Philips 190G6
The 190G6 wasn't necessarily meant to hit stores. It was unveiled as a prototype one year ago and took a long time to be really available. The objective is to sell a dream monitor for design and sound, and it looks like the engineers in charge of the project had a good time. We did as well, except for one point, the monitor has a glossy panel. This is, however, rather logical, as Philips doesn't target graphic designers, but rather design enthusiasts. Glossy panels are more attractive than mat ones.
In fact, we reached the limit in assessing this type of monitor. To be honest, we find it quite useless. Glossy panel + wrong color adjustments + 8ms response time = not great. And this is being rather nice. If we reconstitute the grey scales as it displays it, the color dominance immediately shows:
We can reasonably say that the quantity of blue is too strong and that it lacks red to balance colors.
In objective tests, we can compare the sound solution to the Asus. Philips clearly wins this battle, and it’s better for satellites and woofers. It’s really possible to listen to music without immediate saturation. Music lovers will find things to say about the quality of sound but for games and MP3s, it’s nice.
The main central button in front controls the sound level. On the right, four buttons allows you to change the ambiance: classic, rock neutral and jazz.
In the back, the video interfaces are numerous: YUV, Scart, S-Video, DVI and D-Sub 15 pins…we have rarely seen so many inputs on a monitor.
To see the image coming from an ADSL box via the SCART plug, you just have to press the control on the left side to change from one interface to another: Computer monitor -> TV.
In the end, we could see this monitor in the dorm room of a (wealthy) student, or in an office to watch the news from time to time, and impress visitors with its stylish appearance.
