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Through the Looking Glass -- 8 Widescreen Monitors Reviewed

Michael Brown — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:30:00 -0600

Trying to choose an LCD monitor from the ever-growing, ever-affordable selection available can be maddening. Our reviews of eight new panels help make sense of it all

Imagine a Wonderland where the most powerful components in existence are free for the asking. You’d have the speediest CPU on the market; two or three of the newest, most outrageous videocards; the fastest, most capacious drive available; as much top-drawer memory as your operating system of choice could address; and, of course, multiple 30-inch flat-panel displays.

Now, grow up and face life, Alice. The state of the economy is no fantasy, so you’ll probably need to make more realistic component choices. The good news on the display front is that manufacturers haven’t been sitting on their mushrooms smoking hookahs; they’ve been innovating and driving down costs to the point where 23- and 24-inch widescreen LCDs are the new sweet spot.

Before you set out on your next monitor-shopping adventure, however, make sure you have a firm understanding of the most important specifications, features, and quality and performance criteria, lest you fall prey to the industry’s Jabberwocky. Rest assured, we’ll guide you through the thicket. We’ve also dug up a number of specifications that manufacturers have taken to omitting from their published data sheets.

Even the most thorough checklist can’t reveal how a monitor will perform in the real world, so we gathered eight of the top manufacturer’s latest models and put them through a benchmark wringer. Our test bed consisted of an Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 running at 3.33GHz, an Asus P5Q3 Deluxe motherboard, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 videocard. We relied on DisplayMate Multimedia with Test Photos Edition (www.displaymate.com) for diagnostic testing and analysis. And since we use our monitors for entertainment as much as anything else, we also used Fallout 3 to test gaming performance and the Blu-ray edition of Watchmen for movie performance.

Let’s head down the rabbit hole.

Spec Speak

It pays to understand the features manufacturers tout as well as the ones most don't disclose in their spec charts

Backlight

All LCD monitors require a source of illumination, with cold-cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFL) being the most common (every display in this roundup uses one). White LED backlights are one alternative solution, found most commonly in mobile displays. Some high-end displays use RGB LEDs, which enable them to deliver a wider color gamut. CCFL and both types of LED backlights have drawbacks: CCFL backlights deliver a narrower color gamut, while LEDs can age at different rates, causing color and white-point shifts over time.

Color Depth

Color depth indicates the number of bits the panel uses to represent the color of one pixel. A display that uses eight bits each for the red, green, and blue channels (28) can produce 256 shades of each color for a total of 16,777,216 colors (256x256x256). Most LCD monitors based on twisted nematic (TN) technology, however, cannot transition eight bits per pixel quickly enough to compensate for fast motion, resulting in unacceptable blurring and smearing while displaying movies and games. To get around this problem, mass-market LCD panels use six bits per pixel (26) to represent the RGB color space. Since this reduces the total number of displayable colors to just 262,144 (64x64x64), many panels use frame-rate control (a dithering method) to have each pixel display a slightly different shade with each successive screen refresh. Frame-rate control can enable a six-bit panel to simulate 16,194,277 colors.

Color Gamut

Color gamut describes a subset of a defined color space that a display is capable of producing. For the purposes of this comparison, we asked each manufacturer to report its display’s color gamut as a percentage of the NTSC color space. Most of the manufacturers claimed their displays delivered 72 percent of the NTSC color space.

The triangle in the center of this chromacity diagram represents the NTSC color gamut, used to measure the color output of LCDs.

Contrast Ratio

Contrast ratio is supposed to measure the relative magnitude between the brightest (white) and darkest (black) colors the display can produce. Unfortunately, the manufacturers’ propensity for using different methodologies and unstated variables in their measurements has effectively rendered this specification meaningless. The industry has further muddied the waters by introducing entirely new variations of this measurement, such as dynamic contrast ratio. We recommend you ignore this spec when comparing LCD monitors.

Inputs

Nearly all the monitors in this roundup support the two most common digital video interfaces, DVI and HDMI (with HDCP copy protection, so you can watch Blu-ray movies at full resolution using either one). None of them, however, use the DisplayPort digital interface. In terms of analog display interfaces, every monitor has an old-school VGA port, but the Samsung P2370HD is the only monitor to also feature composite and component video inputs (useful for connecting such analog sources as VCRs and older set-top boxes and DVD players). None has an S-Video input.

Panel Type

Virtually every consumer LCD monitor uses thin-film transistor (TFT) technology these days, but it’s important to consider the subsets of that classification. Twisted nematic (TN) is the most common because it’s the easiest and least expensive to produce (all the displays in this roundup are TN panels). TN panels boast very fast response times, but are typically limited to six-bit color depth. The next two most common subsets are super in-plane switching (S-IPS, developed by Hitachi, although LG also uses it) and super patterned vertical alignment (S-PVA, jointly developed by Samsung and Sony). Both S-IPS and S-IPA panels support eight-bit color, but have much slower response times than TN panels.

Response Time

Response time measures how long it takes an LCD monitor’s pixels to transition from one state to another and is measured in milliseconds. A monitor with a low response time will display fewer motion artifacts with movies and games. In order to make apples-to-apples comparisons, we asked each manufacturer to report its display’s gray-to-gray response time, because that is the most common real-world transition.

Stand Functions

The LCD monitor manufacturers in this roundup have all but abandoned ergonomic considerations. Each display in this roundup has a stand that tilts, but only three of the eight swivel left to right and only two offer a height adjustment. NEC’s EA241WM is the only monitor we reviewed that pivots to enable you to switch between landscape and portrait modes.

Calibrating Your Monitor

Even the best screens can use a little help in achieving peak performance

Calibrating your monitor will make certain your photographic prints match what you see on your display. It will also ensure that the games you play and the movies you watch will look as their creators intended. The most foolproof means of calibrating your monitor is to use a colorimeter, an instrument you attach to the front of the display and control with related software running on the host PC. The software sends various colors, shades of gray, and brightness levels, to the display, and the sensor analyzes and evaluates them. These devices used to be quite costly, but we’ve achieved terrific results with Pantone’s inexpensive HueyPro. This colorimeter/software combo is currently street-priced at less than $100.

Free Alternatives

If only a free solution will do, there are several excellent options. Tom Niemann, of ePaperPress.com, has produced an online application that can step you through the monitor-calibration process by making adjustments to your display’s brightness and contrast settings. He’s also developed a tool for determining your monitor’s gamma setting. Niemann has also developed a free tool for calibrating your printer. You can find his tools at http://epaperpress.com/monitorcal/index.html.

Torben Rasmussen, of Flatpanelshd.com, has developed a larger collection of test images for evaluating backlight contamination, defective pixels, color uniformity, banding problems, text reproduction, and lots more. You’ll find his online monitor tests, including a downloadable executable version, at http://tft.vanity.dk.

Calibration Preparations

Whether you calibrate your monitor using a hardware colorimeter or one of the free alternatives we’ve described above, it is essential that you first prepare your display and your work area to achieve the best results.

1. Set the monitor to its native resolution, and make sure your videocard is operating in either 24- or 32-bit mode.

2. Clean your monitor thoroughly. If the manufacturer doesn’t provide cleaning instructions, try this: Turn it off and let it cool. Remove any surface dust and loose contaminants with a can of compressed air, and then wipe the surface with a soft, clean cloth. Now, mix a little isopropyl alcohol with tap water (the alcohol will help dissolve grease and fingerprints), sprinkle a little onto the cloth, and wipe the screen. Never spray liquids directly onto the display.

3. Turn the display back on and let it warm up for 15 to 30 minutes, but turn off any screensaver or energy-management utilities you might be running, so that the calibration process won’t be interrupted.

4. Remove any color profiles you might have previously created for the display. In Vista, right-click on the desktop, select Personalize, choose Display Settings, and then Advanced Settings. Click the Color Management tab and then the Color Management button, select any color profile listed, and click Remove. Restart the computer.

Flatpanelshd.com has a very useful online collection of test images for calibrating and measuring the performance of your display for free.

5. Set up your ambient lighting so that it’s consistent with the environment you typically work in. Make sure the display is not reflecting light from a window or other strong source of illumination. Close any drapes or angle the monitor to eliminate reflections.

Move any brightly patterned, shiny, or colorful objects off your work surface, or at least out of your direct line of sight, so they won’t compete with the display for your attention.

6. Launch your calibration tool of choice and follow its instructions.

7. Primarily interested in calibrating your display so that the colors in your digital photos match those you print out? Here’s one quick-and-dirty solution: Find a photo you really like, print it out as an 8x10, and place it next to your display. Tweak your monitor’s brightness, contrast, and color values until the image on your screen looks as close to the print as you can make it.

Winging it this way won’t produce results as accurate as you’d achieve with a colorimeter, but it’s certainly better than nothing. You should also be aware that your monitor’s performance will change over time and decline as it ages, so you can’t just set it and forget it. A good rule of thumb is to recalibrate your display once each month.

Next, on to the reviews!

The Reviews

Acer H235H

Asus VH242HL-P

Gateway FHX2300

LG W2353V-PF

NEC MultiSync EA241WM

Samsung P2370HD

ViewSonic VX2433

HP 2709m

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.

<< Back to the Monitor Index

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.

<< Back to the Monitor Index

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.