X-bit labs

Closer Look at the 19" LCD Monitors Features. Part II (page 4)

Category: Other

by Oleg Artamonov

[ 11/19/2003 | 11:44 PM ]

Acer AL1931

Well, it’s hard to pass by this one. It is one of the most beautiful displays I have ever seen. The appearance of this LCD is up to the highest mark: slim metal base, compact and thin silver-colored case, shiny metal buttons. Following the latest fashion trends, the power LED (it’s built into the power-on button) is blue rather than the ordinary green. It looks winsome sitting against the silver of the case. There is one problem, though. The LED is too bright and might be uncomfortable if you work in a dim room.

The base only allows adjusting the screen’s tilt. For mounting the display on the wall, you can replace the base with a standard, VESA-compatible one.

The next thing of a surprise about the display is the heap of cables coming with it. And there are all corresponding ports in the display’s back panel to plug all those cables into. So, we have DVI and D-Sub connectors, an audio input for the integrated speakers, S-Video and composite inputs. Besides the cables for all those connectors, we found three 220V power cords in the package. For some reason, the display has no headphones jack.

The menu is beautiful, too, but not too easy to use. You can scroll through the main menu in one direction only, in a circle. To activate some menu items (“Auto Adjust”, “Memory Recall”) you have to press the Menu button (which is somehow dubbed “Up” in the menu itself) along with the “>” button, although the menu hints suggest something else. Sound settings are quite flexible: timbre, stereo-balance, tone compensation… On the other hand, this looks a bit excessive for the simple integrated speakers that are only suitable for reproducing the standard Windows sounds and for applications like ICQ.

The display offers four color temperatures to your taste: “Cool” (our measurements gave 7090K on white and 9700K on gray for this mode), “Natural” (5580K and 6600K for white and gray, respectively), “Warm” (5150K and 5900K) and “User” (this is for manual adjustment; by default, the sliders stand on 50%, which corresponds to 5960K on white and 7700K on gray, respectively). I performed the tests using the “Natural” setting; the color temperature was 6760K on white and 7410K on gray after calibration.

The default brightness was 100%, the contrast – 50%. To make the screen shine with 100nit brightness, I dropped both settings to 28%. Note also that the display is not very good at reproducing light tones when the default contrast setting is used; to reach the best representation of the entire range I would advise you to set the contrast below 45%.