Multiscan F500R

Sony
Star rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

A top-of-the-line monitor with a top-of-the-line price, the Sony Multiscan F500R has just about everything you'd want on a contemporary monitor, although at $1,899 it costs at least $530 more than any other monitor in this review.

The Multiscan F500R is based on the virtually flat FD Trinitron (aperture-grille) CRT and is well designed and well engineered. In addition to BNC and mini D-sub vertically mounted connectors, it incorporates USB support (one upstream and four downstream). The F500R weighs 70.5lb and is covered by a standard three-year warranty.

Although Sony doesn't publish dot clock figures for any of its monitors, the F500R has a horizontal scan range of 30–121KHz and a vertical scan range of 48–160Hz. Maximum resolution for this monitor is 2048x1536 at 75Hz. Dot pitch is an ultra-fine 0.22mm. The on-screen image is both stable and very pleasing.

As you might expect on such a high-end monitor, it has a full range of adjustments. You access an excellent on-screen menu with an innovative and extremely easy-to-use joystick mounted just below the primary front bezel. In addition to the standard range of controls, Sony also incorporates such niceties as zoom, menu position, lock, and language. The language feature is the most complete I've seen on any monitor, covering Italian, Swedish, Russian, Italian, French, English, Japanese, German, and Spanish. The Multiscan F500R performed quite well on the CADALYST test suite, turning in perfect scores for brightness, contrast, focus, geometric distortion, and raster rotation. Only color purity was slightly less than perfect, with greens slightly indistinct and not very well separated. All colors, however, were very well saturated.

If your budget has room for a display such as the Sony Multiscan F500R, you won't go wrong. This is the kind of monitor that will be easy to live with and use for years to come. — R.L.