Medion AKOYA P56005

The Medion AKOYA P56005 first caught our attention thanks to its low price for a 25'' monitor with a resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels, better than the 1080 pixels high often found elsewhere.

With HDMI, DVI and VGA inputs, a good response time and plenty of other features, could this monitor represent an excellent deal?

Less attractive from the back


When you look at it from the front, it looks pretty classy with a stand and frame in glossy plastic.  Things are a lot less attractive from the side or at the back, where a lot less care has been taken over the design.  The whole thing is also pretty thick, measuring almost four inches from front to back.

Once you've got over the unusual styling, the next thing that catches your attention is the fact that the trio of video inputs (VGA, HDMI and DVI) is joined by an audio line in which leads to a pair of 2 W speakers.  That hardly makes this the most highly customisable monitor we've seen this year, but not everybody needs a height-adjustable stand or a monitor that they can rotate to portrait mode.

Excellent default colours

Default Colours

Ideal Colours Compare the Medion Akoya P56005 to other LCD monitors in our Product Face-Off

After warming up for an hour or so, the colours go from very average when you first switch it on to almost perfect.  The average deltaE, the discrepancy between the ideal colours and those actually shown, is only 1.8.  Remember, when that figure is below 3.0, the monitor is already considered good, while a score of below 2.0 is even less common.

What keeps the P56005 from gaining its fifth star in this section is a contrast ratio of just 700:1.  It would have only needed to reach the average of around 850:1 to have a chance at getting the top score here, but it didn't make it.

Responsive with low input lag

Coloured   Transparent
Average ghosting over ten frames

The P56005 is any gamer's friend.  It offers a good combination of responsiveness with a low input lag.  It won't give you any problems whether you're gaming at home, online or at a LAN party.