Product Reviews

With TFTs still firmly placed at the top of the display price range, it looks like the 17in CRT will be the professional's entry-level choice for a while yet. As recompense, Mitsubishi with its patented Diamondtron tube still has a lot to offer in the flat-screen aperture-grille market. As technology moves further forward, it isn't long before you get more for your money, and the 720 comes just six months after the award-winning Diamond Pro 710 (reviewed Labs, issue 65, p129) at the same original price. The 720 offers TCO 99 certification, a higher refresh rate of 75Hz at 1,600 x 1,200 and dispenses with the restrictive captive D-SUB cable.

Initial results from the 720 were promising, with high contrast and bright vibrant colours pure and even across the screen. Switching the front button to Fine Picture Mode made the display even more pleasing on the eye, reducing brightness and making colours more prominent with a deeper black.

However, moving on to the more demanding DisplayMate Multimedia Edition tests revealed a few surprising weaknesses. Like the 710, the screen regulation was disappointing. While we've seen far worse, there was noticeable movement compared with the solid results returned by ViewSonic's PF77 (reviewed p172). Although less noticeable, the display also curved up

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slightly in the top-right corner, making it look unbalanced, especially compared with the unflawed horizontal geometry.

The horizontal colour registration tests proved faultless. The vertical tests, however, fell out of alignment at the top of the screen, and disappointingly there were no colour convergence controls to resolve this. The control system itself uses the same familiar navigation system as other recent Mitsubishi CRTs. Unfortunately, this can mean a lot of button pressing to cycle one way through the multitude of geometry options to get where you want. Our main criticism with the controls is the limited options. While the ViewSonic PF77 provides focus controls, as well as top and bottom hooking geometry options, the Mitsubishi provides none of these, sticking with the expected standards.

One of the criticisms levelled at the 710 was its lowly maximum refresh rate of 65Hz at 1,600 x 1,200 resolution. This has been rectified with a 75Hz option on the 720 but, although this is much easier on the eye, the 16in viewable screen area still makes this resolution too small to be practical. Even Mitsubishi's recommended 1,280 x 1,024 at 75Hz is squint inducing, losing clarity to boot. We found the optimal setting to be 1,024 x 768 at 100Hz, which is clear and solid.

While the image quality and performance of the Diamond Pro 720 overall are great, its street price of £249 is uncompetitive considering its limited features. The ViewSonic PF77 comes in at the same price with DVI functionality, and a well-designed and more advanced OSD system. Likewise, you can get our current A List 17in monitor, the Iiyama Vision Master Pro 410, for a street price of £245, which again offers superior performance as well as BNC connectivity. While the geometry and convergence complaints are minor, the limited features make the Diamond Pro 720 an average monitor for the money.