

For long-distance travel outside their installations, monitors are equipped with impulse drives. Monitors are given access to their assigned installation's translocation grid, allowing them to quickly move across the span of the installation. While monitors are authorized to use all recovery measures available to them at the facility they are assigned to, the construction of new or replacement monitors must be approved by fleet command.

The most significant command monitors were often backed up in multiple duplicates should one of them be destroyed, its consciousness would continue to exist in another physical shell. Should a monitor be damaged, it is capable of self-repair. Each monitor is represented by a colored dot in surrounding the Forerunner glyph. Six of the Halo installation monitors gather. The central core of the monitor is known as the encephalon. 049 Abject Testament's voice also had a tinny quality, but was notably deeper. ģ43 Guilty Spark and 2401 Penitent Tangent both possessed high-pitched, tinny voices. The Warden's photoreceptor was dull green. 2401 Penitent Tangent's and 686 Ebullient Prism's photoreceptors were perpetually red, despite no evidence of combat-related behavior. However, some, if not all monitors' photoreceptors can change color for example, the photoreceptors of 343 Guilty Spark and 859 Static Carillon were both generally blue, though they turned red when they were in combative states. The photoreceptors of a monitor vary in color, including blue, red, orange, yellow, white, green, and purple. Monitors were generally 58 centimetres (22.9 in) in length and 51 centimetres (19.9 in) in height, however some differed in size the Warden was smaller than average, for example. Some parts of a monitor are elaborately designed, while other parts are intricately simple. A monitor's silvery metal covering is reminiscent of other Forerunner constructs, though their spherical shapes stand in contrast to the polygonal, angular shapes commonly seen in other Forerunner creations. A monitor's body consists of a roughly spherical shape that is concave on three sides, with an illuminated photoreceptor located on the front of the orb.
