Acer AL2216W
The announcement for the release of the AL2216W didn´t come from the Europe or the US, but from the manufacturer’s Asian website. We read that it would feature a DVI input – which is surprising considering that the AL2416W, its bigger brother, didn´t have one. Indeed, if some of the
Asian countries and the US benefit from such a version (the US version is entirely black and is named Acer AL2216Wbd), its been lost in monitors for the old continent. In Europe, you have to make do with the AL2216W without DVI. The reason why there is no DVI input is easy. All wide monitors assembled outside of the European Union are considered as potential TVs and subject to a tax. There is an additional cost – on the components – of 14% that leads to a 20% price raise. Now we understand why Acer removed this input considering that the objective was to sell the cheapest monitor possible capable of interesting potential buyers of 17, 19 and 20 inch monitors.
How good is this analog input? It’s OK. If the monitor is a bit blurry at first, you just have to press the Auto button (located on the left side of the monitor). It recalculates the phase, the signal clock and sends a perfectly clear picture. On the test monitor, we had to start this function after each reboot to make sure that all areas of the monitor were sharp. Nothing to worry about, as not everyone would have noticed this problem. After activating the Auto function, each time it was perfect.
About the image delay that we measured since
this article, it is 8 ms compared to a CRT monitor. The average of the 16 monitors tested up to this date is 20 ms:
Out of 10 measurements, this delay was even zero in three attempts. However, there are peaks up to 32 ms or in other words two images. This delay might be due to afterglow and electronic components.
Ergonomics are equivalent to entry level monitors and are a minimum. It isn´t vertically adjustable, doesn´t have a pivot mode and has no memory card player or USB hub. You get what you buy, a monitor and that is it.
