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Asus VH242HL-P

Michael Brown — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:57:44 -0600

Up, down, and almost all around

The Asus VH242HL-P is one of only two monitors we tested with a stand that tilts, swivels, and is height-adjustable. The 23.6-inch display is based on a six-bit TN panel with FRC and a native resolution of 1920x1080.

The monitor’s default setting prevents changes to brightness and contrast, so we switched to User Mode to tune the monitor when using DisplayMate. Red, green, and blue were all set to 100 percent here, but the entire display nonetheless over-emphasized blue. We also ran into a problem with the gamma measurement test, which indicated a serious color-tracking error. We finally put the monitor into sRGB mode and sacrificed brightness control in the interest of color accuracy.

Call us old-fashioned, but we like the reassuring tactile feedback that the Asus VH242HL-P's mechanical switches provide.

The VH242HL-P exhibited a nicely uniform black level with very little backlight intrusion, but we observed blooms of intensity in the corners and in the middle of the screen while displaying high-intensity blue and cyan as well as low-intensity green. Compared to the rest of the field, DisplayMate’s high-resolution digital photographs looked markedly more subdued on the Asus display. But the VH242HL-P did a spectacular job of displaying text; even nine-point serif fonts were clearly legible.

We didn’t encounter any dead or discolored pixels in our review, but buyers should note that Asus’s three-year warranty kicks in only if there are more than five of the former or three of the latter.

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Acer H235H

Michael Brown — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:52:26 -0600

It's pretty; pretty vacant

The Acer H235H is typical of this class of displays: It’s based on a six-bit TN panel that uses frame-rate control to augment its color depth. The screen delivers 23 inches of viewable area at a native resolution of 1920x1080.

As with nearly all the monitors we tested, we found it necessary to make significant adjustments to the display’s brightness and contrast settings to make the monitor look its best with our DisplayMate benchmark software. But the five touch-sensitive buttons in the Acer’s glossy black bezel and the obtuse icons in its onscreen display make this process extremely frustrating; the onscreen icons don’t line up precisely with the physical buttons and it takes too many button presses to drill down into each menu choice. It takes five button presses, for instance, to make a single brightness adjustment.

H235 display looks as attractive in back as it does in front, with a removeable panel to hide the ports.

The H235H performed well in DisplayMate’s dark-screen test, with almost no backlight leakage around the perimeter of the display, but we noticed significant banding in the 128-step grayscale test. It also did a poor job of reproducing low-saturated colors against light-gray backgrounds.

The display had no problems with smearing or blurring in our Blu-ray movie and game tests, but poor contrast resulted in a significant loss of visual detail in the opening scene of Watchmen.

The Acer H235H’s features and performance put it in the middle of the pack, but its three-year warranty is unusual in that it does not cover the backlight.

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ViewSonic VX2433wm

Michael Brown — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:40:31 -0600

A steaming pile of mediocrity

None of the monitors we examined was flawless, but the ViewSonic VX2433wm surprised us with how poorly it fared in many of our DisplayMate benchmarks, even after an intense round of button-mashing. In the color-uniformity test, for instance, the monitor should have displayed a consistent wash of color from edge to edge; what it delivered instead was a mottled, blotchy mess.

We had difficulty associating the ViewSonic VX2433wm's side-mounted controls with its onscreen display.

The VX2433wm had trouble with all four test colors (red, green, blue, and gray), but the distortion was particularly objectionable with green and blue—it was almost like staring at a Rorschach inkblot (ironic, considering we used Watchmen for our Blu-ray movie test). The ViewSonic turned in another poor performance when displaying low-saturated colors against the high end of the grayscale, with red, green, and blue at two-percent saturation disappearing into the background.

The digital photos we examined appeared washed out and subdued, as though they’d been drained of their color and vibrancy; the display’s Blu-ray performance was equally bland. Our results finally improved with our gaming tests, thanks to the panel’s two-millisecond response time (among the fastest of all the monitors tested), but that one bright spot doesn’t compensate for this display’s otherwise lackluster qualities.

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Gateway FHX2300

Michael Brown — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:39:33 -0600

Mirror, mirror on my desk

Gateway’s 23-inch FHX2300 truly is a looking glass: The glossy screen produces extremely distracting glare and specular reflections. Don’t use this monitor if there’s a window or any other strong light source directly behind your seat.

The panel we used for our evaluation had a discolored pixel that glowed green when DisplayMate was producing solid black, gray, or low-intensity cyan and magenta backgrounds; it glowed yellow when the background was solid red. Gateway sent us a replacement unit, but consumers might not be so lucky: The company’s one-year warranty covers dead pixels (meaning pixels that don’t function at all), but it expressly does not cover discolored pixels.

The Gateway FHX2300 did a superb job of rendering skin tones in DisplayMate's high-resolution digital photos.

Once we positioned the Gateway to minimize its glare problems and ignored the discolored pixel on the solid-black background, we noticed significant backlight leakage on the bottom and left-hand sides. Apart from those issues, the FHX2300 delivered solid performance with the rest of our DisplayMate tests, particularly in the areas of grayscale production and screen uniformity. The display delivers six-bit color depth with frame-rate control and five-millisecond response time, so we didn’t encounter any significant motion-blur or other visual artifacts in our game and Blu-ray movie tests.

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NEC MultiSync EA241WM

Michael Brown — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:30:25 -0600

You don't always get what you pay for

NEC’s EA241WM has a number of features that set it apart from the rest of the displays in this field: It’s the only model to support a full complement of ergonomic features (tilt, swivel, pivot, and height adjustment); it’s the only model with an integrated USB 2.0 hub; and compared to its competition’s flimsy construction, this monitor is built like a Mack truck.

It’s also the most expensive and least consumer-oriented model we tested, with an MSRP of $450 and native resolution of 1920x1200 (versus 1920x1080). And while the monitor does support HDCP, it’s not equipped with an HDMI port (NEC will provide a free DVI-to-HDMI adapter, but doesn’t put one in the box).

The NEC EA241WM comes with NEC's NaviSet software, which provides a graphical user interface for controlling the monitor's brightness, contrast, and color environment.

The EA241WM’s tiny thumb-stick controller is one of the best tools we’ve used for making minute adjustments to a display’s brightness and contrast levels. The NEC performed better than any of the other monitors in DisplayMate’s black-level test, with virtually no backlight contamination of a black screen. In spite of its precision controls, this monitor performed poorly when it came to differentiating between black and dark shades of both gray and colors. This was particularly bothersome in the opening scene of Watchmen, because important details were lost in the dark shadows.

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Samsung P2370HD

Michael Brown — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:23:11 -0600

Do we have to buy the tuner?

Samsung’s heritage as a consumer-electronics manufacturer is readily apparent in its P2370HD monitor. This is the only display we looked at that included not only an integrated HDTV (ATSC) tuner, but also composite and component video inputs, S/PDIF audio output, and support for Dolby Digital Plus.

The P2370HD was also the easiest display to set up and configure, thanks to a very useful remote control, a built-in graphical user interface that steps you through the process, and input ports that are set at right angles, instead of parallel, to its back. The port configuration lets you see how the DVI and HDMI ports are oriented without having to turn the entire monitor upside down.

The interior edge of the Samsung P2370HD's bezel has an unpleasant propensity to reflect objects appearing at the display's outermost edges.

Samsung claims its proprietary frame-rate control technology (Hi-FRC) enables this six-bit panel to produce the same number of colors as an eight-bit panel (16,777,216), and that it covers a broader swath of the NTSC color gamut (80 percent). We found the difference just barely perceptible: It did render DisplayMate’s high-res digital photos slightly warmer than the rest of the field, but we really had to stare.

Don’t need the TV tuner? Don’t buy Samsung’s P2370 model thinking you’ll get everything but. That model is limited to DVI and VGA video inputs (no HDMI), and it has no speakers, headphone jack, or remote.

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LG W2353V-PF

Michael Brown — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:13:12 -0600

You sure about that?

LG insists its W2353V-PF is based on a true eight-bit TN panel, a feature that would make it unique in this roundup, so we were surprised at how poorly the display performed with several of our DisplayMate benchmarks. We were also irritated by the display’s gimmick of rendering a black screen by turning off its backlight. This might be acceptable if the transition was instantaneous—after all, there’s no better way to achieve true black—but the fade takes at least two seconds, which exposes the trick.

The LG produced inconsistent color uniformity, with colors near the top of the display appearing significantly darker than the same colors shown in the middle and bottom of the screen. This same flaw also manifested itself in DisplayMate’s graduated grayscale tests.

LG's W2353V-PF was the only monitor in this roundup that didin't come with a digital video cable (neither DVI nor HDMI).

The monitor had trouble with our other grayscale tests, as well, with peak white exhibiting a pinkish tinge. We noted a similar shift toward pink in facial skin tones when we studied high-res digital photographs of faces. And we encountered color-tracking errors, with red hues shifting toward orange as they increased in intensity.

The W2353V-PF did perform well in our game and movies tests, thanks to its two-millisecond gray-to-gray response time.

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HP 2709m

Michael Brown — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:53:54 -0600

Meaty, beaty, big, and bouncy

HP’s new 27-inch 2709m is considerably larger than the rest of these displays; it’s also more expensive ($400).

The 2709m offers the same native resolution as the rest of the field, so it spreads the same number of pixels over a much larger area. As a result, DisplayMate’s high-resolution sample photos looked just a bit softer than they did on the smaller monitors. The HP also did a poor job of rendering very small text.

In addition to being the largest display we tested, HP's 27-inch 2709m was also the only monitor to feature two HDMI inputs. And its stand swivels as well as tilts.

Those criticisms don’t matter when you’re watching a Blu-ray movie or gaming—this big screen shines here, and you needn’t worry about your videocard supporting an insanely high resolution as you would with a 30-inch display. Unfortunately, the 2709m suffers from the same specular reflection problems as Gateway’s mirror-like FHX2300.

HP tells us the 2709m is outfitted with a wider color-range backlight and color filter, which enables it to produce 92 percent of the NTSC color gamut (compared to the rest of the field’s 72 percent) but we didn’t perceive any significant difference. We didn’t encounter any backlight leakage, but DisplayMate’s Screen Uniformity and Color Purity tests revealed a dark band across the top of the display with light grays and colors at mid-range intensity.

We also found a discolored pixel on the 2709m (HP calls this a “bright sub-pixel defect” and doesn’t cover it under warranty unless there are two or more).