Iiyama ProLite E2773HDS review

Iiyama claims a 1ms response time for the ProLite E2773HDS, but this is missing the point; what’s more important is that this is a 27in monitor with decent image quality that’s available for just £231. It has a Full HD resolution and a choice of VGA, DVI or HDMI inputs.

The E2773HDS’s menu system is controlled by fiddly touch-sensitive buttons underneath the screen, and it’s pretty basic. As well as brightness and contrast, you get a dynamic contrast and Eco modes and an overdrive control. The dynamic contrast is of the crude variety, and led to distracting changes in brightness, so we left it disabled. The Eco modes were simply fixed levels of brightness, and of course we kept overdrive off.

A separate set of colour controls offers four levels of colour temperature – Cool, Normal, Warm and User – as well as an “i-Style” option which gives you a choice of presets based on your activity – Standard, Game, Cinema, Scenery and Text. We actually found the Standard option gave the best balance of colour and contrast, although this also disables the other image controls.

Although it uses the older TN technology, image quality is very good and this monitor keeps up with the latest technology. Blacks were especially impressive, looking inky and deep in all of our test footage. Colours were natural, with warm flesh tones and lush greenery.

Producing bright and vibrant colours, we found that movies and photos looked great on the screen. Contrast is surprisingly good, too. While this display can’t compete with the best IPS monitors, it managed to bring out most detail in dark scenes in our test footage.

It’s safe to pretty much ignore all response time claims, as anything under 10ms is nigh-on impossible for the human eye to detect. As you’d expect then, the ProLite E2773HDS and its 1ms response times, managed to cope with games without any sign of ghosting.

Despite it’s generally excellent image quality, the ProLite E2773HDS is slightly bested by monitors using newer technology. For the absolute best image quality the more expensive BenQ EW2730V is a great choice. If you want to save money and can put up with a smaller display, the 23in LG IPS235V is a brilliant choice. However, if you want size and quality at a low price, this is a good choice and wins a Budget Buy.