Planar Monitor Gripes

The PL-1910M is a 19 inch LCD monitor

July 28, 2005. About a brand new Planar PL1910M monitor. This is a 19 inch LCD with integrated speakers and both analog and digital inputs.

There was no documentation at all about how to connect the stem to the base.

It was hard to connect the VGA (analog) video cable to the back of the monitor. The connector has a screw on each end and the video port is very close to the monitor stem. I found the distance between the monitor stem and the innermost screw was so small that my fingers did not fit, so I couldn't tighten the screw. When I borrowed a person with smaller fingers, all was well.

When booting from DOS floppy disks, the first letter or two of each line of text is chopped off.

The Quick Start Guide shows a picture of, and refers to, a power brick that does not exist. It also says the maximum resolution is 1600x1200 which is not true.

Initially, when first connected to a Windows XP machine, the monitor did not self-adjust the screen image as the documentation said it would. Horizontally it was shifted by over an inch. In Windows, I changed the number of colors from 32 to 16 and that fixed the problem.

Some software can detect the monitor, some can't.

A Windows XP computer reported the monitor as a Plug and Play Monitor, no make and model number. The documentation seems to say this is by design.
A Windows 2000 computer also showed it as a Plug and Play Monitor. This machine had an ATI RAGE XL PCI video card and there are some custom ATI tabs in the video properties. The ATI Attributes tab correctly reported it to be a PlanarPL1910M. It also had the correct maximum resolution.

FYI: The monitor can tilt forward/backward but can not swivel left/right.

FYI: There were no bad pixels.

FYI: Home page for the monitor www.planar.com/Products/flatpanel_monitors/pl_flatpanel/PL1910M.cfm

Created: July 28, 2005

Last updated: July 28, 2005