NEC 23 Inch MultiSync EX231W

Jan 5th, 2011 | By Simon

The NEC EX231W-BK is shipped in a plain brown cardboard box. Printed on the sides are some of the features the monitor has to offer. We’ll be exploring this in much more depth later in the review.

Inside the cardboard box we have the contents well protected in Styrofoam. The accessories are separated from the screen to the screen is protected from any bumps and scratches during delivery.

The accessories include a setup manual, a power brick, power cord, power brick mounting bracket, DVI-DVI cable, DVI-VGA cable and a USB cable.

I will admit that when I saw the power brick I thought NEC had taken a step back in innovation. There are very few monitors these days still using power bricks. However, I realize the power brick is a compromise to having a slim bezel and it’s one I think was worth doing. The power brick has a mounting bracket that can be fixed to the monitor in a simple and sleek way.

Also in the cardboard box we have the screen wrapped in a soft foam bag, the base and the height adjustable stand.

Removing the protective padding, we get our first good look of how the EX231W is designed. The monitor looks fairly plain; you wouldn’t associate it with any particular grade of monitor. The front has a narrow bezel around the screen with touch sensitive controls at the bottom right. Situated in the middle of the bottom edge are the human and ambient light sensors. The human sensors detects if you’re in front of the monitor and if you walk away or leave your desk it will put the monitor to sleep. The ambient light sensor can automatically adjust the brightness to conserve power. The sensitivity of both human and ambient light sensor can be adjusted using the OSD.

On the backside of the monitor we don’t see very much. The inputs are nestled along the bottom edge of where the stand and base mount onto the screen. There is a single USB port on the top edge of the display. It would be perfect for a webcam or a nano bluetooth dongle if your computer is far away.

The EX231W-BK comes in three pieces – apart from the screen we have the base and stand. The base swivels and the stand tilts and has an adjustable height of 11cm.