Hi guys. I have had the above monitor for more than a month and I thought I would do a reivew on it. Keep in mind when i say review it would be more like and impressions of the monitor when in use for gaming and multimedia than a technical discussion of its specs.
Speaking of specs here is the official website list of them. ViewSonic: Products: LCD Displays: X Series: VX1932wm
Some things worth pointing out. Its a widescreen monitor. 2 Ms response time. Inbuilt speakers. VGA and DVI input that means you can plug in your Xbox 360 and PC at the same time.
I will divide this reivew into to peices. Impressions with movies. Impressions with games.
So lets get started with how the monitor does in the film department. [BREAK=Next]
Movies
Format = Divx, Xvid. Normal 700 MB conversion.
For this part I thought I would try The descent (an excellent horror film) as it has a lot footage in nighttime. And to go with that I also tried two differant TV series episodes. One Episode of Band of brothers, 700 MB for 1 hour footage (the episode being Carentan my favourate episode of the series) and the Season 2 Episode 1 of Heroes (350 MB version of the HD broadcast).
All three files were chosen for differant reasons. Band of brothers has the best compression along with a lot of outside, colourfull footage. Ditto for Heroes. The descent is mostly shot in the dark.
I have always been told that Divx and most other compressions look worse on LCD than they do on CRTs and this part of the review prooves that right for the most part.
The descent comes off as the worst offender as the most of the dark scenes loose out on clarity and if you pause the film at any time you can easily spot the big square pixels. You could claim that its a shoddy rip but bear in mind the same film looks good on my normal 21 " Crt TV and it looks good on my friends 17 CRT monitor. Same is true for 28 Weeks later and The Prestige.
Band of Brother and Heroes come off a lot better as the better compression gives them a rich and vibrant feel. They look as good as they do on a CRT (maybe even a bit better) and the colors are really sharp. You also see noticably less flaws if you pause the film at any given point.
Bottom line here is the monitor does the job when it comes to this format. But just about barely. If you are looking to buy a monitor and you are restricted to this file format (which is to say you mostly watch Divx rips) I would say this is not a bad option but it hardly a leap in quality over CRT. Not a fault with the monitor it self but still.
BTW Mp4 rips in decent quality do much better but they are harder to find.
[BREAK=Next]
Movies CONTD
Format = DVD. 480p
hyeah:
I suppose the smiley at the top here says it all. It bloody brilliant! Films choosen for this little test were - King Kong, Lord of the rings: Return of the king, Kill bill Vol 1 and Sin city. Again the reasons for choosing them were pretty simple. Both King kong and LotR has a lot of CGI and some jaw dropping nature shots. Kill bill looks like a "normal" movie would and Sin city is entirely in Black and white with some splashes of occasional colour.
This is clearly the way films are meant to be watched and it shows. Alll of the films look amazing on the monitor. Some of the island shots of King Kong are stunning, as are the battle scenes of LotR. The clarity is superb and the colors look breathtaking. Kill bill too looks excellent (if a little underwhelming after the grand scale of the previous two
). And sin city which I though would be the real test looks awesome. The black and white color saturation is very good.
One thing that stands out for me here is the colour reproduction. After having seen these movies on my telly and a CRT monitor I cant imagine ever watching them on a CRT screen again. The leap in quality is well worth the money here.
And a side note. If you have an Xbox 360 the DVD movies get upscaled which results in even better qaulity! The closest thing SD can get to HD.
All in all its hard to find something to criticise here. This test is passed with flaying colors.
[BREAK=Next]
Movies CONTD
Format = High definition. 720p, 1080p and some x264 rips
Hmm this was a tough one. Simply because HD content takes time to find (read download ). So I had to make do with whatever I could scrounge. The testbed here was - Planet Earth Episode 1 (720p), 300 (x264, 720p), Halo 3 trailer in 720p and some 1080p trailers from the September issue of Chip magazine.
Lets start with Planet earth beacuse of the three it impressed me the most. In all probablity it has to do with the content itself rather than quality but that doesnt mean the quality is in anyway lacking. It looks very impressive. It makes the DVD qaulity look like Divx. And the montor does cope with it superbly. Every details is so clear you will curse MTNL that limits your speed to 256. This is the way the monitor was supposed to be used. Everything about the whole film is outstanding. The crystal clear qaulity, the superb and rich colours. Looks amazing when paused and even better in motion. LCD and HD go hand in hand.
300 looks good too just not as mind blowing as Planet earth. Infact when compared to using an upscaled DVD of the same (borrowed from a friend) played off my Xbox 360 it doesnt look much better. But again that is no fault fo the monitor but the media itself.
The monitor is restricted to a resolution of 1440 X 900 which means that it cant do 1080p natively and the images (I think) get downscaled to 720p. They still look fantastic and a leap in qaulity over DVD.
All in all HD is the media format best suited to the montor. Thanks largely to the widescreen availability and excellent color reproduction. It is a shame then that you wont find a lot of HD media to play on it. Still hard not to fall in love the image quality being shown by the Viewsonic here.
[BREAK=Next]
Games
PC games. Played on a 8800GTS. At a resolution of 1280X1024 unless mentioned otherwise.
Games tried. Splinter cell : Double agent, Bioshock, Colin Mcrae: DirT and STALKER.
Let me honest. This is the real reason I bought the monitor. Almost 70 percent of my time on the PC is spent gaming. And this a test that was crucial to what my final thoughts on the monitor would be. I have played quite a lot of games over the past two months on this Viewsonic and the ones I picked for this test were because they showed of the best graphical content this year has had to offer. So lets get started.
Splinter cell. I love the whole series and graphically it has always been outstanding. This one uses a heavilly modded Unreal engine 2. The game features a lot of stealth action in dark areas. Dark areas have looked OK for the most part on the monitor but in games they look slightly better. The contrast really kicks in and you would be impressed by the black color shown off in the game. All in all it looks very, very good.
Bioshock. 2nd best game of the year and the best looking game I have seen so far. And it looks outstanding on the monitor. Most of the game is played in poorly lit areas and here again the contrast is superb. Some of the water effects look amazing on the LCD. You will particaularly love the drops of water on the screen. They are the most realistic things I have seen so far. It also has a Widescreen option and it looks even better when you up the resolution to go with Widescreen gaming.
Colin Mcrae Dirt. This was mostly chosen to test the 2 MS response time the monitor boasts of. And again it passes with flying colors.
In fact with all the games I have played (I play at high FPS mostly due to an excellent rig) this has impressed me the most. No ghosting seen in any game so far. None at all. No distortion either. The images have beeb flawless.
STALKER I choose mostly because no other game does dynamic lighting as well as STALKER does. And again it is a joy to see the shadows move and dance around the fire.
All in all I cant stress this enough, this monitor is perfect and I mean absolutely PERFECT for gaming. Hands down winner here.
[BREAK=Next]
Games
Xbox 360 connected via VGA (official) cable. All games played at 1280 X 1024. Sometimes with Widescreen enabled.
Games tried
Halo 3
Gears of War
Project Gotham racing 3
Another big big reason I bought the monitor was becase I needed it to be used with my Xbox 360 so I could play games in HD. Like mentioned at the start the monitor has a DVI and a VGA port. The DVI port is always used with my PC and the VGA port is now owned by my Xbox.
Not much new to add here except the fact that it works flawlessly with the 360. You can select any resolution you see fit. And games look superb on it. In fact Halo 3 in HD has some superb lightning effects that you will miss in SD.
Another point to note is that I always though 19" would be too small to do split screen gaming but I have to say it does the job.
All in all a cheap and excellent option to a HD TV if you want to play games from a console.
[BREAK=Final thoughts]
So here we are at the end of it all. This took me damn near two hours to get done and I hope you will find this helpfull.
Some other points to note.
The monitor had a stuck pixel out of the box.
. I got rid of it and havent seen it since. /Knocks wood.
It looks awfull if you are using Windows XP service pack 1 with 162 version of Nvidia drivers. So make sure you update your OS.
You can plug in VGA cable and a DVI cable at the same time but I have not tried to switch inputs on the fly. Yet. I dont know if thats even possible.
The monitor has inbuilt speakers. They are crap.
Images (i.e picture files) look OK. But I dont do a lot of image editing (in fact I do none). So I dont know how the monitor does at that.
Final verdict.
Divx movies 7/10
Dvd movies 9/10
HD movies 10/10
PC gaming 10/10
Xbox gaming 10/10
Value for money 9.5/10 (Not really an average but my final rating on the product).
My apologies for any spelling or grammatical mistakes, hope the review helped you.
Speaking of specs here is the official website list of them. ViewSonic: Products: LCD Displays: X Series: VX1932wm
Some things worth pointing out. Its a widescreen monitor. 2 Ms response time. Inbuilt speakers. VGA and DVI input that means you can plug in your Xbox 360 and PC at the same time.
I will divide this reivew into to peices. Impressions with movies. Impressions with games.
So lets get started with how the monitor does in the film department. [BREAK=Next]
Movies
Format = Divx, Xvid. Normal 700 MB conversion.
For this part I thought I would try The descent (an excellent horror film) as it has a lot footage in nighttime. And to go with that I also tried two differant TV series episodes. One Episode of Band of brothers, 700 MB for 1 hour footage (the episode being Carentan my favourate episode of the series) and the Season 2 Episode 1 of Heroes (350 MB version of the HD broadcast).
All three files were chosen for differant reasons. Band of brothers has the best compression along with a lot of outside, colourfull footage. Ditto for Heroes. The descent is mostly shot in the dark.
I have always been told that Divx and most other compressions look worse on LCD than they do on CRTs and this part of the review prooves that right for the most part.
The descent comes off as the worst offender as the most of the dark scenes loose out on clarity and if you pause the film at any time you can easily spot the big square pixels. You could claim that its a shoddy rip but bear in mind the same film looks good on my normal 21 " Crt TV and it looks good on my friends 17 CRT monitor. Same is true for 28 Weeks later and The Prestige.
Band of Brother and Heroes come off a lot better as the better compression gives them a rich and vibrant feel. They look as good as they do on a CRT (maybe even a bit better) and the colors are really sharp. You also see noticably less flaws if you pause the film at any given point.
Bottom line here is the monitor does the job when it comes to this format. But just about barely. If you are looking to buy a monitor and you are restricted to this file format (which is to say you mostly watch Divx rips) I would say this is not a bad option but it hardly a leap in quality over CRT. Not a fault with the monitor it self but still.
BTW Mp4 rips in decent quality do much better but they are harder to find.
[BREAK=Next]
Movies CONTD
Format = DVD. 480p
hyeah: I suppose the smiley at the top here says it all. It bloody brilliant! Films choosen for this little test were - King Kong, Lord of the rings: Return of the king, Kill bill Vol 1 and Sin city. Again the reasons for choosing them were pretty simple. Both King kong and LotR has a lot of CGI and some jaw dropping nature shots. Kill bill looks like a "normal" movie would and Sin city is entirely in Black and white with some splashes of occasional colour.
This is clearly the way films are meant to be watched and it shows. Alll of the films look amazing on the monitor. Some of the island shots of King Kong are stunning, as are the battle scenes of LotR. The clarity is superb and the colors look breathtaking. Kill bill too looks excellent (if a little underwhelming after the grand scale of the previous two
). And sin city which I though would be the real test looks awesome. The black and white color saturation is very good. One thing that stands out for me here is the colour reproduction. After having seen these movies on my telly and a CRT monitor I cant imagine ever watching them on a CRT screen again. The leap in quality is well worth the money here.
And a side note. If you have an Xbox 360 the DVD movies get upscaled which results in even better qaulity! The closest thing SD can get to HD.
All in all its hard to find something to criticise here. This test is passed with flaying colors.
[BREAK=Next]
Movies CONTD
Format = High definition. 720p, 1080p and some x264 rips
Hmm this was a tough one. Simply because HD content takes time to find (read download
). So I had to make do with whatever I could scrounge. The testbed here was - Planet Earth Episode 1 (720p), 300 (x264, 720p), Halo 3 trailer in 720p and some 1080p trailers from the September issue of Chip magazine. Lets start with Planet earth beacuse of the three it impressed me the most. In all probablity it has to do with the content itself rather than quality but that doesnt mean the quality is in anyway lacking. It looks very impressive. It makes the DVD qaulity look like Divx. And the montor does cope with it superbly. Every details is so clear you will curse MTNL that limits your speed to 256. This is the way the monitor was supposed to be used. Everything about the whole film is outstanding. The crystal clear qaulity, the superb and rich colours. Looks amazing when paused and even better in motion. LCD and HD go hand in hand.
300 looks good too just not as mind blowing as Planet earth. Infact when compared to using an upscaled DVD of the same (borrowed from a friend) played off my Xbox 360 it doesnt look much better. But again that is no fault fo the monitor but the media itself.
The monitor is restricted to a resolution of 1440 X 900 which means that it cant do 1080p natively and the images (I think) get downscaled to 720p. They still look fantastic and a leap in qaulity over DVD.
All in all HD is the media format best suited to the montor. Thanks largely to the widescreen availability and excellent color reproduction. It is a shame then that you wont find a lot of HD media to play on it. Still hard not to fall in love the image quality being shown by the Viewsonic here.
[BREAK=Next]
Games
PC games. Played on a 8800GTS. At a resolution of 1280X1024 unless mentioned otherwise.
Games tried. Splinter cell : Double agent, Bioshock, Colin Mcrae: DirT and STALKER.
Let me honest. This is the real reason I bought the monitor. Almost 70 percent of my time on the PC is spent gaming. And this a test that was crucial to what my final thoughts on the monitor would be. I have played quite a lot of games over the past two months on this Viewsonic and the ones I picked for this test were because they showed of the best graphical content this year has had to offer. So lets get started.
Splinter cell. I love the whole series and graphically it has always been outstanding. This one uses a heavilly modded Unreal engine 2. The game features a lot of stealth action in dark areas. Dark areas have looked OK for the most part on the monitor but in games they look slightly better. The contrast really kicks in and you would be impressed by the black color shown off in the game. All in all it looks very, very good.
Bioshock. 2nd best game of the year and the best looking game I have seen so far. And it looks outstanding on the monitor. Most of the game is played in poorly lit areas and here again the contrast is superb. Some of the water effects look amazing on the LCD. You will particaularly love the drops of water on the screen. They are the most realistic things I have seen so far. It also has a Widescreen option and it looks even better when you up the resolution to go with Widescreen gaming.
Colin Mcrae Dirt. This was mostly chosen to test the 2 MS response time the monitor boasts of. And again it passes with flying colors.
In fact with all the games I have played (I play at high FPS mostly due to an excellent rig) this has impressed me the most. No ghosting seen in any game so far. None at all. No distortion either. The images have beeb flawless.
STALKER I choose mostly because no other game does dynamic lighting as well as STALKER does. And again it is a joy to see the shadows move and dance around the fire.
All in all I cant stress this enough, this monitor is perfect and I mean absolutely PERFECT for gaming. Hands down winner here.
[BREAK=Next]
Games
Xbox 360 connected via VGA (official) cable. All games played at 1280 X 1024. Sometimes with Widescreen enabled.
Games tried
Halo 3
Gears of War
Project Gotham racing 3
Another big big reason I bought the monitor was becase I needed it to be used with my Xbox 360 so I could play games in HD. Like mentioned at the start the monitor has a DVI and a VGA port. The DVI port is always used with my PC and the VGA port is now owned by my Xbox.
Not much new to add here except the fact that it works flawlessly with the 360. You can select any resolution you see fit. And games look superb on it. In fact Halo 3 in HD has some superb lightning effects that you will miss in SD.
Another point to note is that I always though 19" would be too small to do split screen gaming but I have to say it does the job.
All in all a cheap and excellent option to a HD TV if you want to play games from a console.
[BREAK=Final thoughts]
So here we are at the end of it all. This took me damn near two hours to get done and I hope you will find this helpfull.
Some other points to note.
The monitor had a stuck pixel out of the box.
. I got rid of it and havent seen it since. /Knocks wood.It looks awfull if you are using Windows XP service pack 1 with 162 version of Nvidia drivers. So make sure you update your OS.
You can plug in VGA cable and a DVI cable at the same time but I have not tried to switch inputs on the fly. Yet. I dont know if thats even possible.
The monitor has inbuilt speakers. They are crap.
Images (i.e picture files) look OK. But I dont do a lot of image editing (in fact I do none). So I dont know how the monitor does at that.
Final verdict.
Divx movies 7/10
Dvd movies 9/10
HD movies 10/10
PC gaming 10/10
Xbox gaming 10/10
Value for money 9.5/10 (Not really an average but my final rating on the product).
My apologies for any spelling or grammatical mistakes, hope the review helped you.
