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Princeton SENergy 914 review: Princeton SENergy 914

Princeton SENergy 914

Kristina Blachere
2 min read
The Princeton SENergy 914's gray and black tones and clean lines bring to mind a Brooks Brothers suit, but its $700 price (as of May 2004), makes it more reminiscent of something from the Men's Wearhouse. The six silver buttons running along the lower edge of the slim, inch-wide bezel give the SENergy 914 just a bit of flash, like platinum cuff links. The very stable rectangular base sits atop a lazy Susan that can swivel 45 degrees to the left and the right. Although you can also tilt the panel 25 degrees, raise the neck to give the panel a modest two additional inches of height, and remove the base for mounting on a wall or a swing arm, the monitor is still a bit less adjustable than many of the other 19-inch LCDs we've seen. Princeton plans to offer an optional Pivot Kit in summer 2004 to let you pivot the panel from Landscape to Portrait mode. If you're willing to spend a bit more money for a more adjustable 19-inch LCD, check out the Dell 1901FP.
Though many 19-inch LCDs offer both analog and digital connections, the SENergy 914 provides one digital and two analog inputs (Princeton includes both kinds of cable). A button on the front panel lets you easily toggle between inputs, and the other buttons control a selection of fairly standard image adjustments, including autoadjust. The monitor also provides a handful of presets for Web, text, and video.
Like its predecessor, the SENergy 981, the SENergy 914 has quite good image quality. At the monitor's native resolution of 1,280x1,024, text looked sharp and easy to read, largely due to the display's noticeably strong contrast ratio, which Princeton claims is 700:1. The display showed nice, bright whites, very dark blacks, and a much more even range of grays than we usually see from LCDs. The SENergy 914 also delivered above-average performance with video. We were pleased with the colors, and even dark scenes were full of details, though we saw some of the ghosting and background noise that is typical of LCDs.
Princeton backs the SENergy 914 with an industry-standard three-year warranty on parts, labor, and backlight. Toll-free tech support is available Monday through Friday from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. PT. Princeton's Web site offers e-mail tech support, driver downloads, FAQs, and a support bulletin.
CNET Labs DisplayMate tests  (Longer bars indicate better performance)
Princeton SENergy 914
75 

Brightness in cd/m2
Princeton SENergy 914
245 
Note: Measured with the Sencore CP500

Find out more about how we test LCDs.