Hyundai L70S 17inch LCD Review - A real steal for the right price.

After about 2-3 years of use my Dell P991 19inch Trintron CRT finally bit the dust, so I decided to buy a LCD instead of spending money on another CRT. My bargain hunting and reviewing eventually led me to the Hyundai L70S 17inch LCD which I found listed at yougotdeals.com for $280.

Being a fan of flat screens, I wasn’t about to buy anything other then a Trinitron or LCD. The advantage I had with an LCD was that I could buy a 17 inch and it would nearly have the same viewable area of a 19inch CRT. There is also the light weight, space saving factor as well that played into it. The only downside to the purchase was that LCDs are usually considerably more expensive then their Cathode Ray Tube counterparts. However, being the resourceful bugger I am I was able to find a very good deal on the Hyundai L70S 17inch LCD.

The Hyundai L70S model has been through an interesting existence as whole. Hyundai originally started using their own LCDs in the L70S, switched to AU Optronics in August 2003, then switched to a Samsung panel in December 2003. This isn’t a bad thing, however. User reviews/quality of this model were poor until 2004 when the Samsung panel started getting into circulation.

With a little digging and luck I found the L70S on sale at outpost for $280, no rebates. After looking around a bit and finding the specs and response time I decided to take the chance and order one. The price on the panel is now $399 at outpost, so I consider myself fortunate I ordered it when I did.

Specs:

Hyundai ImageQuest L70S 17" LCD Monitor w/ Speakers
Model# L70S
Panel Type: A-Si TFT Active Matrix
Native Resolution: SXGA (1280 x 1024)
Pixel Pitch: 0.264 mm
Brightness: 260 cd/m2
Contrast Ratio: 450 : 1
View Angle: 150° / 125° (Horizontal / Vertical)
Input Connectors: Analog: HD15, Audio: Mini-Stereo jack
Features: Built-in 2 x 2w speakers
Synchronization Range: Horizontal: 31-80kHz, Vertical: 56-75Hz
Dimensions: 372.5 x 398 x 185 mm (WxHxD)

It has no DVI output. This will be an immediate turn off for some people, but it’s argued that DVI really isn’t needed for lcds 17 inches and under.

The panel has not disappointed me. I was afraid of getting a unit with dead pixels but my LCD is fully functional and thus far has developed no dead pixels. But is there any ghosting? Not that I claim to be an expert on “ghosting” but after playing a few games of Halo, which looked very, very nice on this display, I noticed no ghosting whatsoever. The LCD is optimized at 1280X1024 resolution at 60HZ. We tried running it at 75HZ, but the screen looked slightly out of focus and fuzzy. This did not matter as the 60hz range worked perfectly (refresh rates on a LCD aren't as important as refresh rates on a CRT) . The display has a 16ms response rate, contrary to what you may read elsewhere. It’s possible that the earlier makes of this model that used other panels could have been 20ms as reported at some places. Regardless, a 16ms or 20ms response is great for gaming and watching dvds.

Believe it or not, the display has actually improved since I have first started using it. For the first few days there was an annoying blur problem when using the display when 2 bold letters were side by side like this: II. This problem seems to have completely disappeared.

The L70S comes with built in “speakers”. Keep in mind I use the term speakers loosely because the sound coming out of these reminds me of a dog chewing his way out of a paper bag. The speakers on my Dell Inspiron 8200 Notebook sound better then they do. You can easily buy a $10 pair of speakers at WalMart or make some out of aluminum cans that would sound better then the enclosed speakers. In any case you buy a display for the display, you’ll probably never buy one based on the fact the speakers that came with it are awesome. I won’t be throwing out my Logitech Z460s anytime too soon.

The final strong point of this LCD is the 3 year warranty. I wish my Dell monitor had a 3 year warranty, but I suppose I wouldn’t be writing to you about this LCD if it did.

A helpful link to LCD users:
Cleartype is a special font that makes reading fonts on LCDs easier.

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartype/tuner/1.htm