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Anyway, with it receiving a clean and crisp digital signal I took a closer look at image quality using Displaymate for Windows. First up, I have to say I was impressed by the panel’s brightness. With a 400cd/m2 brightness rating and a 450:1 contrast ratio it’s certainly a lively display and caused little issue when discriminating between steps in the greyscales and colour scales. However, the colour shades of the segments in each scale were not uniform and can be best described as a slight clumping of colour groups where only a short series of two or three steps is seen to graduate smoothly followed by a larger change in shade. It was not a surprise, therefore, that our test shots containing large areas of colour with a varying tone looked a tad blocky. Banding was also evident across the 256 intensity test screen and, surprisingly for this monochrome picture, I was also able to make out a number of spuriously coloured regions.

I was a little disappointed with the graininess of the test DVD movie too, but was pleased to see a genuine 16ms response time that kept motion smearing at bay. Viewing angles are adequate in the horizontal plane over approximately 140degrees, but be prepared to knock another 20 or so degrees off that in the horizontal plane.

Of course, while watching a movie you expect good quality audio and the FP791 doesn’t let you down. I’d started to grow tired of the pathetically tinny speakers that so many TFT displays come with, but for such small stereo units the sound is truly excellent. You can enable SRS Lab’s surround sound processing for a more spatial ambience too. If you want the fully monty, an optional remote controlled TV-tuner box does exist for the FP791, offering support for NTSC and PAL systems, plus composite, S-Video and TV antenna signals. However, I’ve been informed by BenQ that a component shortage has resulted in limited stock of the box, but otherwise expect to fork out somewhere in the region of £89 (inc VAT).

Verdict

All in all, the FP791 is feature rich unit and the brightness of the display along with audio quality can certainly be admired. The quick response time is also impressive but it is somewhat let down by its colour reproduction and DVD performance. The FP791 retails for around £433, which represents realistic value for money considering it offers a card reader, and a design that will appeal to multimedia users looking for something different.

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