Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)This TV is a great size for a small livingroom or bedroom, but I did have some disappointing issues with it which I wasn't expecting. For background I am using this in my living room, connected to a home theater PC I built. Here is a summary:
Pros -
Resolution (1920x1200) - This is great for use as a computer monitor, as you can see more than 10% more vertical pixels; a screen this size, resolution and price range is hard to come by. It also goes great with older 4:3 (SD) TV signals, as you get to see a larger picture than a 1920x1080 screen of the same size.
HDMI Inputs - These look great! I only tried this after trying VGA, which I was not happy with (see below), but it is definitely the way to go if possible.
Weight - I was surprised how light this felt, compared to my ~5 year old Viewsonic of the same screen size. Much easier to position, and I imagine it would be better for wall-mounting as well (though I've not tried that).
Horizontal Viewing Angle - You can go nearly 180 degrees to the right or left and the image still looks great (color-wise). Much improved over my last TV, though I think this is pretty standard these days.
Cons -
Resolution - While it is a positive, the non-16:9 resolution also brings some problems. For example, most of the current crop of game consoles aren't built to handle that. You'll either get an image stretched vertically a little bit or small black bars on the top and bottom.
VGA Input - I'd been using the VGA input on my previous TV, as it pre-dated HDMI, but I found that with this screen the pixels wobbled. You couldn't really notice with TV or movies, but viewing text was very distracting. I tried the on-screen controls, which did have some things to help compensate, but I couldn't remove the shakiness. Do *not* get this if you need to use VGA.
No Sleep Mode - The last TV I had, and every monitor I've owned in at least the last decade, has had some form of sleep mode. Usually they will go into this if there is no signal for a few seconds, and it helps save power as well as the backlight. This TV, however, just sits on a bright blue screen with yellow text indicating there is no signal... and I've emailed their tech support to make sure this was how it is supposed to work. This is *almost* a deal-breaker for me - I really considered returning the monitor because of it, and it is responsible for 1 and 1/2 of the stars I took off the rating. There is no excuse today for a screen not to go into sleep mode, and manually turning the TV off whenever you wander away from it seems like a waste of time. Maybe this wouldn't be an issue for folks using it as a pure TV, but for HTPC users it is a serious issue.
Controls - There is no button to simply toggle inputs. The only option is to open a menu, move the selection to the input you want, and then select it. This seems rather slow and inconvenient, but maybe they didn't want to clutter the remote further.
Vertical Viewing Angle - If you are much more than 10% or so off of straight-on there is pretty serious color change. This seems to happen a bit more than with my older TV, though it really only affects me when I lay on the floor and look up at the TV (playing with my young son). Viewing from below is worse than from above, as well.
Hopefully the above info helps someone else make a good decision - whether you choose to purchase this or something else!
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The stylish and understated ST289MUB delivers a smooth picture quality and a high level of user-friendliness to enrich the audio-video entertainment lifestyle of you, your family and friends.
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