ViewSonic VX924
ViewSonic has successfully released two very nice monitors. They released first the VP191b, the first LCD monitor with a fast reaction time and extra wide viewing angles. Today, they are once more the first to release a monitor with a 4ms-response time panel. Our tests confirmed this figure: this really is the fastest monitor on the market. This panel is even better than the Samsung 8 ms included in the very good Samsung 913N and Hyundai L90D+ monitors. However, there are a couple of downsides…
First of all we have to specify that ViewSonic sent us a pre-series. The unit tester isn’t the final product and, as we noticed a couple of problems, we asked ViewSonic to let us test once more, later on, the final sales version.
Ergonomics
According to the pictures circulating on Internet for the past few months, this should have been a very nice monitor. This pre-series’ finishing touches are, however, disappointing. To begin with, the bezel is made of plastic and not metal and it isn’t the nicest plastic either. Then some of the pieces fit loosely and squeak when pushed. Just grabbing the monitor to incline it produces sounds that we would have preferred never to hear.
ViewSonic has also added some sort of grey frame to the black panel. This grey frame moves with a "slatch!" sound under a single finger’s pressure.
The OSD is accessible via the " 1 " control on the monitor. It isn’t at all obvious and the lack of clear indications is sometime misleading. If you press the control "2" the image displayed disappears: the monitor looks for another video source signal (from DVI to analog or the other way around).
About ergonomics, the bezel is quite good-looking but the base is fixed. It isn’t vertically adjustable and the monitor doesn’t have a pivot mode. There is no video input, no sensor to automatically adjust the brightness according to ambient lighting, no memory card player, and no USB hub… Only the essential is present: power supply DVI, analog input.
Color quality
Once more we repeat , this monitor isn’t a series product. This is a good thing because the standard adjustments of this monitor are quite surprising. You just need to open your wallpaper, a movie or play one of your favorite games to realize that the colors aren’t accurate.
How to interpret the graphOn the left is the gamut: this is the monitor colorimetric range compared to the sRGB range (the one usually used for digital cameras). This doesn’t correspond to its accuracy, but to the range of reproducible colors.
For accuracy, you have to refer to the right graph, the DeltaE. This is a measure between the color requested and the one really displayed on the monitor. The result obtained is also counter-balanced by human color sensitivity. With 1 < Delta E < 2 colors are accurate. With Delta E < 1, the result is perfect.
Before calibration, test with standard adjustments
After calibration
The least we can say is that ViewSonic’s team hasn’t just carried out wrong adjustments. If you look at the DeltaE graph before calibration, you clearly see that it was easy to spot the color problem. Our new test procedure is recent, only one month old, but this high score will be difficult to beat.
After calibration, results are fortunately a lot better. If we consider as good, results inferior to DeltaE = 3, the quality of this monitor is satisfying. After correction (quite long, hesitant and irksome – without the colorimeter we could never have reached this result), the pictures finally featured the right colors.
For the best adjustment, reported above, the white is at 239 cd/m² and the black at 0.39 cd/m². The contrast ratio measured is 613:1. This result is good especially for a TN monitor.
Viewing angles
The image displayed is still nice until 130° on the side and only 60° for vertical viewing angle.
For the vertical viewing angle the 60° repartition is in fact 45 above and 15 below.
This result is far from the 160° claimed. If there is a chance that ergonomics or color quality might improve with the final product versions, chances are that viewing angles will remain identical.
Interpolation
We could remove this step as all answers are almost invariably identical, but we feel that it is important to keep it for the manufacturer to understand our requirements and our disappointment in this area. Not a single monitor is capable of displaying a nice picture in any resolution other than the native one. Of course, it is still possible to play but the quality will be strongly reduced: a little blurred with less sharp shapes and sometime a scaly effect…We have to play in 1280x1024 and it is too bad for you if your graphic card isn’t powerful enough.
Video games
Let’s get to the point: yes this panel is the fastest one ever tested here. But no, it isn’t our favorite to play with.
We might consider that the occasional gamer or user will be pleased by such a response time. This is true, this panel is very fast and the afterglow is even lower than before. Since the release of their 16 ms panels, this is the first one produced by AU Optronics where we can clearly see an improvement. We feel that the AUO 16, 12 and 8 ms are simply identical. Adding the
overdrive to the panel helped to improve the communicated response time for grey to grey but didn’t result in any real progresses. For us AUO has stagnated with TN panels for the last two years.
This panel finally marks new changes. The improvement to 4ms is due once more to the
overdrive obviously even more intense than the one applied to the VP1191b. If we noticed a reaction time improvement, we also spotted the apparition of micro cuts especially visible during lateral traveling. Objects in motion aren’t flowing perfectly. This problem isn’t really perceptible when the character runs straight ahead of him. However, if it turns a little, this effect is immediately perceptible and it is frankly unpleasant. Not everyone will perceive it but for intensive gamers it is a very disturbing effect. It is so unpleasant that we even prefer a monitor with a slower reaction time such as the Iiyama E480S.
Films : DVD, HD
There is a strong twinkling effect = very average result for movies. This is a secondary monitor to use for video sequences but not as a potential substitute for your TV.
We tried to put ourselves in the shoes of a standard user. We adjusted the monitor as best we could without using our colorimeter, to see the type of results we could obtain. As we feared with the color test, the results were disappointing. We were soon faced with an unsolvable gamma problem. Images feature too much contrast. Blacks are too black, white too white. Using the contrast, brightness and color parameters aren’t enough.
Verdict
Same player shoot again. This first test excited us very much, but our conclusion can’t be final at this stage. We spotted too many problems, finishing touches, color quality, fluidity…we hope that ViewSonic will soon send us one of their new units. We also expect the color problem, at least, to be corrected. Our expectations are lower for the other problems, but it would be a good thing to see an improvement in the pictures’ flowing.
Take a look at this manufacture’s dead pixel policy by clicking here! 
