Review

NEC EA261WM TFT monitor

The NEC EA261WM is part of the the firm's new line-up of professional business displays featuring built-in carbon footprint meters to help businesses monitor their environmental impact.

Housing a 26in panel, this display sits at the top-end of the EA series. With the stand already attached, setting up the monitor takes just a matter of seconds, which will please IT staff looking to install them across a whole site. It features adjustment for height up to 110mm, and tilt between -5 to 30 degrees, and the monitor will swivel 340 degrees.

Five small buttons sit on the bottom right of the 16mm bezel. One of these is a four-way directional button for navigating the menus that, due to its size, requires a delicate touch. During testing, we found that the fluid motion of the base makes it all too easy accidentally to swivel the monitor when pushing these buttons. Some form of swivel lock would have helped.

VGA and DVI-D inputs are located at the rear. There's no HDMI input, but the DVI-D socket supports HDCP, so it can be used to view copy-protected HD content from a compatible player. There's also a line-in socket to make use of the two 1W speakers. These are fine for basic audio, but we did detect a fair amount of distortion at full volume. On the left side of the monitor sit two USB ports and a headphone socket.

Although perfectly viewable from different angles, brightness does lose its uniformity somewhat if you're not viewing it straight on, but this is something in common with most large displays. Thanks to the native resolution of 1,920 x 1,200, squeezing in three windows side-by-side is perfectly possible. Other core specs are in line with NEC's competitors, including a 5ms response time and 1,000:1 contrast ratio.

NEC makes much of the EA261WM's green credentials, and calculates its annual carbon footprint at approximately 75.3kg. It's difficult to ascertain just how accurate this is, since part of the figure is calculated using an algorithm developed by NEC.

At full brightness (the monitor is rated at 400cd/m2) we measured it drawing a pretty hefty 89W, but if you're sitting within one metre of the display it's unlikely that you'll want it this bright. Switching to Eco Mode limits the brightness to 50 per cent and also tells you how much the monitor's carbon footprint has been reduced as a result.

When we turned Eco Mode on and pegged the brightness right back to zero, the carbon footprint dropped to 75 per cent and power draw to just 36W, but at this setting the display will be too dim for most applications. We found 50 per cent brightness to be the best for close-up operation, which draws 51W. According to the NEC, its carbon footprint is also reduced to 85 per cent at this setting.

Flick to the Information menu and you'll see a running total of how much carbon your reduced brightness settings have effectively saved. And, with Eco Mode activated, whenever you turn the monitor on or switch inputs, a message will appear congratulating you on 'saving the environment', which does seem a little over the top.

Companies serious about limiting their carbon footprint will be disappointed to discover that, although it's possible to disable access to certain menu functions, including switching Eco Mode on and off, it's just as quick and easy to re-enable them without the need for a pass code.

With similar 26in models, such as the Samsung 2693HM and Viewsonic VP2650WB, available for under Rs. 30000, the NEC EA261WM is fairly expensive, but it's also a decent performer.

However, although it's admirable that NEC is taking a keen interest in letting businesses keep an eye on their environmental impact, there's actually nothing special about this display in terms of its power consumption. The fact that it indicates how much of an effect even a small reduction in brightness can make is commendable; it's just a shame that IT departments won't be able to lock the monitors into Eco Mode.