Product Reviews

It may have taken its time, but Mitsubishi has finally succumbed to the anti-beige movement. Its new Diamond Pro 750SB has a matte-grey panel on its nicely rounded front and comes in both black and beige exteriors, so it will suit your PC, be it silver, beige or black. It may look like a microwave, but it's pleasing on the eye.

That's not all that's changed, though. The Diamondtron M2 tube's SuperBright mode - first seen in the Iiyama Vision Master Pro 413 (see Labs, issue 91, p76) - now has two stages that are switchable from the front panel. The first is intended for still images; the brighter second mode is for movies and games.

And it certainly makes a big difference to both, particularly 3D games - 3DMark2001 looked rich and bright, without becoming distorted. The SuperBright mode also has an auto-brightness feature, which brightens foreground applications and dims the Desktop slightly - similar to the LightFrame technology seen in the Philips Brilliance 107B30 (see Reviews, issue 86, p170), but less distracting.

However, on both the test samples we received, this feature also came into play with SuperBright switched off. It's not nearly as exaggerated, but maximising a white Explorer window, or even bringing

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up the OSD, made the blue Windows Desktop become briefly brighter and then dim slightly. There may be a route round this though, as Mitsubishi is offering its Brightness Controller utility as a free download.

We got a preview sample of the software, which lets you control the brightness level with a simple slider. You can also select SuperBright mode 1 on your usual Desktop without distorting text. The dimming effect is less pronounced, but it's still there.

We initially thought this was a power regulation issue, but the DisplayMate Multimedia Edition tests disagreed. While there was a slight movement in the borders between light and dark screens, it was still stable.

The rest of the tests were also impressive, with both the horizontal and vertical colour registration only coming very slightly out of alignment at the bottom and right edges, while the vertical resolution was faultless.

The only slight disappointment was the horizontal resolution, which made blocks of fine lines blur, particularly on the right-hand side and in the corners. It makes the corner focus slightly blurry too. It's not the worst we've come across, but we've seen better.

These complaints are minor though, and are compensated for by the straight and solid geometry. There are even advanced options like top and bottom hooking in the OSD, and the four navigation controls and simple display make navigating the OSD a doddle.

The only other niggle is the captive D-SUB, which is where the dual-input Iiyama Vision Master Pro 413 still has the upper hand. However, at £159, you can't complain. A few years ago, a 17in Mitsubishi Diamondtron monitor would have cost double that, and the Diamond Pro 750SB still offers a vivid, sharp picture. This is a high-quality monitor for a reasonable price, and it looks good too.