Customer Reviews

Gateway FPD2485W 24" Widescreen HD-LCD Flat-Panel Display

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I just picked this up today and can't say enough about my initial reaction. I have a three-year-old AOC flat panel monitor that is now serving as my second display. Looking at the two side-by-side, you see a remarkable difference.

Sharp, bright, huge, almost intimidating. If you can get your hands on one of these, I think you'll feel the extra money you'll pay over a 21" is money well spent.

Notable features include:
- 90 degree rotation (your monitor can be portrait or landscape)
- picture in picture
- 16:10 aspect ratio
- 1920 X 1200 resolution (make sure your video card supports it)
- HD-ready!
- VGA, dual component, S-Video and composite
- DVI-D with HCDP input
- 4-port USB (2.0) hub

There's an available option for a speaker bar along the bottom. The monitor adjusts very easily. Raising and lowering it is aided by a spring system. The entire monitor is actually very light (~15 pounds)

I'm very happy with this purchase.

Wow. I just replaced a 5 year old 21" Viewsonic CRT monitor that was getting yellow and fuzzy. I picked up this beauty and plugged it into my PowerMac's DVI port and just about fried my corneas with the white intensity. Don't get me wrong about the brightness, it's a thing to behold. If they only made the automatic pivot software for the Mac...

Nothing beats lots of screen real estate, and at 1920 x 1200 I have multiple web pages side by side open or Photoshop with all the pallettes strewn everywhere with a large image open, and with the plethora of inputs I'm watching NFL network in a Picture-in-Picture while working (well, maybe not getting much work done!)

Bottom line - huge, lots of inputs, great price, Innovative stand with pivot, happy as a lark ;-)

I have two of these at home and a Dell 24" at work. Compared to the Dell, I prefer the styling of the Gateway, though the controls for changing inputs or tweaking the brightness/contrast is more frustrating on the Gateway.

One of the Gateway units I bought had to be returned due to a headache-inducing high pitched squealing noise, but my replacement has no such issue. The squeal usually started after the monitor was on for a few hours, so beware of this.

Other reviews have pointed out the great specs; I will note that this monitor offers two sets of composite inputs for DVD players/game consoles (Dell only has 1). The monitor has 100 mm VESA mounts which work fine with my Ergotron stands. In particular, I want to note the high value of this monitor. The contrast is not as good as higher priced models--many LCDs have trouble with black, and this model does a good job on it (but it's not perfect). However, this is a great monitor given its relatively low price.

The 24" widescreen display looked to good to be true. For the price I was willing to try it out.
After arrival I easily installed it. Telling all my operating systems about the new display was a tad harder. WindowsXP required some tinkering plus one reboot, Solaris/Xorg only needed some changes to the xorg.conf

The good:
- excellent brightness and responsiveness
- crisp image
- reasonable power consumption (~125W) (better than my 280W 21" CRT)

The untested:
- PIP, TV and other screen modes, no need to, please check out the other reviews.

The not so good:
- color-sync is hard. Compared to my Apple and the CRT the red colors are richer than they should be. Not really annoying, its like looking at Kodak Color GOLD pictures all the time... colors are shinier than reality... Getting to the appropriate balance is likely very difficult since the backlight does not have the appropriate spectral range. In the spectroscope the Apple screen has a more uniform spectrum. This however is a nit.

Overall:
Unless your work requires color-sync, this is a great monitor.

Wow! This is the brighest display I've ever seen! Blows away the 20" 1280x1024 Sony that I'm replacing. The store demo does not do this justice once you've seen it cranked up to 1920x1200 in your own home.

Definitely recommeded.

UPDATE: 4 years later and it's still going strong!!! Too bad they don't make their computers as well.

UPDATE 2.0: After 5 years the sun is dead...not a big deal as I'm looking forward to a nicer and more energy
efficient LED screen, but it would have been nice if it lasted longer.

Resolution is very good. I love the flexibility. Easily swivels and rotates, which enables me to take full advantage of the big screen. Download movie resolutions are not quite ready for the big screen TV, but this screen size is absolutely perfect for watching movies in a medium-sized room. The big screen also makes today's Internet surfing, with more open windows and programs, much better. Lastly, the controls are futuristic, cool, and many. All inall, very good screen for the price. My first ever Gateway.

Wow, where do I start? How about its flipping HUGH! With it's HD capability's, everything is crystal clear. You can multi-task with out having to keep opening and closing applications to view them (usually you can have about 2 applications opened side by side). It has the option to turn 90 degrees but I never found that useful. These days, whenever I see anything less then 22 inches it looks small.

Make sure you have a powerful video card cause your going to need it. Also, check the specs of your video card if you are upgrading to make sure this monitor will even work. Only bad thing I have to say about this is the touch pad options menu. The thing keeps on making piano key noises when touched (which is really annoy and I can't seem to find where I can turn off the sound) and it's also too sensitive (another thing you cannot adjust.)

I purchased my first Gateway FPD2485W 24" monitor some 2 years ago. It died within 6 months but Gateway replaced it with the minimum of fuss.

Excellent service but there was a catch. The replacement monitor would continue the warranty held by the first. Lightning couldn't strike twice I thought.

Alas the replacement just died too in the same manner as the first - monitor totally unresponsive with no sign of life except the power lamp flashing on and off.

This is my only experience of Gateway hardware and to be honest its going to be the last.

OK, when I bought this monitor I was so happy with it! It is awesome if you have one that lasts. Mine laster almost a year but not quite. Right around the time when the warrenty was getting ready to expire, it started doing things like taking a long time to actually come on after hitting the pwer button or freezing up once in a while but nothing major. Then one night a blue line tore down the screen. It was thin and went right down the enter of the screen. It would not go away. I was told that once that happens, it will only get worse so get rid of it. Well I still had about a month left on my warrenty but to get Gateway to fix it was not easy. First they told me that it would cost me $50 just to speak with a customer service rep. I didn't want to do that so I tried to chat with a live tech person from Gateway. The first time I tried it the live rep. said he could not locate my seriel number and that there was nothing he could do. Then I tried a few days later. Another rep. kept getting my issue confused with a computer problem and not a monitor problem so he was no help. The third time I tried, I got a rep to finally look into it and he said to send it in and Gateway would repair it. So after a hour of chatting with him...(yes a hour)the rep. said they would send me some empty boxes to ship my damaged monitor back to Gateway to be repaired. Well when the boxes came...they were the wrong box and wrong size. Again they thoguht I was trying to send in a desktop computer but...to my surprise...Gateway sent me a brand new monitor! I was so happy because I really didn't want a refurbished motnior. So as soon as I shipped the old one off, I sold this new one I got on Amazon.com because I didn't want any parts of a monitor that can't even last a year and cost over $500. I have read many other reviews with people having problems with this monitor. I am sure it is not everyone but all I need is one time to learn my lesson. No more Gateways for me but you never know...yours might work fine, and if it does, you will have an awesome monitor!

I purchased this monitor on sale for just under $600. It's nice, but for the price I expected more. My first gripe was ONE dead pixel on the right lower side. It was stuck ON (white) but is not prominent except on dark screens. Second, as most LCDs, black is NOT black, but this monitor shows a 'black' screen as dark grey at best (my Samsung 930b does a much better job at blacks.) Too much light shines through, specially on the corners of the screen where you can notice a lot of light shining through. This can best be seen in a darkened room. The washout is just unacceptable. The 'auto rotate' is NOT perfect, specially when using this ONE monitor for TWO computers. Picture in picture via software is also a problem when using TWO PCs. I think the monitor does NOT like being controlled via software by the two PCs. It does not respond and caused crashes on my PCs.
Additionally, the speakers that you can buy for it are underpowered and do not have a lot of base. Forget using it for decent sound during a DVD.
It is nice, but based on the performance and problems I have had, I would NOT have paid more than $450.00 for this monitor, and even then, would have seriously considered the competition.