EVGA Interview Dual Monitor System Review
Hi, Dave Altavilla for Hot Hardware.
You know, company EVGA is widely know for it’s broad product offering of motherboards and graphics cards but not exactly a household name when it comes to flat panel monitor products.
The company however is making an entrance today with a new innovative twist or should we say flip on LCD technologies. Let’s take a look at EVGA’s interview Dual Monitor System.
The Interview Monitor System is made up of two primary components, the system’s bays and the top panel section that slides down on the center post to the bays. The panels themselves are made by AUO. There’s 17 inch TFT WXGA LCDs. For the resolution capability of 1440x900, the center post cross member here allows the panels to be pivoted a horizontally 90 degrees and be flipped vertically 180 degrees.
The front edge of the base has three USB 2.0 ports. In this telescoping leg for stability for anyone to install the panels, slide it back in when installation is complete. On the top side of the base are the power buttons, the monitor active indicator lights, monitor selection button, brightness up and down controls and an auto configuration button that will affect each panel depending on which is selected with the selector button.
On the back side of the system is a USB in port, a microphone in port and a DMS port which accepts a pair of DVI Digital Video Inputs on a single cable and a DC power in port as well. The Interview Monitors powered by this single small AC adapter break. And in with the kit, EVGA includes this USB cable for hooking up your USB ports as well as several DVI and DGA converters and this Dual DVI to DMS converter cable.
We should know that a graphics card capability of driving dual simultaneous DVI outputs or dual simultaneous VGA outputs is required to drive both panels from one machine. So if you’re going to be hooking up the Interview Monitor to a notebook, you’re going to have to look at another solution to get you another video signal for that second panel. And you could look at things like EVGA’s UV plus, USB to VGA expander.
The panel themselves are really nice high bright, bright glossy displays that are for good coloring deformity, high contrast ratio and crisp image quality. Where you can see, we’ve got them setup in a desktop mirroring mode. But you can also set them up in a spanning mode that will afford you with total of 34-inches of wide screen desktop real estate.
In between the two panels, you can see there’s a pivot 1.3 mega pixel webcam that allows for video conferencing if you decide to share the panels and you’d like to conference in somebody on the other side of the display.
And of course the really interesting thing about EVGA’s Interview Dual Monitor System is its ability to share that in mirrored desktop with the person sitting directly across from you facing in a total opposite direction. And as you can see, the panel will re-orientate itself on the fly depending on which direction it’s facing.
Let’s fire up a little bit of High Definition Digital Video. See how the panel reacts to fast moving action. As you can see, we’ve got a 720 Digital Video clip running here, images are fluid and smooth. And again, the panel will re-orientate itself on the fly very quickly depending on which direction it’s turning.
EVGA’s Interview Monitor System is certainly an innovative approach for addressing their requirements of the dual display setup. However, it’s obvious that this solution is squarely targeted at the business, educational, financial or engineering markets where sharing a desktop display or configuring multiple displays in a tight work space is the primary importance.
The system is set to retail for $649 which is a bit on the pricy side when you consider the cost of a pair of discreet 17-inch LCDs. So you’ll be paying a little bit more for the flexibility and features and performance that this system has to offer.
Hope you’ve enjoyed this look at EVGA’s Interview Monitor System. I’m David Altavilla for Hot Hardware, thanks for stopping by.
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