The display

Physical

Everything about the MX-15HW shows that it’s an easy to use display. From the features controls to the on-screen display utility, everything is straightforward and easy to navigate. The unit has control buttons at the bottom of the display which are easy to use and because they’re hidden from sight, it keeps the unit looking clean.

Simple controls

Ready for wall mounting

VGA only. Pitty.

One of the gripes we have with the MX-15 HW is its tilt. It’s rather difficult to angle the unit without heavily pressing on the sides of the display. The base of the display isn’t quite heavy enough although its footprint is sufficiently large. However, the body of the unit is heavy enough that it won’t tip over and the screen itself seems rugged enough to stand a small amount of abuse. There are displays coming out that have a glass shield on top for extra protection; the glass also makes for easy cleaning.

The actual LCD

One of the issues that ADI has addressed is the viewing angles associated with LCDs. As we explained earlier, LCDs are best viewed when viewed from the center. On most LCDs, you’ll find that the more to the left or right you position yourself, the more invert (in color) the image will become.

The digital camera wouldn't focus without that window

This is actually not too shabby!

Looks good right? It's actually horrible.

Excellent horizontal viewing angles

The MX-15 is great when viewing images on a horizontal axis but not so good when looking from above or from below. Although ADI’s own specifications call for a 120 degree horizontal viewing angle, we were able to clearly view the image from a much wider angle. This is of course a good thing to have. Despite its excellent horizontal angles, the MX-15 doesn’t do too well vertically and the specified 120 degree angle seems to hold true. You’ll most likely be moving across the screen horizontally if anything so the vertical angle shouldn’t be a concern.

Per pixel shading

Our initial thoughts about the MX-15 HW was that it would be blurry compared to a pure digitally connected LCD. After testing the unit out for about 5 minutes, we were proved otherwise. Close examination of the screen showed no pixel or color bleeding and each pixel was defined and sharp. The quality is that of a DVI connected LCD and you would be hard pressed to tell the difference unless we told you. The pictures below are extreme close ups of the LCD screen. Notice that the pixel edges of text are clean and sharp.

Wow that's pretty sharp!

My eyes! My eyes!

It's best to use an LCD's native resolutio

Pixel response time was fast enough that games ran just fine. We didn’t notice any severe ghosting effects or unnecessary blurriness. We tested the MX-15 HW with a few games ranging from Medal of Honor to RTCW and all were very playable. There is a slight blurriness to the game when making quick turns but otherwise the display performed very well. We also tried to display images at 800x600 and the display stretched the image to fit the entire 15 inches. While this method allows you to use all of your screen real-estate, it also causes the image to be stretched and thus be blurry.

One of the other great things about the MX-15 HW is that it has excellent color differentiation. We were able to distinguish colors that were one unit apart in their RGB values. For example, we were able to tell the difference between R255, G255, B254 and R255, G255, B255. Although it was very difficult to tell, we were able to see the extremely small difference.