ViewSonic G90f 19 inch CRT Monitor

Prior to owning this monitor, I was using a Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 900u, but that monitor was five years old and needed replacing. As many reviewers have commented, I spend hours (days even!) researching monitors on the internet. I've been very satisfied with Viewsonic monitors in the past, so it was a natural for me to look at them first. My first try was with a nice high-end Viewsonic 18" LCD with DVI input, but I was disappointed, so I returned it and opted for yet another CRT.

In my opinion, CRTs still have the edge if you want to run at various resolutions and refresh rates, and I think the clarity is better, not to mention the pricing. You can get a nice quality 19-inch CRT for ? the cost of a 17 to 18 inch LCD.

I had to choose between an aperture grille monitor (has the two faint lines running across the screen - they are needed to hold the grille in place) and a shadow mask type which uses a metal screen with tiny holes that let the light through. I decided on a shadow mask as my need are primarily text-based and shadow mask monitors generally do a much better job displaying fine text. (For a comprehensive discussion and comparison on the two main CRT monitor types, please read the review on the Sony Deluxe Pro CPD-G420S to be found at epinions.com – web address at: http://www.epinions.com/content_71043616388.)

This Viewsonic G90f is a good monitor for the price. It has a .25mm dot pitch and will display up to 1920 X 1440 at 64 HZ, although I wouldn't recommend going that high due to flicker. 1600 X 1200 at 75 HZ is probably the realistic maximum. However, my "old" eyes can't handle such small fonts and I run it at 1024 X 768. It's fine at that setting. This is a plug and play monitor using Win XP. Graphics are really nice and the colors are bright and rich – it give it 5 stars there. It falls down slightly on text, but using a high end graphics card and converting my DVI output to analog output, I still get very good results – 4+ stars for text. Because I use mine all day mostly for text-based work, this was a major consideration, and fortunately, I haven't been disappointed.

The controls are the standard Viewsonic, easy to use. You will most likely only have to make a few minor adjustments, as the factory presets are almost right on. Power consumption is typical for this class of monitor. The top of the case gets warm, but is not uncomfortablely hot.

As usual for Viewsonic products, the packaging was top quality. I purchased mine from Amazon and it arrived in a few days. I paid $240 at Amazon plus $38 shipping due to the size and weight for a total of $278.

There are a few downsides to this product. I won't get into size and weight, as all 19-inch CRTS are heavy and take up quite a bit of desktop space. The video input cord is hard-wired to the back of the monitor. This is a bit of a pain if you need to move this unit around and I think kind of cheesy. Finally, be aware this is NOT a true flat screen monitor. That's what the advertising and specs say, but saying black is white doesn't make it so. The inner display surface is curved, although the outside front glass surface is flat. To me, this borders on deceptive advertising. That said, for most users this should not be a big issue as the screen curvature is not that significant.

My Summary – This is a very good monitor for all but the most demanding user and the cost is quite reasonable.