the OverDrive Off. I've said this many times before, but any nicely and/or moderately overdriven S-IPS panel variants (especially the latest revisions) are much better gaming choice and that includes fast paced shooters specifically.

Congratulations on your new monitor. Excellent choice.

I ordered the Dell 2407 a few days ago for a very good price. I guess I should be happy but I´m already worrying I might be underwhelmed by it´s size.
But I guess there´s only a limited amount of money anybody is willing to pay for 2-3 extra inches.
I couldn´t convince myself to pay 150€ more for every extra inch. But it sure must be nice to have them.

Nothing is wrong with 24", it's a nice panel size. the 24" version of the NEC is what I was going to get in the first place, but it seems to be trailing the 26" by several weeks. Impatience got the better of me, but no regrets

This is about the limit of what I'd want in front of me on my desk though.

EDIT: Review updated with thoughts on OSD and controls; some icky pix added for Tamlin

Man Far Cry still looks great after all these years, doesnt it? Just checking in for the added pics, nice photography. Don't temp me like that brudda...it really seems the 2690 is a no brainer over the 2490..92% color gamet vs same ole 72%.. bigger and only $150 more, as a percentage it's ~10% more, in the noise level really. I can't see NEC selling too many 24's until that size hits the GX2 series. Question is can I wait . Heard early spring now it's moved to summer, what's next? Arrr:P

We all know PVA's suck - Can you comment on how it compares to your GX2? Or maybe you shouldnt.

The pics came out dark, that's the main problem I felt with them. They aren't conveying how vibrant this baby is. Even with 25% brightness I'm sure I'm way over 120 Cd/M².

It's a lot like 20WMGX², but bigger, of course Since they're both IPS (obviously) you know most of what to expect from one if you've seen the other. Aside from that, this panel appeals much more to my inner geek because of all the tweaks under the hood. In fact, I swung by to add some more info re: scaling to the review

With something this big, you're starting to head into the realm of lifelike proportions in games. I had to fight a brown bear on my way to taking that last Oblivion pic. The hugeness of the bear was conveyed in a way that a small screen just can't do.

OK, no more tempting... I'm not taking the blame if you take the plunge and you aren't happy but you pretty much already know what your turnoffs might be... bigger pixels, no Opticlear.

Thanks to you. The price is the only thing that hurts, but it's like anything else you buy, really. If you want quality, you're going to pay for it. Sitting in front of this beautiful display makes the pain from my wallet go away.

Thanks for maikng pictures!
They were a bit too dark and I doubt they did the screen justice. My favorite was the halflife picture with the woman. Expecially around the area of the necklace.
One of the reasons for choosing this panel type, is its ability to reproduce skin color without getting too much artificial plastic look in the colors.
I'll make a series of pictures too when getting this screen!

Where did you guys get the NEC 2690WUXi? I am considering to get one of them in 2, 3 months.

Also, how much is it normally?

Yup, take more pics, and make them better than mine

Alyx looks a bit too orange in that picture, but it's the lighting there. I have to try out a bunch of new Oblivion face packs now, the one I have makes actors too doll-like. HL2 does a good job IMO.

(Edit: Switching to sRGB (6500K) color preset eliminates a lot of cartoony reds/oranges as well, but color accuracy is still unkown on my unit.)



Provantage for me, Tamlin is in Norway... $1591 shipped was my cost. The price on their site is higher right now, but it fluctuates based on which distro has them available (right now, nobody it seems). I'm not sure what NEC is up to. Supposedly they have hundreds of these panels in their US warehouse.

How is it with the saturation function? Is there a possibility to calibrate the screen for maximum color accuracy and then use it to increase saturation when juicier color is required (WOW) with an option to return slider back without destroying the calibration?
If I play HL2, I want high accuracy and great skin colors.
If I play WOW, I want juicy colors...
For the moment, I use different color profiles in Spyder2pro's profilechooser. If the saturation creates better effect then my current method of using higher gamma, then it might be a good option as well. Using higher gamma usually gives less detail.