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Looking at the back of the ProLite E511S-B, you get some idea of how Iiyama has kept the costs down. There is no sign of any cable routing and the stand is a very basic affair. The stand allows you to tilt the screen forwards and backwards, and that’s pretty much it. There’s no height adjustment, no pan and no screen pivot option for anyone that wants to be able to work in portrait mode. So if you need that kind of flexibility you’re going to have to look elsewhere, but if you can overlook the poor stand design you'll save a chunk of cash. Even though there’s no pan function, the stand will twist on your desk quite easily and, it has to be said, the horizontal and vertical viewing angles are both superb.

Another sign of cost cutting is the lack of DVI cable in the box, which is a little disappointing. You do get a D-SUB cable and the quality of the signal via the analogue input isn’t that far off the digital one. We connected both the D-SUB and DVI ports to our test system and switched between the two. The clock was out of sync initially, but a quick press of the auto adjust button soon cured the problem. Once the auto adjust finished it was pretty hard to tell the difference when switching between DVI and D-SUB.

With a street price of £668.58 the Iiyama represents quite staggering value for money, even before you take the excellent image quality into account. Ok, so it’s not as impressive as the Samsung SyncMaster 213T, but it is over £100 cheaper. With the ProLite E511S-B Iiyama has proved that it can produce a reasonably priced large screen TFT without compromising on the quality.

Verdict

The ProLite E511S-B is a superb monitor that proves that low price doesn’t have to mean low quality. It’s not quite good enough to beat the Samsung for top honours, but it does win Iiyama a Recommended award.

Note

In October the E511S-B will be replaced with the E512S-B. This model will feature a new stand with vertical movement and pivot functionality, and will carry no extra cost.

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