It feels like I say this every time I write a TFT review, but by gum theyve come ahead in leaps and bounds in recent years, in terms of technology, price and sales. According to IDG research, sales of TFT units increased from 15,000 in 1999 to 23,000 in 2000 a growth of over 150% compared to the 4% growth in the CRT market. CRTs still far outsell TFTs in volume, with 1.9 million units sold in 2000, although TFTs are growing in market share.

The Sony SDM-N80 is not just a conventional TFT; it includes some interesting features weve yet to see in a display. Noticeably, the depth of the screen is only around 40mm. Sony has made this possible by taking much of the electronics out of the back of the screen and placing them in a special media box as a separate unit, which can be placed away from the screen or under the desk. The media box is styled like a small PlayStation2 console, and has dual inputs: one for D-Sub and one for DVI. One benefit of this is that you can hook up two PCs and switch between them via a button on the front of the display. The media box also features dual upstream, powered USB ports, with the output ports located at the base of the display.

The screen itself has a top specification, with a 0.28mm-pixel pitch, 350:1 contrast ratio and 200cd/m2 luminance and the quality shows. I ran the SDM-N80 through our usual rigorous DisplayMate tests, and it performed just about as well as any TFT weve ever seen. Brightness and contrast were well balanced, and highly adjustable, unlike some TFTs, which tend to have minimal variation in brightness between 0 and 100. Colours are bright, and at its native resolution of 1,280 x 1,024, the image is perfectly focused. Pixel response time is 10ms to fire up, and 35ms to close out, which is above average for LCDs, although still not comparable to CRTs.

The OSD is interfaced through a series of funky buttons at the top of the screen. The six small black buttons are unobtrusive until touched, then backlit labels appear and the labels change depending on the menu that appears. The OSD gives you wide range of controls for adjusting the picture as well as the inputs, audio and interface. The small built-in speakers at the top of the screen are adequate for basic tasks, although are a little tinny and distort at moderately high volume.

The final funky feature of the SDM-N80 is the IR sensor that can be set to detect whether the user has moved away from the screen, in which case it powers down. I found this feature to be a little unreliable, however, and it occasionally powered down while I was sitting in front of it. There are variable levels of sensitivity, although I still experienced the problem on all settings.
If you are looking for a big screen with plenty of features, then you cant go past the SDM-N80, although you will have to get over the $5,599 price tag.