Iiyama screens still good?

[Mr Whippy]

I used to have the older Pro CRT's in the late 90's and early 00's and was always impressed, especially their aperture grill models in 19 and 21 sizes.

But then they seemed to go cheap, and I've never really read the greatest reviews on their products.

They have a great looking new 30" display

XB3070WQS

That looks like it could be a great buy, and it's a decent 16:10 screen so nice for photo editing etc with that extra height.

It's also a bargain price at around £500.


But would you?


It's just out, but I'm in the market for a new bigger higher res screen... hmmmm.


Any thoughts/advice on Iiyama LCD's from recent years would be much appreciated!

Thanks

Dave

[bitchstewie]

Not sure on where Iiyama rank these days but FWIW see if you can try one first. I have bloody good eyes but a guy at work got a 27" Dell Ultrasharp and the resolution is simply too high IMO - it might be a bit better on a 30" but that's a lot of screen to be sat 12" away from.

[Mr Whippy]

bhstewie said:

Not sure on where Iiyama rank these days but FWIW see if you can try one first. I have bloody good eyes but a guy at work got a 27" Dell Ultrasharp and the resolution is simply too high IMO - it might be a bit better on a 30" but that's a lot of screen to be sat 12" away from.

I've used 30" before, Apple Cinema displays, so I'm happy with the size and pixel density.

Trying one seems the hardest part. Hardly anyone sells these screens these days, never mind this latest 30" display.

The 27" high end versions seem to rate well for the money though, with many Mac owners buying them and saying they're as nice as their 27" Apple displays of twice the price.


Maybe I'll just have to wait a bit for reviews to start appearing... or people start buying and rating them!

Oh for a local shop that sells things, to be able to go look at hardware in these days.

Dave

[TheD]

I bought a couple of 24s for a client last week and I have to say I was impressed with the quality

[buggalugs]

Iiyama are still my default choice for customers, nice screens, no mither.

[NorthDave]

I run 3 x 27" Iiyama's in the office and love them. Mine are a few years old now though so not quite at the resolution of the newer Dell's etc. I'd say go for it.

Can you not order online and then return if you dont like them?

[All that jazz]

Iiyama generally very bright and contrasty screens, but tend to suffer badly from back light bleed so make sure you test an all black desktop colour before buying.

[wseed]

I have a 24" one (I can't recall the model number but not a top of the range) that's a few years old now and while it's sharp and fine for general office tasks the colour reproduction is dire. Even after having profiled it with my colour spider it's below par and I can't use it for any photo editing.

[ZesPak]

Mr Whippy said:

The 27" high end versions seem to rate well for the money though, with many Mac owners buying them and saying they're as nice as their 27" Apple displays of twice the price.

Having used both, this is very accurate.
If you do fork out cinema display money, I'd put my money towards dell just for sheer connectivity.
The iiyama screens have all the connections though, just only one of each .
In all price classes, I'm having a hard time overlooking them time after time.

[buggalugs]

I do think it is dangerous of them to be making both budget and higher end screens under the same brand. For example 24" screens from £120 fixed stand cheapies to £250 IPS jobs. I think people expect a brand to relate to a certain quality level these days.

[ZesPak]

buggalugs said:

I do think it is dangerous of them to be making both budget and higher end screens under the same brand. For example 24" screens from £120 fixed stand cheapies to £250 IPS jobs. I think people expect a brand to relate to a certain quality level these days.

I would agree, but their low end stuff is really good and does as advertised.

I don't think Motorola will sell less "X" because they make the "G", and samsung covers all bases in almost every segment, still selling millions of their high-end gear.

[Mr Whippy]

I'll agree on that.

Their decent 27" IPS screens are about three times the price of the cheap ones.

I think the 2779QS is about £400.

They used to do the Vision Master Pro which kinda made it clear it was a high end product, and Dell do their UltraSharp which suggests a higher end screen too.

But Iiyama currently have no method for buyers to know they're getting a good monitor... so their top end screens just blend into the cheapy ones I suppose.


As much as I'm not a fan of Apple, I do wish manufacturers would take more note of their clear product naming strategy.

It's really not clear how good any Iiyama product is except looking at the price, which is just dumb.


Tempted to go for one of the 27" screens. Also slightly tempted to get 3x 27" 1080p ones too for a driving simulator type setup.

Dave

[ZesPak]

Mr Whippy said:

But Iiyama currently have no method for buyers to know they're getting a good monitor... so their top end screens just blend into the cheapy ones I suppose.


As much as I'm not a fan of Apple, I do wish manufacturers would take more note of their clear product naming strategy.

It's really not clear how good any Iiyama product is except looking at the price, which is just dumb.

Agreed. Apple does it nicely with the laptops Air being mid end and Pro higher end.
Even if they have too many products, they could do the samsung strategy and use series like they do for TV's and Laptops, 3xxx being low end and 9xxx being high end for example.

[All that jazz]

Mr Whippy said:

I'll agree on that.

Their decent 27" IPS screens are about three times the price of the cheap ones.

I think the 2779QS is about £400.

They used to do the Vision Master Pro which kinda made it clear it was a high end product, and Dell do their UltraSharp which suggests a higher end screen too.

But Iiyama currently have no method for buyers to know they're getting a good monitor... so their top end screens just blend into the cheapy ones I suppose.


As much as I'm not a fan of Apple, I do wish manufacturers would take more note of their clear product naming strategy.

It's really not clear how good any Iiyama product is except looking at the price, which is just dumb.


Tempted to go for one of the 27" screens. Also slightly tempted to get 3x 27" 1080p ones too for a driving simulator type setup.

Dave

The 2779QS is the model known for horrendous backlight bleed. If anyone is thinking of purchasing one I strongly suggest you do some googling of the model number and "backlight bleed".

[ZesPak]

All that jazz said:

The 2779QS is the model known for horrendous backlight bleed. If anyone is thinking of purchasing one I strongly suggest you do some googling of the model number and "backlight bleed".

Search for Dell Ultrasharp backlight bleed while you're at it.

Not that I'm saying you're wrong, just that googling it proves absolutely nothing.

[All that jazz]

ZesPak said:

All that jazz said:

The 2779QS is the model known for horrendous backlight bleed. If anyone is thinking of purchasing one I strongly suggest you do some googling of the model number and "backlight bleed".

Search for Dell Ultrasharp backlight bleed while you're at it.

Not that I'm saying you're wrong, just that googling it proves absolutely nothing.

True, but I think even you'd agree that if you find a significant amount of posts/links about a problem with a particular model that it is highly unlikely to be fabricated. I'm certainly not saying back light bleed is unique to Iiyama because it isn't, but there is a comparatively high number of complaints with that specific model. Even my Dell screen here suffers from it a little but it doesn't particularly bother me and I've never been one of the "blacks must be blacker than black" fanboys anyway. Just really giving a 'heads up' to anyone considering an Iiyama to set a black background screen and knock the lights off in the room to see how it looks.

[ZesPak]

All that jazz said:

True, but I think even you'd agree that if you find a significant amount of posts/links about a problem with a particular model that it is highly unlikely to be fabricated. I'm certainly not saying back light bleed is unique to Iiyama because it isn't, but there is a comparatively high number of complaints with that specific model. Even my Dell screen here suffers from it a little but it doesn't particularly bother me and I've never been one of the "blacks must be blacker than black" fanboys anyway. Just really giving a 'heads up' to anyone considering an Iiyama to set a black background screen and knock the lights off in the room to see how it looks.

I've just looked it up, and apparently that's the display I've got at home (iiyama xb2779qs).
I can't say I've noticed serious backlight bleeding, I use it to watch movies and play the xbox as well so plenty of "black" screens.
It was about half the price of the equivalent UltraSharp and came with HDMI, DP, VGA and DVI. The UltraSharp does have two of each of those, matte screen and a USB HUB though .
I have to say I'm very happy with it, money well spend.

[Mr Whippy]

I'm not sure about back-light bleed either.

I see people mention it a lot but in practice I've never really noticed it. Nor ghosting on early LCD in games, nor input lags, or all the other things people can spot under controlled conditions... but seem to melt away in actual use.

I think I've seen back-light bleed on all screens if I force the issue.


I've read people mention back light issues with that Iiyama screen, but then many have mentioned it and said it's no worse than other screens... so I'm not really sure if it is actually worse than you'd imagine or if people just got on a band-wagon with this specific screen.


A shame really that these manufacturers can't get their act together with decent prices/QC, when Korean monitors seem fairly well regarded for a fraction of the price.

Dave

[trashbat]

A long time ago I bought a very expensive professional graphics monitor by Eizo (woo, hark at my former riches) - and all the comments on forums were debating backlight bleed on that. Needless to say, there isn't any.

[Zad]

I still have my old 19in Iiyama CRT in the shed under a pile of stuff; lovely lovely CRT. I guess its like the valve amplifier is to audiophiles, poor technical performance compared to LCD (especially sharpness etc) but delicious blacks, whites, and amazing for displaying photographs. Shame it is the size and weight of a supertanker's anchor.

If you have a good enough graphics card, how about a 4K resolution monitor? (AKA "Retina")

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/displays/73081-iiyam...

I had a £300 24in monitor that went faulty, had to go back to the manufacturers who lost it and then denied ever having seen it, so I got a £110 22in Dell to put me on while I found another good monitor. That was over 3 years ago. I know, £110, it can't be any good surely? I have no idea what panel type they put in it, and there's no VESA holes on the back, but blacks are as good as I have seen on an LCD, there is no smearing and response is crisp enough to play WoW at 60fps without noticing any problem.

TL:DR; See the monitor before you buy it. Expensive doesn't necessarily mean good, cheap doesn't necessarily mean bad.