Iiyama VisionMaster Pro 454

I have had the Iiyama VisionMaster Pro 454 monitor for nearly two years now. The first one I had failed on me after two months. The replacement was marked and not in a satisfactory condition. That went back and a new monitor was sent. This one, after some use developed patches in the screen coating in three of the four corners of the screen. The replacement had similar markings but they were smaller. This one lasted longer but failed with a similar problem to the first one.

I waited two and a half weeks for a replacement, and I had to phone them to be told that they did have a replacement for me, even though they were supposed to contact me. I received the replacement packed in an appalling way... The monitor was laid flat on it's side and totally unsupported with no foam. I was not going to accept the box that was sent, as my box was the original with foam packing. After swapping the boxes, the replacement case was split open on the side that had been laying on the bottom of the box (bouncing about inside the truck no doubt). The case had broken due to the weight of the monitor, and with it being unsupported.

Another four week wait for yet another replacement.

I received an email saying they had a replacement for me. Which I waited in for (another day and more time off work). By late afternoon it still had not arrived, so I phoned the delivery company to find out what had happened to it. They had no record of a delivery to my address. I phoned Iiyama (using their 0870 phone number, which is expensive), and she kept me on hold for half an hour while she found out what had happened to it. She said it had been delivered to a person I had not heard of, and it certainly did not come to my address. It seems that they must have sent it to the wrong address and lost yet another monitor. They had no more stock, and I am still waiting for a replacement now.

Do you really want all this trouble when you purchase a monitor? If not then but elsewhere, as Iiyama don't seem to value their customers at all.

This monitor is very impressive when viewing high resolution digital images, giving vibrant colours and deep contrast with very good sharpness. This is fine if this is all you want it for. This monitor to be heavily biased towards this sort of application.

However the screen somehow makes text documents look very grainy and small fonts are difficult to read at times - like a LCD monitor but much worse. I find this monitor very tiring to work with for extended periods despite playing around a lot with settings. My previous monitor was FAR better in this regard although well in the shade with images.

The sound from the built in speakers is dreadful and there is a continual low level but annoying buzz coming from them. To solve it I had to plug a dummy jack plug into the headphone socket to shut them up.

The monitor produces a colossal amount of radio frequency interference - just try and use an FM radio in the same room. I wonder if the designers just thumbed their noses at the EMC regulations.

The menu arrangement is fairly messy and unlike most monitors menus takes quite a while before using it is second nature.

I don't know why the Vision Master 454 has a bit of a cult following - pretty naff really wish I hadn't followed the hype.

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.