Osee Megamon 15 Released – Affordable 800-nit Production Monitor

Monitoring News

by Francesco AndreolaFebruary 23^rd, 2022

Osee recently released a new affordable 15.4-inch production monitor with a maximum brightness of 800 nits. The Osee Megamon 15 features a 1920×1200 panel, it supports both SDI and HDMI inputs and its carrying bag easily turns into a sun-hood. The monitor is now up for purchase on B&H for $1199.

EDIT: Osee has managed to promote brightness to 1000 nit and also launched calibration software for easy and fast calibrating by customers.

Osee is famous for producing high-quality monitoring solutions that come at an affordable price. A few years ago, their G7 and T7 3000-nit on-camera monitors became popular for being some of the brightest, yet accessible solutions on the market.

The company already produced a 15.6-inch studio monitor in the past, the Osee LCM156-A. However, it could only reach a maximum brightness of 300 nits. Users have been asking for a brighter model and the company listened. So let’s take a look at what the Osee Megamon 15 has to offer.

Osee Megamon 15: overview

The new Osee Megamon 15 has a 15.4-inch panel featuring a WhiteLED backlight technology and a 10-bit color depth. Its resolution of 1920 x 1200 results in a 16:10 aspect ratio that is ideal to accommodate the image along with the monitoring tools.

The screen has a viewing angle of 178°, a contrast ratio of 1450:1 and it can reach a maximum brightness of 800 nits. This represents a great improvement over the Osee LCM156-A. However, it still is a little disappointing compared to the 1500-nit Osee LCM215-HDR+.

Indeed, although the company claims the Megamon 15 is a daylight-viewable monitor, I’m afraid its level of brightness can still cause some headaches when shooting outdoors. Luckily, Osee came up with a smart sun-hood design to compensate. More on that later.

Video signals and monitoring functions

The Megamon 15 features two SDI IN ports and a single SDI OUT. Even though it also accepts a video signal from its HDMI IN connection, the monitor lacks an HDMI output. Furthermore, there’s currently no available information about the support of signal cross-conversion.

The monitor offers a full set of assist tools for analyzing video and audio signals. These include Focus Assist and Peaking, Frames Guides, False Color, Histogram, Vectorscope, Waveform, and Audio Meters.

HDR/SDR monitoring and custom LUTs

Although this is not the brightest monitor on the market, the company claims it is suitable for both SDR and HDR monitoring. The screen features PQ and HLG gamma curves and it supports the ITU709, EBU, SMPTE-C, DCI-P3, and ITU2020 color spaces.

The monitor comes with a set of 30 SDR and 14 HDR built-in LUTs designed for the most common camera models. Moreover, it can store up to 16 custom-made LUTs. These can be loaded into the monitor via the USB port on the front, which is also useful for firmware updates.

Carrying bag or sun-hood?

The smart design of the carrying bag helps compensate for the 800-nit maximum brightness. Indeed, when opened, the front of the bag acts as a pretty deep sun-hood, offering a good amount of shielding from direct sunlight.

The sun-hood still grants clear access to all controls both on the front and on the back of the monitor. Moreover, the Megamon 15 can easily sit on a C-stand, with or without sun hood.

Power options

The Megamon 15 offers two power options: it can rely on AC power supply or draw current from an external battery (11-16.8V). Upon purchase, you can choose between the V-Lock or the Gold-Mount kit. Both are valid options to create an extremely portable monitoring setup.

In the box

• Megamon 15 Monitor
• Portable Bag / Sunhood
• V-mount or AB-mount Battery Plate
• C-stand Adapter
• Cheese Plate for mounting accessories
• Desktop Stand Feet
• Power Cable

Price and availability

The Osee Megamon 15 might not tick all boxes, but it is still packed with a lot of features considering its cost. In fact, the monitor is now available for pre-order on B&H for $1,199.00. This might be a great deal for production companies that want to avoid renting and have a good production monitor in-house instead.

For further information check out Osee’s website here.

Do you own a production monitor or do you usually rent it? What do you think about the new Osee Megamon 15? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!