With the increasing popularity of LAN parties (social events where gamers come together to play multiplayer games), portability in the gaming spectrum is becoming more of an issue. Gamers need to haul their systems from home to the party and back again. Shuttle has made their lives easier with its XPC line of small PCs, and it's now doing the same for displays. The new Shuttle XP17 Lite ($499 list) 17-inch LCD combines portability and solid image quality.

The XP17's panel has a rated response time of 8 milliseconds, meaning it should function very well as a gaming display. It also has a protective front panel that Shuttle says is shatterproof, making it better for travel than typical LCD panels. The unit's on-screen display (OSD) controls are fairly basic, with contrast, brightness, and color-temperature settings for tweaking image quality. The buttons to drive the OSD are on the bottom edge of the panel and work well enough, although they're not the easiest OSD controls we've ever seen.

The XP17 performed well on our tests, though we noticed that its grayscale tracking wavered from the target color temperature of 6,500ºK (Kelvin). It has options to run at either 6,500ºK or 9,300ºK, and although we selected 6,500º K, we still observed this issue. The XP17's average contrast ratio of 436:1 is solid for an LCD, and its overall black levels were also good.

The antiglare coating was actually somewhat reflective when showing darker images in a lit room. The effect all but disappears either after darkening the viewing environment (scary games are better in the dark anyway) or when brighter images are on the screen. The upside is the remarkable increase in sharpness and color saturation. It's a good trade-off if you'll be using the XP17 in a darker room and won't be playing creepy games in rooms with bright ambient light.

We fired up the single-player demo of the upcoming SWAT 4 game, and were impressed by the XP17's overall image quality. We ran it at the panel's native 1,280-by-1,024 pixel resolution, and found that color saturation looked correct and full. Dark-scene detail was also good, and we saw no ghosting or streaking.

The XP17 is designed to color-match Shuttle's CPU cases, so you can have a coordinating set. But its portability, performance, and component matching come at a price, since you can easily find other 17-inch LCD panels for $350 to $400. Nevertheless, Shuttle provides everything you need for a portable gaming display that delivers solid image quality.

Benchmark test results:
Average Contrast Ratio: 436:1
Average Black Level: 0.4 candelas/m² (cd/m²)
Average White Level: 185.6cd/m²
VESA Uniformity Black: 85.1%
VESA Uniformity White: 83.8%

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