Zalman Trimon ZM-M240W review

If 3D is to really take off in the home, someone has to get both the technology and the pricing right. Nvidia’s active-shutter 3D Vision glasses cost £120 a pair – you’d best not sit on them – and that’s before you add the cost of a modern 120Hz TFT on top. At the other end of the scale sit Zalman’s Trimon polarised monitors, whose long-term strength is that replacing the glasses will only cost you a tenner.

Better still, the ZM-M240W is the first 24in TFT we’ve seen that’s capable of handling 3D. It’s a fairly plain-looking 1,920 x 1,080 display with DVI and D-SUB inputs, along with an audio connector for the weak integrated speakers. The glasses themselves feel as cheap as you’d expect, and to say you’ll look a bit of a nerd wearing them doesn’t really do them justice – they’re more Woody than Lily Allen.

Compatibility is always going to be a big factor with 3D, and with the Zalman a lot depends on your graphics card. Nvidia owners can use that firm’s stereoscopic 3D driver: the list of supported games is huge, and the driver advises on the graphical settings to change for the best results on a game-by-game basis. A simple depth slider makes adjusting the 3D level easy, and for recent titles the effect is often superb – crawling through the jungles of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 shows off the 3D effect in all its glory. Older titles are a little hit-and-miss, with Crysis in particular showing a few too many graphical glitches to be truly immersive, but few games proved unplayable.

Those without an Nvidia card aren’t so lucky. ATI owners will need to purchase a £21 exc VAT stereoscopic driver from 3D monitor firm iZ3D, and although a huge list of games is supported, we had real problems getting the effect to look right in most we tried. Even with the setup wizard and preloaded game profiles, using the numeric keypad to adjust both the separation and convergence levels to suit each game proved tiresome, and not always successful. Compared to the automated immediacy of the Nvidia driver it’s like handing you a spanner and smearing you in grease – there’s just too much manual jiggery-pokery involved.

Driver issues aside, the big advantage of the passive approach to 3D is supposed to be the cost. The ZM-M240W is priced at £340 exc VAT; there’s no 24in rival, but at 22in you’re looking at £255 for a Zalman and closer to £300 for a 3D Vision monitor bundled with the glasses kit. It’s not as big a saving as we’d like, particularly as Zalman’s approach has its drawbacks.

As it interlaces two images, one for each eye, the effective resolution is halved, so it’s imperative you have a fast enough graphics card to play at the ZM-M240W’s native 1,920 x 1,080 and high settings. Finally, the polarising filter over the panel makes it extremely reflective, to the point where playing it in a well-lit room negatively impacts on the experience.

Other than that the screen is solid enough, with a reasonable black level and no backlight bleed or banded gradients. It’s not going to win any vibrancy awards, but it’s sharp and feels well made.

But is that enough to make it a serious rival to 3D Vision? If you have an ATI card alas the answer is no, but with the Nvidia drivers we were impressed with just how good the passive 3D experience can be. It did tire our eyes a little more than active-shutter glasses do, and there’s a nagging feeling that you may be backing the wrong horse in a race that’s about to explode into life, but this 24in Zalman monitor and its passive 3D abilities left us pleasantly surprised.

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