Fujitsu Siemens Silver Line S5

This slimline and stylish 15in LCD is worth a look.

Price: £339.58

Manufacturer: Fujitsu Siemens

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Verdict

Pros:
Good looks and price.
Wall- or arm-mountable.
Speakers included but can be detatched.

Cons:
Shallow vertical viewing angle.
Weak audio.
Rare D-Sub cable design.

Overall:
If we were to judge solely by appearance, the Fujitsu Siemens Silver Line S5 would be up there with our favourite flat-panel displays. Its size and price certainly make it appealing, but its image quality isn't the best.

Jalal Werfalli, Personal Computer World 23 Jan 2003

The 15in Silver Line S5 LCD has a sleek silver chassis measuring only 1.5cm in depth around its sides, and an interestingly designed metallic stand.

To set it up all you do is rotate the base around its hinge until a clever sliding mechanism locks it into place.

The S5 can also be wall- or arm-mounted, but make sure there's a gap between the wall and the back of the display to make room for the right-angled D-Sub cable. Using a standard D-Sub cable hinders the stand's 30-degree tilt range.

Next to the D-Sub port is the external power supply socket, plus left and right phono inputs. The latter have to be connected to your PC's soundcard if you choose to attach the speaker bar to the base of the display. But don't expect too much from the tiny 3w speakers.

The simple OSD is accessed using three of five mirror-backed buttons mounted on the lower bezel. Of the remaining two, one is for power and the other for auto-adjustment, which worked well.

Available settings include picture position and size, brightness, contrast, phase, and colour where you can adjust the blue, red and green levels of the current picture or choose between a warm and cool one.

Testing the S5 at its native pixel resolution of 1,024 x 768, picture quality was sharp and had good contrast. In our intensity scale the S5 demonstrated clear differentiation of steps well into the highlight and shadows areas.

On the downside colours were a little oversaturated, and the S5's vertical illumination fell off rapidly beyond 45 degrees.

An attractive unit, yet not a killer performer. Nonetheless, at £340 it could be a chic addition to any home or office.

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