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Rating: 
Summary: "Varanus Komodoensis"
Review: A couple of things about this screen which you may not already know. Firstly, I noticed that the image that you see on the screen is kind of set back a little, behind this flat glass plate that is at the actual front of the monitor. The resulting parallax error will be noticeable if viewing from the side at an angle - something that you can't tell if you're buying sight-unseen. On the positive side, you do get a built in USB hub, so you'll get 2 more slots than you have now!You'll probably need to get yourself a new graphics card; the minimum that will take advantage of the FP1355's full potential will be at least the nVidia GeForce II MX400. If you're paying this much for your monitor, a little extra for a new card probably isn't going to make any difference (or like me, you can't afford anything else for months).
Don't think that because this monitor is capable of up to 2048 x 1536 @ 75Hz that this resolution will be practical. At this highest resolution, I couldn't help notice that the resolution is not all that crisp, perhaps a little blurry or more correctly, quivery - so it isn't perfect. Do you use the highest res possible on your existing monitor? Probably not, right? So if you can't live with using this monitor at the NEC recommended 1600 x 1200 @ 95Hz, I'd say don't buy it.
Don't forget that if you will be looking at text, you will have to make it slightly larger because you'll be using much higher resolutions. However, you can will be able to look at smaller-sized fonts than with normal monitors because it will look crisper and less pixelly. A small tip for windows setup: go to the display properties window / settings tab / advanced button / general tab - and where it says font size, choose other and make it something like 150 or 200% and THEN go back to the display properties window / appearance tab and re-adjust the size of each item individually for fine tuning. If you don't make the fonts 200% of their normal size, some of the text that you will see in use during windows will be very small indeed and it can't be changed by changing any of the items in the appearance tab alone, and you will end up squinting. I truly don't think this monitor is for everyone. If you know much about computers and windows setup, and you enjoy customising everything..... if you spend hours with your current monitor adjusting the screen's image so that you get the last millimetre of display area out of it - you will be very pleased; but I couldn't recommend it if you simply want to do ordinary computing just with a bigger screen. Remember that the intended use is desktop publishing / CAD / graphic design and perhaps spreadsheets (although NEC doesn't mention this use) - which is what I bought it for. Yes, the two thin horizontal black lines are visible on any light-coloured background. But only a perfectionist or fastidious person would be truly bothered by it. It's something that you learn to live with.
I have personally called it "varanus komodoensis" which translates as komodo dragon - or the biggest monitor that ever lived!!
Rating:
Summary: An Update...
Review: I wrote the other review, and I have a correction to make. I had to write a new review - after all, I don't want to lose all my helpful votes now do I? I've since bought a new graphics card (ASUS GeForce4 MX440), which has made the monitor sooooo much sharper at the higher resolutions containing more than 1600 horizontal pixels (i.e. 1920x1080, 1920x1200, 1920x1440 and 2048x1536). I didn't think a graphics card would make any difference at all to the quality of the display. Boy was I wrong. Before I said that the screen was slightly blurry looking at say 1920x1440. Now I find it is very crisp indeed, and I suddenly realised why this monitor is worth so much.
The display is still the slightest bit "shaky" at 2048x1536 @ 75Hz, it kind of quivers or hovers around a bit. This is probably because it is 75Hz and not 85 or 100Hz. Personally, I don't find that 75Hz is high enough for the amount of time I spend in front of the computer. But anyway, the "blurriness" aspect has gone completely.
The only explanation I can come up with is that when I yanked out the two-year-old old graphics card, there was a really thick layer of dust on the back of the circuit board. A few times, I'd carefully vacuumed out some of the dust from inside the computer, but I must have missed that area. Sorry NEC, if you lost any customers because of the other review. With over 3 million pixels at my disposal, I can display two whole pages in MS Word side-by-side simultaneously, while still being able to legibly read font (Verdana) as small as size six!! Try doing THAT with any LCD display!!
So it sure helps with the layout aspect of serious word-processing (such as producing a thesis or a book). It is also capable of displaying, perhaps, 3, 4 or even 5 times the number of cells at any one time than, say, a 17" monitor could in those huge spreadsheets you sometimes create (no I'm not kidding).
And for all you gamers out there, can you imagine playing need for speed 4 in 2048x1536, and 16-bit colour? That is the reality. What a blast! One last thing, for all you desktop publishers and graphics artists out there: know that you better plan on getting a mighty fine graphics card if you intend to use 32-bit colour at the 2048x1536 pixel mode, because even though I bought the ASUS card that said it could cope with this @ 75Hz, it could only manage 60Hz, which is not good enough for me. I even edited the ini files of the display driver to try and force it to work, but could not get the claimed 75Hz - despite what it said on the website to the contrary. So I stick with 16-bit colour, partly because I can't really notice the difference, but mainly because the refresh rate is higher.
The other thing to consider is that even though the monitor may be capable of, let's say, 1600x1200@95Hz - the graphics card might only be able to display 85Hz or 100Hz at this resolution, so you must use the lower one, which is a pity because it isn't taking full advantage of the monitor's capabilities. But I'd still give it six stars if I could! :-) ONE MORE THING: NEC ISN'T NOT GOING TO MAKE THIS IN AUSTRALIA ANY LONGER, SO SNAP IT UP WHILE YOU STILL CAN 'CAUSE THEY'RE NOT GETTING ANY CHEAPER!
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