This is a C5 5.5 inch monitor from Andycine
And in today's overview,
I'm going to take you through some of the features and of course,
let you know my own thoughts about this product.
Quick disclaimer, though.
This was sent to me for free by the company.
However, the views and observations with regards to
this product are not influenced by anyone else but myself.
So let's start with what's in the box.
So we have the monitor, of course, and it comes in a carrying case,
a pretty cool carrying case to keep your product safe whilst you're not using it.
You've got a little zippered pocket at the back right here.
You can chuck a few accessories in the back .
You're going to be stuffing out with a lot more stuff that you don't actually need.
What else?
It comes with this Usb-C cable.
I'm not sure why there's not a port for Usb-C on there, but HDMI
Cable Micro tofull size cable that can come in handy.
You might need a different cable depending on what type of camera you're using.
We also have a battery, which is really cool.
Get a free battery so it's good and we have monitor mount.
So it's a swivel mount.
That's pretty nice touch.
So you can get started straight away without having to buy
extra accessories for this.
All right.
Now let's talk about the build quality of this monitor.
Now the monitor is primarily
made from plastic, which makes it lighter and ultimately cheaper to produce,
but obviously not as robust as a metal alloy body.
It's a bit squeaky around the joints
and there's a little bit of flex in there, which is a little bit concerning.
So I probably wouldn't be too heavy handed with this monitor.
There are two 1/4 20 inserts, one at the bottom
and one at the side of the product for attaching the mounting accessories.
And one aspect of the design
that really stands out is the intake grilles
that are dotted around the body of the monitor.
We have some of the back on the sides and the top.
So these are your intakes and this is your outtake for exhausting hot air.
And at bottom we have the DC input and output jacks as well as an SD card
slot on the left are HDMI in
and Out ports and a handy headphone jack as well.
Now on the power button and the jog wheel sits at the top
while the back accommodates L - series
type battery and also a dummy battery mount.
I'm going to tell you a little bit more about this later on.
Now, to power this on press and hold the power button for a couple of seconds
and the monitor boots up in about 10 seconds or so,
you can hear this come to life.
You canhear the fan starting to go.
But we talk about the fan in a bit The menu button
and the scroll wheel is also at the top.
And even though it's pretty basic and lacks, you know, some refinement,
it really does what it's supposed to do.
Now, let's talk about ease of use.
Now, the user interface on this monitor makes it
pretty intuitive and I think easy to navigate and understand.
Now, there are two ways
of accessing the menu on this monitor, and one of them is if you just slide up,
you'll give you access to all of the tools,
all of the onscreen tools that you can use with this.
The second option, if you were to just depress the menu button at the top,
then it'll launch the menu from the side of the screen
and you can scroll through that using the jog wheel.
There are some settings that you can only get
by using the menu button, and the side menu gives a little bit
more options than you would if you were to use the swipe up method.
You can also turn on and off the touch function by just hitting the power button
right at the top here. So if we just tap that once
and we
can see we can't use the touch functionality anymore
and we have an icon in the top right hand corner with a cross in it
saying that it's disabled to turn it back on.
You just do the opposite.
You just hit that one more time and we get the touch functionality back.
In terms of adjusting the brightness on the screen, you can go through the menus
or you can do it quickly by using the left hand portion of the screen.
So if we just slide up and down, we can see right away
we can go from zero or 1 to 100
and on the right hand side of the screen that would affect the volume.
So if we were to scroll down
and up, we'll go from zero to a 100 foot or volume button.
There is also an auto brightness feature on this monitor
which is activated in one of the menus and then that is controlled
by this light sensitivity right at the top of the monitor.
And depending on your ambient lighting situation,
that will adjust the brightness of the screen to suit.
Now let's talk a little bit about the features
and the functionality of this.
Now, this little monitor packs
a lot of the tools that you associate with higher end modern field monitors.
There is a good range of focus framing, and exposure tools built into this
that you can toggle on and off depending on what you want to see on your screen.
You can have waveforms, false color,
zebras, focus, assist just to name a few of the functions.
There is also a facility to add custom LUTS as well.
Now one of the highlighted
features of this monitor is the reason it has this ultra bright stamp
at the top of the monitor and why it is marketed as such.
Now the specs claim is to have a 3000 nits brightness, which should really aid with
visibility when using daylight outdoors conditions or bright studio conditions.
Now for me, I haven't tested that functionality.
I haven't tested that claim.
Really.
It's kind of relative sometimes when you're dealing with lighting and clear
and really just positioning this
sometimes or using a lens hood be using a monitor.
hood would help you to reduce a lot of glare and to be able to see the monitor
really in a lot of situations in any case.
But to be honest with you,
like if I was going to be using this primarily in an outdoor situation in
bright lighting conditions, then I would definitely want to have one of these
as opposed to, you know, something with a lower nit factor.
Now, let's touch briefly on the price point.
Now, this monitor currently retails at £289.
And to be honest with the build quality aside, I think it's
competitively priced based on the features and functionality factors alone.
So what I like well one of the features on this monitor
I really like is a dummy battery mount at the back
because it provides a convenient mounting point for, you know, things
like wireless transmitters like this one, for example.
So I can just attach that to the back here and that would allow the monitor.
So it conveniently mount and power this at the same time.
Now this is a feature I would use quite a lot when I'm setting up my shots
for product videos as it allows me to move around the set untethered.
And I can use a remote of focus as well.
I can just, you know, attach a remote follow focus just mounted on the side here
and it allows me to near the position in of focus without having
to traverse back and forth from a set to the camera for reference.
Now, let's talk about something that I don't like.
Well, there's an internal cooling fan and I get
it is a really great monitor and it's plastic,
so there's not a lot of ways of dissipating heat.
So you need to have a fan.
The thing is, the finest kind of always on.
Now if we go into the fan settings right now and we check that
we can reduce the fan speed so we can reduce it from 100% down to zero.
It won't stay at zero for very long because as soon as this starts to get hot
or you increase the brightness on the monitor,
then this fan will go up anywhere between 50 and 100%.
And the fan speed is in proportion to the noise.
And, you know, if that's going to be an issue for you
in terms of sound recording, then you might want to really think about
how loud that is going to get.
And what I'm going to do right now is do a little test with this.
I'm going to put this from 100% down to 0% on a fan speed.
And you can see the difference it makes in terms of the noise.
I'm going to kind of put it near to where, you know, my mouth is where too wide
and the mic is picking up my audio and we can see what happens
when we go from 100% to 0%.
So let me know if you can hear the difference.
So it does make a whirring noise.
I mean, relatively like there there are other elements in this room
that are noisy, there's ambient noises.
Maybe you can get away with it
depending on how close you're going to have this to your audio.
Now to wrap it up, I think this monitor has great value for money.
It's packed with quite a lot of features.
And if I were in the market for an affordable monitor,
I'd definitely consider it.
I've added an affiliate link
in the description if you're interested in checking it out on Amazon.
Actually, you know what,
it's almost Christmas and I'm going to give away this monitor.
So when I use that, all you have to do, leave a comment below,
make sure you follow me on Instagram, make sure you subscribe to the channel,
let me know where you're from and why I should send you this monitor. So.
So I'm going to aim to announce and dispatch this
to the lucky person by the end of November 2022.
I hope you guys found is useful.
And till next time peace.