NEC MultiSync E243WMi review: a budget monitor with low running costs

NEC’s latest 24-inch full-HD IPS monitor, the  NEC MultiSync E243WMi, promises to save you money – not in the initial purchase price, but from its Eco power-saving mode. Specified at just 13W, this monitor ought to prove cost effective over time.

With a typical specified power drain of 19W in its regular non-Eco mode, it’s hardly burning down the house anyway. It’s fair to say that this 16:9 widescreen panel, with its chunky telescopic stand and solid base is designed for being left on all day in a corporate or studio environment.

It comes with a range of interfaces from the analogue D-Sub to DVI-D and DisplayPort. There is also a jack plug out for headphones if you don’t want to listen to the tinny speakers. These are driven by a 1W amp but still produce a surprising amount of noise, even if it lacks any base.

As you might expect from a corporate-aimed monitor, it’s functional rather than aesthetically outrageous, and the tilt-and-rotate stand is very handy.

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The monitor’s power supply is built into the back panel, which is as chunky as the rest of it. There’s good all-round build quality, while the panel itself showed no darkening in the corners, nor any perceptible light leak.

The on-screen menu is operated by touch-sensitive controls on the front of the bevel. These are not illuminated so proved problematic in adjusting in a darkened room since the controls were obscured by light from the screen itself. We found the menu to be a thoughtless cludge of icons and features.

As an IPS panel, we were able to view the screen from all directions and still read clearly rendered fine text, for example.

We tested the display’s performance with a Datacolor Spyder4 calibrator, and found reasonably good results of 98 percent sRGB, 74 percent AdobeRGB and 69 percent NTSC colour coverage.

Maximum brightness reached 264 cd/m^2 which may seem a little dim but is ample for most applications.

The chequerboard contrast ratio was 650:1 at 100 percent brightness, a good result. Luminance uniformity at 100 percent brightness was tight, with only the right side of the screen showing much variation and all at under 10 percent. At 50 percent brightness it dropped to just 4-6 percent around the outside edges.

Colour uniformity was nearly as good, but it tended to vary around the screen’s top right corner with a variation of Delta-E 3.0 and 3.1 at 100 percent brightness. This fell to a much better 2.2 and 2.4 on the right side at 50 percent brightness.

An overall average of Delta-E 1.59 for colour accuracy was very commendable.