Sony MFM-HT75W review

Sony has carried off the design of this TFT and TV immaculately. The MFM-HT75W is finished in a stylish silver casing, making it an ideal match for modern interiors.

The first thing you notice is the glossy X-black screen. Love it or loathe it, this has the advantage of adding perceived vividness, with the drawback of picking up room reflections. Nevertheless, if you're careful with positioning and room lighting, you'll get great results.

PC connection is via DVI-D or D-SUB VGA, with a 3.5mm audio input jack for each. There are also two video channels, each with dedicated audio input: one with S-Video and composite video inputs, the other with component video. Picture-in-Picture is also supported.

Picture quality is excellent. Preset modes for PC, Game, Movie and Auto let you quickly match setup to content, and you can fine-tune settings through the intuitive menu. There are separate controls for contrast, backlight and brightness, giving wide control over the basic image. This allows you to enhance detail at the bright and dark ends of the scale: the bright end (towards white) shows good detail and near black it's superb. The only slight blemishes are that the screen was marginally brighter towards the left side, and there was some minor banding in 256-step greyscale and colour ramps.

Colour temperature controls include 9,300K, 6,500K, sRGB and individual red, green and blue settings, plus four gamma presets. And for movies and games, the 16ms response time handles movement with no significant lag. The main cost of switching to the analog D-SUB input is increased noise, seen in our phase lock tests.

The integrated analog TV tuner doesn't stretch the picture to widescreen format, showing it with black bars down the sides instead. The only disappointment is sound. The speakers are fine for TV, but not the best for DVD movies or music.

But while this may be a desirable panel, the price certainly isn't. If you're not bothered about the analog tuner, Acer's AL2032wm) offers a 20in screen for the same price.

Author: Roger Kirkwood