X-bit labs

19" LCD Monitors Roundup. Part IX. (page 8)

Category: Other

by Aleksey Meyev

[ 02/20/2008 | 10:39 AM ]

The monitor’s brightness and contrast are set at 90% and 80%, respectively, by default. I lowered them both to 62% to achieve a 100nit brightness of white. Both dark and light halftones are displayed fully at any settings, but color gradients appear striped. The brightness is regulated by means of pulse-width modulation of the power of the backlight lamps at a frequency of 391Hz.

The brightness uniformity for white is 6.4% on average with a maximum of 15.7%. That’s good. For black, the uniformity is 4.5% on average with a maximum of 10.8% - there are darker bands along the top and bottom of the screen.

The gamma curves are rather sloppy at both the default and 100nit settings. They go higher than the theoretical curve and differ from each other.

There are quite a lot of color temperature modes available in this monitor, yet I’d prefer to have fewer but with more accurate setup because the difference of 1500K in every mode is no good at all.

The VW193D’s color gamut is somewhat larger than usual in reds, but quite standard overall.

The response time average is 15.7 milliseconds GtG with a maximum of 32.9 milliseconds. That’s a normal speed of an RTC-less TN matrix although there are faster samples available in this product class.

The brightness and contrast ratio are going to be satisfactory for a majority of users. The contrast ratio might be a little higher, though.

So, the ASUS VW193D is a nice-looking inexpensive widescreen monitor that has certain flaws concerning color reproduction and lacks a digital input.

Highs:

• Inexpensive
• Nice exterior design

Lows:

• Sloppy color reproduction setup
• Slow matrix
• No digital input
• Imperfect onscreen menu

Recommended usage:

• Text-based applications (documents, spreadsheets, Internet)
• Movies and games that don’t require a fast matrix