ViewSonic VX924 19 inch LCD Monitor

For several years now I've been looking at getting an LCD to replace my CRT monitor. My main motivation being that LCDs take up so much less desk real estate, and you get significantly more usable screen space/inch than you do with a CRT. (due to the way the industry measures such things, a 21" CRT usually has somewhere around 20" of viewable screen space - with an LCD, 19" is 19" - so a 19" LCD has almost the same viewable area as a 21" CRT.)

However, I just haven't seen the performance from LCDs reach a point that could make the switch justifiable. I spend too much time working with graphics, and although I'm not much for gaming, the low refresh rate of earlier monitors could give me a headache when doing simple things like scrolling through large chunks of text, something made even worse when using a code editing suite that represents different commands in different colors.

But I had some spare money recently, and I was looking to upgrade to a 21" CRT, when I came across the specs for the VX924 on my wholesaler's website. Given the enormous amount of desk space that a 21" CRT would have taken up, I decided I was willing to give the 924 a go based on the published stats. What the heck, if I didn't like it, I could just return it and go for the 21" I was looking at anyway.

- Out of the Box -

This is a pretty monitor. It has a nice cord management system on the back, and a very clean and stylish design. As anyone who's ever seen the rat's nest of cables and equipment that serves as my computing area can attest to, I'm not that big on aesthetics when it comes to my equipment. But if you're in an environment where it does matter (ie: retail, or a professional office accessed by the public), you'll be very happy with the slick modern styling of this monitor.

Downside: You can't adjust the height of the monitor, and this is one tall monitor. Viewsonic fumbled the ball horribly in this aspect. This monitor desperately needs height adjustment.

- First Plug In -

I'm going to assume that a lot of people out there aren't going to bother installing the drivers that come supplied. I rarely do for monitors. With several computers set up in my work area, and the constant need for switching around hardware, one of the things I rarely do any more is install the specific drivers for any given monitor. I tend to go with the "vanila" profiles available on a modern operating system.

Doing this with the VX924 is a mistake. I ran the monitor for two days without installing the supplied drivers, and I was less than impressed with the performance. Text appeared just slightly out of focus, no matter how I fiddled with the controls on the monitor itself, and there were significant ghosting issues with moving graphics when viewing video files or playing video games (I used this monitor as an excuse to spend a number of hours on games - "I'm product testing honey. I'm not doing this for fun, it's RESEARCH" ;-)

The one aspect of this monitor's performance I was impressed with was the color. I've read varying reviews about people's impression of the color quality of this monitor. Some people love it, some hate it. While it did take some fiddling with the contrast/brightness, and messing with the color temperature to get it just right, the end result was vivid, accurate color representation. I measured this empirically against a color wheel, and I found that it met, or exceeded, the performance of the average CRT.

After two days of being annoyed by the fuzziness and ghosting, I decided I might as well install the supplied drivers before I packed the whole thing up and traded it in on a CRT. And that made all the difference.

The text crisped right up, and the ghosting issues virtually (but not completely) disappeared.

NB: If you buy this monitor, install the supplied drivers or you'll suffer from a significant performance hit.

- In Depth Testing -

As I've already mentioned, I set up the color temperature, and fiddled with the contrast and brightness, measuring it against a color wheel. This is somewhat time consuming, and a bit of a hassle, I know, but, I do this with every monitor I set up. The controls/menu on the monitor itself were simple and intuitive, and provided all the necessary functions to do a proper set up. Hitting the "Auto Image Adjust" function provided a very good baseline, and overall, this monitor was no more difficult to set up than a good CRT monitor (though not any easier, either).

Once I had the drivers installed, and the color adjusted to my satisfaction, I really hit the games hard for another day, did a bunch of surfing, and (because I had to accomplish some actual work), even brought up my code editing software for an extended stint.

In all of these cases, I was highly satisfied with the performance of this monitor. When playing games or viewing videos, I couldn't detect any ghosting. I did notice very slight ghosting when scrolling text, but I stress the word slight. Within a very short period of time, I simply became used to this, and don't really notice it anymore.

One thing I do notice, on a regular basis, is that this monitor has a stunning color depth. This can actually work against you when surfing the web, because a great many images out there are over optimized (especially JPegs), and have a lot of "artifacting" - you don't notice this on most CRTs, because the way a CRT performs, it has a tendency to "blend out" JPeg artifacts. This LCD, like most orthers, is very intolerant of JPeg artifacting, and it can jump out and scream at you sometimes. If you design images for the web, be warned. As more and more LCDs hit the market, you're going to have to be increasingly conscious of this effect.


- The Litmus Test -

My current setup allows for multiple monitors, so I decided to set up my best CRT monitor right next to the VX924, and set my controls to have both monitors "cloned" - so that would display exactly the same thing side by side. The monitor I compared it against is a 19" "perfectly flat" Samsung CRT, that is truly a well performing monitor.

Side by side, the monitors perform noticeably differently.

The LCD displayed much greater color depth, and a finer degree of gray scale gradient.

Brightness was a tie between the two, as well it should be. A good CRT and a good LCD should both have brightness adjustments with sufficient range to please anyone.

Ghosting: Hands down winner was the CRT. I really noticed the difference when viewing the monitors side by side. In this mode, I was even able to detect slight ghosting on the LCD when viewing video and playing games. If you're highly sensitive to the ghosting effect (and this varies from person to person), then I would have to say this could be a killer issue with LCDs until they can get the refresh rate down to 1 millisecond or less.

Overall: It might just be the significantly greater viewing area of the LCD, but side by side, I found myself wanting to look at the LCD more than the CRT. I found it provided less overall eyestrain, and a much nicer image to look at. In the end, this is what kept me from repacking the VX924 and going back to the wholesaler for a 21" CRT.

- In The End -

I ended up really liking this monitor. I put it through its paces, and it came out swinging like a champ.

With very good color, brightness, and more than acceptable ghosting levels for my tastes, I don't see myself getting into another monitor upgrade for at least another couple of years.