About three months ago, I decided to purchase a 30" LCD. I started the research phase. I looked at various dell 3007/3008 models, HP's LP3065 model, apple cinema stuff, and samsung 305/305T/XL30 models, hannspree, lacie, ezio, gateway, viewsonic, and LG. Then I added the NEC LCD3090WQXi to the list. I was looking for something professional that I could use for long programming and graphic designs work days, and also something to run games and movies during off-hours -- home office and all that. My business budget of $1'500 - $2'500 excluded the XL30 and ezio displays. I wanted an IPS panel, so the samsungs were out.

I had read all about anti-glare textures, colour shifts, accuracies, speeds, well, you know the many dimensions of LCDs these days.

Yesterday I decided to go ahead and purchase the NEC LCD3090WQXi. From all of the other reviews that I had read, I figured it's going to give me all of the graphic quality I could ever want, and at worst I'll use a cheap fast monitor for games. That won't be necessary.

I paid something like $2'500 after taxes and shipping and a friend to save me some time -- from AgileElectronics.ca ( http://www.agileelectronics.ca/prod_details/tab/details.asp?prod_id=LCD3090WQXI%2DBK ).

It's prefect. It's been 36 hours, and I have no dead pixels. All of the bad things that I read in reviews are simply false.

By the way, it took me about ten minutes to go through the OSD menus and set everything to my liking. Then an hour to read the manual and discover an "advanced mode" for the menus. The advanced mode is about three times larger, with incredibly fine control over everything. This thing does not skimp on features. Here are some of my favourites, in no particular order, that I feel run the gammut in terms of describing the width of this thing's feature-set.

• The little power led light on the frame is a semi-bright blue. I would have grabbed some electrical tape as usual, but the OSDs allow you to change the colour to green, and the intensity between 0% and 100% -- yes 0% is completely off always.
• The OSD control buttons on the frame are further labelled on-screen -- something that every monitor should do, it's just nice.
• Full 4 Mpixel resolution is at 60Hz -- some people said only 30Hz, they are incorrect.
• It has a screensaver to move the picture around if you do want to keep a static image on-screen long-term.
• The scaler is incredible. During boot-up, in DOS on my win98 machine, at 700x420 res, the white text, now at 30", has no scan-lines. It's rendered at beautiful 2560x1600 brilliance! Almost weird playing old games better than they were ever meant to be seen.
• Oh yeah, the picture, the colours, the colour quality are the best I've ever seen anywhere. The colour shifts are virtually non-existent. Completely non-existent during ordinary usage -- which is impressive since I need to turn my head as I type this.
• The stand is the prefect stand. It telescopes vertically so you can raise the screen. It goes as low as possible so the screen is touching the base, a total of less than 1 inch from my desk itself. Oh, and at full height, feel free to pivot the screen to portrait mode -- more aptly termed monolith mode. It pivots, it tilts, it swivels. You could present the space shuttle on this thing.
• Auto-everything -- luminance, colour, brightness, contrast. I've got mine set to 150 cd/m2 because 300 requires me to put my hand up as a defensive measure. The light-sensor monitors your room lighting to further adjust brightness levels, or even turn off the screen entirely, when your lights turn off, day time, night time, whatever. And yeah, allow it to adjust the colour and it'll take that horrible laptop connection and remove that aweful blue cast.
• There's no end to the list of control and calibration and auto-adjustment features. DVI-D, DVI-I/Analog VGA. Two inputs total.
• The frame is rather slim, matte black -- very matte, it just vanishes. The stand itself, and the monitor itself, are rather industrial in design. Let's face it, they aren't pretty. Compared to something like the apple cinema display, this thing is abouth three times as thick, and then the stand is another two times as thick. World space we're talking about 5" of monitor and 5" of stand, with another 4" of base in front. But I don't see the back of the screen, so I really don't care. And if it takes all that space to house the electronics that do the amazing colour stuff, well that's cool with me.
• Speaking of cool, it's very cool in the front, and more than warm on the top. Not uncomfortably so, but it's warm.
• Oh yeah, two greyscale modes for medical imaging, dynamic gamma corrections, the list just doesn't end. This really is a professional monitor, and it's worth every penny. I'll find out if it's worth buynig 24 more -- yeah, it supports 5x5 tiling. Go figure.

I'm here for you. It was difficult for me to choose through all of the other screens out there. Call me, 416-230-1410. I'll help you out any way I can -- it's that good. The NEC boot logo is optional, and I'm keeping it on, they deserve it.