Editors' Rating
Published: 31 Aug 2005
The Philips Brilliance 200W6CS is a good performer and will fit equally well in a business office or at home, but it lacks the features and adjustability we've seen on other similarly priced wide-screen LCDs. To its credit, the Brilliance 200W6CS offers network-management software (although this costs extra) that businesses will appreciate; and home users may benefit from the standalone speakers, which can play music without video input. If you're likely to need the network-management software, the asking price of around £450 (inc. VAT) for the 200W6CS is fair. But for a similar price, the HP f2105 offers better-sounding built-in speakers and better performance, while the Dell 2005FPW provides S-Video ports, a pivoting screen and picture-in-picture functionality.
The Brilliance 200W6CS's silver-effect bezel measures 1.9cm along the top and sides and 6.3cm along the bottom, where the decent-sounding 2-watt speakers are located. The display has a short, hinged neck and a round base, and its flexibility is fairly limited: you can't pivot it between Portrait and Landscape mode, and you can raise the panel only 5cm. The hinges are very stiff, so making the few possible adjustments requires two hands and quite a bit of muscle. The display turns easily on a smooth surface thanks to a lazy-Susan-style disc built into the monitor's base. You can buy an optional Super Ergo base with a telescoping neck that adds 12.7cm of height adjustment and a Landscape-to-Portrait pivot function.
The Brilliance 200W6CS offers an adequate array of ports for a monitor of this category, including digital and analogue inputs, an upstream USB 2.0 port, a PC audio jack and a headphone jack; given that it's a wide-screen monitor, we'd also like to see an S-Video input. Philips generously includes digital, analogue, USB and audio cables, and a Mac adapter is free upon request. On the back of the neck is a plastic panel that snaps off so that you can tuck all the cables neatly out of sight. Along the bezel's left edge sits one downstream USB port, which in our opinion is at least one too few; most LCDs have at least two downstream ports, if not three or four.
The unobtrusive on-screen menu-navigation buttons are embedded in a stripe on the bottom of the bezel. We experienced a slight lag between pressing a button and getting a response from the menu, but we got used to it after a while. We found the menu a bit tricky to navigate at first, as it uses two sets of arrow buttons (up/down and left/right) to drill down into submenus and make adjustments. Most LCDs use just one set of arrow keys.
At its native resolution of 1,680 by 1,050, the Brilliance 200W6CS looked very sharp, especially when displaying text. In our DisplayMate-based tests we noticed very little hue shifting and compression in the greyscales. The Brilliance 200W6CS also displayed good colour quality; reds and yellows had more warmth and depth than on the typical LCD. DVD and gaming performance also looked pretty good, with minimal streaking and digital noise. On the downside, the display has a tendency toward ghosting in high-contrast areas.
The Philips Brilliance 200W6CS comes with an industry-standard three-year warranty. Telephone technical support is available Monday through Friday from 8am to 7pm, and 9am to 5pm on Saturdays. Philips's Web site offers a product-specific support page with access to drivers, documentation, troubleshooting and Philips's SmartControl software.
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