Iiyama ProLite B1906S1 review

We’re so used to seeing widescreen monitors come through the door that it’s easy to forget just how many users still work with 4:3 monitors every day. Most manufacturers have been gradually phasing them out of their ranges, but those with an eye on business sales have kept a few standard models on the books.

Iiyama’s ProLite B1906S is a fine example, with an old-school 1,280 x 1,024 resolution that’s still perfectly acceptable for document work and web browsing. It required no setting up, as the sRGB colour temperature provided neutral greys and a good compromise between whites and blacks. With a 250cd/m2 backlight it isn’t an overly bright TFT, but for work this is a blessing, and even when dealing with small text it never tired our eyes.

If you want to dim the screen further you’ll have to switch to Normal colour to enable the brightness controls, and the eco mode does a quick job for you with several preset levels. At its lowest setting it’s a little too dark for anything but white-background work, but a power draw of just 16W is impressive indeed. Even at full brightness we didn’t see it top 23W, so somewhere in between proves the ideal green compromise.

And the quality of the image is very high, with perfectly smooth colour gradients and a uniform backlight. Small text was reproduced sharply, while images showed a decent level of detail in dark areas, and the 800:1 contrast held up well, despite being lower than most modern TFTs. The lightest grey shades were visible on a white background, but the black tests were a little less impressive, with the bottom end of our gradient ramps a little thin. This will be less of an issue for a monitor designed for document work.

And when you throw in a set of perfectly reasonable speakers and a stand that swivels, pivots to portrait mode and lifts through 110mm of height adjustment, the seemingly dear £140 price tag begins to look more reasonable. The low power consumption and impressive picture offsets that further, making the Iiyama PLB1906S an excellent work choice for those who wish the world of TFTs wasn’t getting wider.