Iiyama VisionMaster Pro 454 Review

Overall Rating

Integrated speakers with headphone jack. Integrated USB hub. 2 signal input connectors. Nice design. Excellent picture quality.

No RGB BNC inputs. Very little bass on the speakers. Noisy on startup. Prone to being affected by bright backlighting.

Iiyama have always been able to pride themselves on the quality and reliability of their display devices, and the VisionMaster Pro 454 is no exception. The monitor features a sleek, rounded design, with a flat Trinitron tube. The monitor uses Aperture Grille technology, which although superior to the old shadow mask tubes, it does have the annoying problem of having the little guard wires visible, (about 1/3 and 2/3 down the screen). However once you have used the monitor for a while, these lines seem to disappear, and you would probably never even notice they are there.

As I mentioned, the monitor uses an ultra-flat Trinitron tube, with a special UV coating. The tube is a gloss finish, which can be a little annoying in bright light scenarios, as it can be difficult to see the screen for reflections. However the tube gains in display quality, what it loses in physical appearence. The quality of the display is excellent, with crisp, sharp reproduction, and almost no blurring at high frequency. The monitor can support refresh rates of up to 200Hz depending on the resolution, although a setting of 85Hz to 120Hz is more than adequate.

One thing I particularly like about this monitor, is the way Iiyama have built all the speakers, controls, ports, and connections, into the base of the unit. Unfortunately this means that the base is not detachable from the monitor, but I doubt this would be an issue for most people. On the front of the base, there are two speaker grilles left and right, with a 4 way touch pad and two buttons in the centre. The 4 way pad controls navigation within the configuration menus, whilst the buttons on either side control the selection. The speakers are not particularly good, and they have little, if any bass. However with most PC setups these days, most people wouldn't use the speakers, as they would probably run their sound through a hi-fi or sub-woofer.

On the right side of the base, there are 4 USB ports and a headphone jack. The headphone jack will only be of any use if you use the monitor's internal speakers. If you don't then this jack is somewhat redundant.

On the rear of the base, all of input connectors are located. The monitor supports 2 signal inputs, which means you can have 2 computers connected to the monitor at the same time. Toggling between the monitors is done with a press of one of the buttons on the front, which has to be held for 2 seconds to prevent accidental toggling. For a monitor of this size and quality, I would have expected some BNC RGB input connectors, which unfortunately the 454 doesn't have. Again most users won't require this sort of connectivity, but it would have been nice all the same. There is also a standard 3 pin power input, and a USB connector on the back. The USB connector provides the USB hub with its communication to and from the host computer or hub.

The monitor controls and settings are fairly standard, with the usual screen positioning, picture quality, and reset facilities. What I found particularly useful was that the monitor has 3 presets that can be selected at the touch of a single button. For normal use it is recommended that the monitor is run in 'text' mode. When you start gaming, or using art programs, you can switch the monitor into 'OPQ' mode, which significantly raises the brightness of the monitor, and also increases the vibrancy of the colours on screen. Finally there is a 'movie' mode, which again has high brightness and contrast, but it also slightly blurs the display with some left bias. This does look a bit strange, and many people might think that this is a fault, but the manual goes into this mode in some detail, explaining why the left-bias-blur on the monitor is good for displaying motion video.

The only unusual thing about this monitor is that it is fairly noisy when it is turned on for the first time. The degauss function does make quite a loud noise, although only for a second. If you don't expect it the first time you switch it on, it could make you jump a bit.

Overall this monitor is excellent for just about anyone. The monitor is a good upgrade from a smaller monitor, as well as offering all the features that a professional computer user could want. I believe that only a TFT would be able to surpass this monitor in terms of quality, but for the sake of £200 (approx), I think this monitor is a bargain. Highly recommended.