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Moving on to vibrancy, the contrast is not the highest I’ve seen in a TFT and with a ratio of 500:1 being very common these days, the 1500MAEP’s 400:1 makes for a panel that lacks that extra bit of punch - rather surprising considering this monitor is trying to be a television. I say surprised because you’d expect the contrast ratio and overall luminosity to be as high as possible in order to mimic the inherently high beam energies found in a standard television CRT. Instead, what you get is a display that makes the moving picture look flat and lifeless. Things can be improved slightly by upping the contrast and brightness but then you start entering the washed-out zone. When watching our test DVD the picture looked rather noisy regardless of whether I was using the S-Video or composite connections, but at least the 25ms response time kept motion smearing at bay.

Much the same can be said for the picture from the antenna, but this largely depends on the quality of your aerial and the reception in your area. Viewing angles in the horizontal plane are about average typically peaking at about 60 degrees either side of centre. From above I could view the screen from approximately 70 degrees from centre, but only half that from below.

Finally, some words on the OSD and remote control. These are probably the 1500MAEP’s best features with OSD carrying coloured menus that are quite simple to navigate using the nine buttons on the lower bezel. There’s a dedicated auto-adjust button that corrected the phase and clock seamlessly and a signal select button for cycling through the various connectors. There’s also a Picture-in-Picture option with three different sizes for watching television as you work. The finish on the remote looks like a home spray job, but the fact that I could select, adjust and control all of the OSD settings from my armchair makes up for that.

Verdict

You’ve got to ask yourself if you actually want to watch a movie or TV broadcasts on a screen that’s pretty small to start with and cannot match the performance you’d find from a television – which incidentally won’t cost as much. That said, I quite liked the Picture-in-Picture function and the remote control’s functionality, but when you take the unit as a whole I wouldn’t part with any money. I’d forgo the TV tuner function altogether and instead make friends with a 17in TFT screen with better build quality, a livelier picture, and a DVI port.

Update

During this review I was informed that this model has been superseded by the NF-1500MAESP, which is identical except for the styling around the speakers and stand.

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