Product Reviews

As the only non-Apple display to support the Apple Display Connector (ADC) technology featured on all new Power Macs, Formac's Gallery 1740 has won plaudits in the last year. The company has now extended its range of LCD displays with the Gallery 2010, which, as its name suggests, features a 20.1in screen.

Whereas the 1740 offered a cheaper alternative to Apple's 17in Studio Display, the Gallery 2010 is in a category of its own. Apple's range jumps from the 17in model, at £699, up to the 22in Cinema Display, which costs a hefty £1799. Sitting nicely in the middle is the Gallery 2010, at £1195.

If you think that sounds inexpensive for a display only marginally smaller than Apple's product, consider this - the Gallery 2010's native resolution is larger than that of the Cinema Display. At 1600 x 1200 pixels, it provides 17% more screen real estate. In fact, the vertical resolution is the same as in Apple's Cinema HD 23in display, which costs a whopping £2599.

An important difference is that both of Apple's high-end displays are wide-screen, a format increasingly favoured by creative professionals, especially those working with video. The Gallery 2010 uses the more traditional 4:3 ratio, which is ideal for illustration and page layout , and at these sorts of resolutions, you'll have room to spare.

As easy as AGP

Because of the Gallery 2010's huge resolution, you'll need a powerful graphics card to plug it into. A minimum of 32Mb of VRAM is required, so if your Mac came with an Nvidia GeForce2 MX or better, you'll be fine. Otherwise, you'll have to upgrade. But be warned - the Gallery 2010 only works fully with an AGP graphics card. You can use it with a PCI card, but only at its native resolution.

With an AGP card, the scaling required to display lower resolutions is impressive, but the Gallery 2010 undoubedtly looks at its best at 1600dpi x 1200dpi.

As the Gallery 2010 is currently an all-digital solution, you'll have to plug it into an ADC port or a DVI connector. (Two different models are avaible, and Formac is also planning to release a VGA model.)

The Gallery 2010 doesn't use ADC to its full potential - drawing power, video

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and USB through a single connector. The Gallery's power must still be provided separately, but it uses a cunning device called, imaginatively, the Formac Display Connector (FDC). This is a small box near the end of the video cable which the power supply plugs into. This means there is still only one cable in the back of the display, keeping things neat and tidy. For the DVI version, a USB cable is also provided, which connects a USB port on the back of the Mac to the FDC box, providing a USB signal to the display's two integrated, powered USB ports.

Formac is aiming the Gallery 2010 at creative professionals who have been reluctant to adopt LCD technology because of concerns over colour accuracy and image artefacts, despite its obvious advantages over CRT in terms of space and power-saving. But the Gallery 2010 includes a top-notch LCD panel from Fujitsu, which uses a technology called Multi-Domain Vertical Alignment (MVA) Premium, to provide greater colour purity, higher brightness and contrast, and minimal ghosting with moving images.

And the Gallery 2010 really lives up to these claims, with truly excellent image quality for text, graphics and video. It conforms to Pantone colour standards, so can be accurately calibrated. Importantly, it boasts an extremely wide viewing angle, which means that the colours on the screen don't distort, even when viewed from an extreme angle, either from side to side or up and down.

Stand and deliver

Of course, the colour accuracy is at its best when the screen is viewed straight on, and to this end the Gallery 2010 has a stand at the back enabling the screen to be tilted back and forth. But this stand is a bit of a disappointment. Apple's monitors require only a light push to the screen's surround, which changes the balance on the spring-loaded stand, so the screen rests in its new position. With the Gallery 2010, the easiest way to change the viewing angle is to pull the screen forward, reach round and adjust the stand, and then rest the screen back on the desk. With all that effort, it's also disappointing that there's only about 20 degrees of movement from the most upright to the furthest back position.

The stand is indicative of our only real criticism of the Gallery 2010. From a distance, it looks stylish and in keeping with Apple's range, but up close, the screen's surround, the stand and the LED power light on the front all look rather cheap. It seems a shame to house such a gorgeous panel in a less-than-optimal case, but this is a small quibble when your attention will be focused on the screen itself.

If you've always wanted a big LCD screen, but have been put off by the astronomical prices of Apple's high-end products, then the Gallery 2010 is just what you've been looking for.