HDMI Field Monitor Review

by Sebastian WöberFebruary 25^th, 2010

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Inputs and Enclosure

If you want more than just hdmi some of these monitors have a variety of additional inputs. I haven’t tested all these inputs in detail so I will just show you what is theoretically possible.

Some monitors have bnc inputs. Those are rca jacks that are supported with a locking mechanism. You can get an adaptor to use normal rca connectors:

Inputs and Enclosure smallHD DP-1

top view:

front view:

back view:

bottom view:

left view:

right view:

Opinion:
The DP-1 has a very beautiful expensive looking enclosure.

The enclosure is very rugged, made of aluminum and offers a 1/4 ” thread on every side. That’s a nice feature to have, you can mount this monitor on any side and mount stuff to it on any side. It’s less heavy than it looks, but heavy enough to feel like it would take a hard impact should it accidentally ever fall down. I cannot judge what would actually happen.
On the other hand this device is resistant against pressure, it’s unibody aluminum casing is extremely hard.

Wes from smallHD gave me this statement:
“..As seen half-way down our home page, we parked the front tire of a 4000LB land rover on the DP1 and it worked just fine under that stress (which was roughly 1500LBS). In a laboratory, we tested the DP1’s housing to withstand over 3000LBS of vertical pressure before flexing at all (a similar test as the land rover, but with more weight). This test obviously does not conclude that the DP1 would survive a drop (we have not done THAT test yet ; ), but since these are probably the only “strength” or “durability” tests performed on any of the monitors, it might be worth throwing in there (if you agree). Also, the metal housing was designed to protect the inputs while the monitor might be bouncing around in your gear bag. We felt that some of the BNCs sticking out of the back of the other monitors might have a chance of breaking if they received an impact. Anyways… just some thoughts. Let me know if you have questions about any of that : )”

Weight: 750g
Weight with battery: 1000g

Apart from hdmi it has an sd composite input, component inputs, s-video and a vga input so you can for example use it as an additional computer monitor. The inputs are on the top which might present a problem for some of us because when the hdmi cable goes directly to the cam it will usually fall in front of the monitor. Unfortunately you can’t just swap sides because the image swap feature is disabled in hdmi mode.

There are no outputs on this device. There is no bnc connection (rca connectors that have a lock-in mechanism so the cable can’t fall out).

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