LG Flatron L3000A

LG's huge flat panel looks ideal for designers, engineers and architects - but might be more at home in a corporate lobby

LG's Flatron L3000A is a 30in flat-panel LCD display designed for group presentations or for displaying information in company reception areas.

The new monitor, available now, is one of the largest displays so far tested by IT Week Labs. We felt the size of the screen, coupled with its high brightness, would make it well suited for giving presentations to large groups of people.

The screen might also find a use in dealer rooms and trading floors, but LG ships the Flatron L3000A with only a temporary stand, actually little more than a metal bracket, on the assumption that all buyers will want to mount the Flatron L3000A against a wall. We think that this is a mistake, because many professionals might like to use such a large screen as a desktop display. By comparison Samsung's 24in SyncMaster 240T screen, which IT Week evaluated some time ago, is provided with a desktop stand to make it more flexible.

We found that our Flatron L3000A review unit had an impressively bright screen. With its display brightness left at its default setting of 80 percent, the screen was noticeably brighter than the selection of other monitors used in IT Week Labs.

The Flatron L3000A has a relatively low native resolution of 1280x768 pixels, perhaps due to its intended role as a presentation display. As a result, text and icons appear very large when it is used as a standard computer monitor. However, the Flatron L3000A's widescreen 16x9 format could enable two Windows applications to be comfortably viewed side by side, and it could also allow a wider-than-usual view of an Excel spreadsheet, for example.

LG supplies a remote control with the Flatron L3000A that lets the user switch the display on or off and access the on-screen display (OSD) menu. The OSD can alternatively be accessed via a handful of buttons built into the monitor itself, but these are inconveniently located on the bottom edge of the display bezel.

Users must access the OSD to adjust the brightness and contrast, and there are also controls to adjust the colour settings.

Two colour temperatures, 9300K and 6500K, are supported, and users can also adjust each RGB primary individually. However, there is no support for more advanced rendering features such as adjustment of secondary colours.

The Flatron L3000A supports input from several display sources, including a digital video (DVI) connector, composite video and S-Video, as well as the standard 15-pin VGA-style PC graphics connector.

A picture-in-picture (PIP) facility allows a video feed from one source to be viewed in a smaller secondary window overlapping the main display. The OSD can be used to set the size and position of this window, as well as to separately adjust its attributes, such as the settings for contrast and brightness.

The Flatron L3000A measures 73.4x 48.7cm, and is 9.6cm deep. The product weighs 18kg, which includes the built-in power supply unit.

Four screw holes at the rear of the case allow mounting on a wall bracket, but we would like to see LG offer customers at least the option of a tilt-and-swivel stand for use with this display.

Using the supplied temporary stand means that the monitor's bezel has to rest on a flat surface such as a desktop.

Price: £2,399 + VAT

Contact: LG Electronics 01753 491500

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