CTX VL950ST

CTX has been going great guns of late, with its 1795UA 17in and EX1200 21in monitors in PC Pro's A List for several months. Its latest, the VL950ST, is a 19in display with the emphasis on value - it has only been recently that you've been able to get such a lot of monitor for so little cash.

While the CRT industry is currently preoccupied with flat-screen aperture-grille tubes sported by the latest high-end units, the VL950ST has a humbler shadow-mask screen. It's the short-neck variety, which leads to an overall depth of just 427mm. The nominal 19in screen gives a viewable diagonal a whisker over 18in, which is large enough to run Windows at the unit's recommended resolution of 1,280 x 1,024. At this resolution the display should (and does) manage an 85Hz vertical refresh rate. The monitor is also capable of a 1,600 x 1,200 resolution at 75Hz.

The styling of the VL950ST is identical to others in the range, including the legend above the OSD exit button that purports to switch between BNC and D-SUB inputs when the OSD isn't active. Unfortunately, there are no BNC connectors. The D-SUB cable is captive too, which can be infuriating if you bend the pins at the computer end of the cable and need to replace it.

The 950 features an integrated USB hub as standard, although CTX has chosen to place the one upstream and four downstream ports at the back of the main unit, rather than placing them more conveniently at the sides.

We tested the 950 at its recommended 1,280 x 1024 resolution, set to a refresh rate of 75Hz. The unit gave a pretty good account of itself when subjected to the usual raft of DisplayMate tests, although we were slightly underwhelmed, having been spoilt by the stunningly good 19in aperture grille units around at the moment, such as Mitsubishi's 900u (reviewed issue 51, p182). One feature that stood out was the very consistent corner-to-corner performance, with little degradation of image quality at the extremes of the screen. Power regulation was adequate and geometry performance was fine after a little tweaking. There was some blooming around areas of intense white, leading to loss of definition - a common problem with shadow-mask displays. A little streaking at the boundaries of high contrast areas was also noticeable, both using DisplayMate and in normal use. MoirÚ effects were evident with the standard Windows colour scheme, which weren't fully correctable with the compensation controls. However, none of these problems were especially pronounced.

The OSD controls of the VL950ST are easy to use, with the full complement of adjustment options and the very welcome dedicated Exit button.

The VL950ST is a perfectly competent monitor, and for the money it represents great value for a 19in display. Unfortunately, models of the quality of CTX's own 1795UA lead to very high expectations and, as a consequence, the 950 failed to impress.

Author: David Fearon