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Tuesday, November 20th, 2012
| Time | Event | ||
| 3:00a | ASUS PB278Q Review: An IPS Competitor Emerges Every 27” panel that I have reviewed this year has had two things in common: the panel was IPS based, and it was made by LG. The vast majority of IPS panels are made by LG, and so most high-end monitors use the same panels but have major differences in their electronics and design. In the past two years Samsung has entered the market with an alternative to IPS called PLS, or Plane-Line Switching. While similar to IPS, PLS is designed to have advantages over traditional IPS. First, it has a higher level of transmittance, so more light gets through each individual cell. This allows you to use either a lower powered backlight, or to have a brighter display, both of which lower the power output required for a certain screen brightness. Second, as each cell allows more light though, you can pack them tighter allowing for displays with a higher pixel-per-inch count while keeping light output higher. PLS also claims to have better viewing angles for color and contrast in comparison to IPS. Let's see how the ASUS PB278Q fares in our testing. 
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| 3:05p | AOC's i2367fh: Thin, "Virtually Borderless", and IPS We've been waiting for affordable LCDs to start showing some clear improvements in performance, quality, features, and design for a while. AOC has potentially done exactly that with their new i2367fh monitor, delivering an IPS-based panel with virtually no left/right or top borders. The bezel measures 2mm thick, making it a potentially great option for multi-monitor users. It's currently available online starting at $189 (though it's also currently backordered). Besides the thin bezel, the 23-inch i2367fh has WLED backlighting for the IPS panel, built-in speakers, VGA and two HDMI inputs to drive the 1080p display, and audio in/out ports. The stand doesn't appear to support any adjustments other than tilt, and there's no VESA mount, so this is definitely a niche product. However, it's a niche product that looks quite nice and should at least match what we've seen from TN panels for years at only a slight premium. The display is so new AOC doesn't even list the i2367fh on their US/English sites yet, so the best information we can provide is via this ~7MB PDF, or if you prefer here's their Taiwan page. All we need now is for B&H to get more in stock (and for other resellers to show up). I don't know how others feel, but I'd love to see more displays ditch the 1" bezels—including on the bottom, please. There's nothing a thick bezel adds other than size, though obviously making a thin bezel does cost more.
Update: Some are questioning whether the content of the display goes to the edge (or 2mm from the edge), or if AOC is simply using glass over the main LCD to give a borderless appearance. I asked AOC for an answer, but all I had to go on initially is the press release stating it has a 2mm bezel. To me, the bezel means the area between the edge and the display content, so 2mm would be great. Unfortunately, this unboxing page indicates that AOC is mincing words and using the term bezel to mean the distance between the edge and the glass cover. I apologize for the confusion, though an 8-bit IPS panel for under $200 is still a nice change of pace. 
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| 10:10p | iPad mini Review Over the last two months, Apple has updated almost all of its core product lines, with the addition of a 13” model to the Retina MacBook Pro line and new silicon for the iPad and Mac mini to go with ground up redesigns for the iPhone, iMac, iPod touch, and iPod nano. But the biggest story from the “little more” event was definitely the introduction of the iPad mini, a 7.9” counterpart to the 9.7” tablet that started it all. Read on for our full review of the second member of Apple's iPad family. 
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