Verdict: In an age of funky widescreen monitors, it's hardly hip to be (nearly) square.
The 19in TFT has always occupied an awkward market position; while it has the same pixel count as a 17in TFT, thanks to its 1,280 x 1,024 resolution, it has a lower pixel density and usually costs more. Even worse, 20in widescreen TFTs have tumbled in price recently, and you can pick up a screen such as the Philips 200WS8 for just over £180.
Frankly, being 19in, square and £150, this NEC MultiSync LCD195VXM+ sails a little close to the armada of more multimedia-friendly 20in monitors currently cruising the market. While its nearly square 5:4 aspect ratio works well enough in an office environment for home multimedia malarkey, it's less than ideal. When displaying widescreen video content, for instance, much of the screen is wasted on rendering large black bars.
The 5:4 aspect is likewise arguably suboptimal when used with Vista. With fat icons on one side and the silly sidebar on the other, on a screen such as the LCD195VXM+, there's precious little desktop acreage in between.
None of this is anything out of the ordinary for a 19in display, of course. It may not be the fault of NEC but, with the finer pixel pitch and superior elbow room of a typical 1,680 x 1,050 20in widescreen display available for a very small premium, the traditional failings of this flavour of 19in flat-screen are tough to ignore.
Still, size isn't everything, and while 20in widescreens such as the Philips might be cheap, they lack finesse when it comes to displaying images. If the NEC has talent, it could still be worth considering.
Sadly, the LCD195VXM+ is powered by a TN+ film TFT panel - you might think that compromising on size and resolution would buy you a higher-quality IPS or PVA-type panel, but this isn't necessarily the case here.
Out of the box, the colour balance is cool and reasonably well controlled. However, the screen isn't particularly vibrant. As with most TN+ film screens, the overall ambience is slightly watery and washed out, and black levels aren't exactly prize-winning either. A fair amount of light penetrates the panel, so the screen never becomes blacker than dark grey.
All of this means that the LCD195VXM+ lacks depth and vitality, both in games and when displaying video. By today's exacting standards, the vertical viewing angles are poor, with far more colour inversion than we'd expect from a modern TFT. However, the horizontal viewing angles are beyond reasonable reproach.
One upside of the cheaper TN+ film panel technology is its decent pixel response. NEC quotes 5ms for the response rate and, in practice, it feels every bit as nippy. Indeed, when you factor in the reduced load that the modest screen resolution places on your graphics card, the LCD195VXM+ makes sense as a budget gaming panel. Compared with a 20in screen, you'll be able to get away with a cheaper 3D card, or hold off upgrading that little longer.
Another plus point is the LCD195VXM+'s backlighting, which delivers clean, crisp and even whites across the screen. There's evidence of light bleeding around the edges of the display, but it isn't a serious distraction. It also earns a thumbs-up in our objective DisplayMate tests, courtesy of surprisingly smooth colour gradients and good colour handling.
Unlike other budget screens, this TFT at least has a DVI input, so there's none of the digital-to-analogue-to-digital conversion shenanigans of some cheap monitors. It doesn't provide HDCP support, though, so Blu-ray and HD-DVD watching isn't a certainty. However, NEC has insisted on integrating speakers in the monitor, which fire downwards onto your desk. They're just about good enough to allow deskbound wage slaves to make out the usual Windows error gongs; for anything else, they're rubbish.
So what of design and build quality? The uniform black plastic gives the LCD195VXM+ a sleek, minimalist look, even if the plastic isn't that sturdy. The ultra-thin bezel certainly ensures that it looks every one of its 19in too.
However, the tilting hinge and height-adjustable stand are more dubious. A small knock to the screen has the LCD195VXM+ rocking in its moorings; it isn't quite as bad as the proverbial cat-flap-in-a-tornado, but it's hardly the BT Tower of screen stands either.
Conclusion
This panel may lack any serious flaws; it offers solid image quality and good response times, thanks to the TN+ film panel. However, the level of quality it offers isn't good enough to justify its price and not nearly enough to earn it a place on the Elite list.
