Sony SDM-E76DB review

If you're always having to remind yourself of even the most basic things, then your house is probably being taken over by little sticky square bits of paper.

Post-It notes are handy for jotting down a phone number or an important bit of information and keeping it somewhere obvious, but you might be wondering what they have to do with a PC monitor. Well some bright spark at Sony noticed that their colleagues couldn't find enough room to stick their notes to their TFT monitors and decided that what was needed was a monitor designed specifically with little sticky notes in mind.

Like all 17in TFT monitors, the SDM-E76D has a native resolution of 1280 x 1024 pixels. That's standard stuff, but we were pleased to find both analogue D-Sub and digital DVI inputs at its rear.

We'd be hard-pressed to say that the Sony is good-looking and in comparison with most 17in TFT monitors, it certainly looks decidedly bulky. This is mainly due to the expanse of black plastic on the bottom of the monitor that's designed to provide room for a row of sticky notes. The recess above it has been designed to give users a place to put their pens. This is of dubious benefit though, and we're not sure we've ever wished that our monitor could double as a desktidy.

Quirky design aside, the Sony is a capable TFT monitor with good, if not exceptional, image quality across the board. Photographs were reproduced well and skin tones looked realistic. The Sony also did well at discerning between black and very dark greys, as well as resolving light shades of colour against pure white - a test that traditionally foxes cheaper TFTs. However, although the images that the SDM-E76D produces are quite good, pure whites lacked intensity and suffered from a subtle blue tinge. Viewing angles were good, but not great and moving even slightly off-centre resulted in changes in colour tone.

The Sony provides a good-quality image, but the ViewSonic VA1912W is only about £40 more and offers a lot more screen for the money.

Author: Sasha Muller