Digital Trends

Gateway FPD2185

January 26th, 2006 | by Ian Bell

Unpacking and setting up the FPD2185 turned out to be a very simple process. Gateway ships the FPD2185 with their EZ Tune software which gives you a control panel right on your desktop. This same software also controls the pivot function so that the desktop changes automatically when the screen is switched to portrait mode. The software is easy to use and lets you change the brightness, contrast, balance and even the color temperature and gamma settings. You can still control these using the buttons on the side of the monitor if you want to.

Colors are very vibrant without any sort of bleeding effects. The black levels and grayscale levels are exceptional and look great during the dark scenes of a DVD movie for example. We did not notice any sort of motion blur during fast moving scenes or games, although text that scrolls on the bottom of the screen still looks a tad bit blurry (think CNN), but we have yet to see an LCD TV or monitor that was perfect here; you will have to wait for the new 4ms and 2ms displays to help correct this. 

Games look awesome on the FPD2185 thanks to its fast response rate. Because the native resolution of the FPD2185 is 1,680 x 1,050, you might be a little disappointed that you cannot play your games in the traditional 1,600 x 1,200 setting. And because some games do not accurately support wide-screen displays, you might be a little flustered if the image looks abnormally stretched. Keep in mind that a lot more wide-screen monitors are being sold though, and most newer games do support the wide aspect ratios.

One cool feature we wish the FPD2185 had was memory settings for each input. That way you could program the Component Video input to have different brightness and color settings than say the DVI input. We have only seen this feature on the high-end LCD TV’s out there unfortunately (hopefully Gateway is paying attention to us). 

Gateway’s FPD2185 might seem like a steal at $599, but there are some hidden costs associated with it. First of all, if you plan on using the Component Video or DVI inputs, you can expect to spend upwards of $35 per cable to use those interfaces. And with a 1-year warranty standard on the FPD2185, you will have to fork out even more money ($30 dollars) to get a longer 3-year warranty which should have been standard in the first place. So expect to pay close to $75 dollars or more on top of the base price should you want the extras.

Even so, there is no denying that the FPD2185 is a killer monitor. Colors are vibrant and thanks to its 8ms response rate, games look incredible. Those that plan on using the FPD2185 for both HDTV viewing and regular computer use will be hard-pressed to find a better monitor out there for the around the same price. Multimedia buffs will love the FPD2185 for its wide-screen display, but keep in mind that the FPD2185 supports a 16:10 aspect ratio and not a true 16:9, so its not perfect – but its darn close.