ViewSonic VX800-3 18'' LCD Monitor

Rating:
Summary: Nice LCD quality for a decent price
Review: I have never owned an LCD display but have wanted one for the past year once the technology seemed to be up to the task of making a large display at a reasonable price. I bought the Viewsonic VX800 because of my experience with Viewsonic monitors (always has been good) and the glowing reviews on several sites. I did a lot of internet research and went to three computer stores before I purchased the Viewsonic from Amazon.

I am running Windows XP on a 2.4 Gig HZ P-4 machine with 512 Meg RAM NVidia GeForce Ti 4200 high-end graphics card with 128 Meg, so the necessary horsepower was there.

So, how did I fare with this monitor?

First, the positives. It arrived quickly within a few days. The packaging was terrific, never seen better. All necessary cables were included. I hooked the monitor up to my computer - first with the D-Sub analog input and then used the DVI cable. Clarity was definitely better using the DVI input. (Hooking up the cables was easy - the panels came off in a snap and connections were all clearly labeled.) The display is very bright and contrast is excellent. I actually had to turn down the brightness setting. Colors are rich and saturated. Beautiful. And, as other reviewers have stated, not one bad pixel. I didn't bother connecting the speakers as I have a much better sound system. The front panel controls were easy to use. A software driver disk was included. However, this monitor is plug and play for Win XP, so the Win 95/98 drivers were not needed. I tried playing a game and did not see any streaking or ghosting. The weight is less then half of a comparable CRT and it was nice to have less clutter on the desktop, although the screen had to be moved up just as close as with my CRT display. Finally, the monitor looks sleek and well designed. Overall, I would say quality is top-notch.

Now, the downsides. I do a lot of work with spreadsheets and word processing. I wear glasses and my eyes are not great, so text and graphics clarity are really important to me. To get small fonts to show clearly, the pixel dot pitch should be .25mm or better. On all 18" LCDs, the equivalent dot pitch is about .28mm. (The Viewsonic VX 800 is .279mm.) Also, LCDs, as opposed to CRTs run at an optimal resolution - for 17 though 19 inchers, it's usually 1280 by 1024. While this my be OK for many users, it made the text and images too small for me. I like my displays at 1024 by 768. Running the monitor at this resolution did not produce very good results; only acceptable at best. Therefore, I changed to the optimal resolution and got a much better display. But, I had a hard time seeing the small print. Not good! To try and improve matters I also turned on XP's "clear type," which really helped. After some more fiddling and several calls to my local computer pro, I changed the DPI setting from the normal 96 to 120. Again there was improvement as the type was enlarged on Excel, but not when viewing websites or e-mail. Ariel displayed well; New Times Roman was hard to read.

To be fair, I lived with the Viewsonic for several more days to try and adapt. Unfortunately, I couldn't and am returning the item. My conclusion is that while LCDs are really getting good and prices are reasonable (I paid $575 with free shipping for atop-of-the-line model), if you are a demanding user who needs really sharp text or wants to run at various resolutions, stay with a CRT. LCD technology is not ready for prime time for these applications. Maybe in another year or two it will be. Right now, I'm going to buy a Viewsonic high-end CRT to replace my 5-year old Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 900u Otherwise, this LCD may be just the ticket.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Monitor, But it May Not Be for You.
Review: I have never owned an LCD display but have wanted one for the past year once the technology seemed to be up to the task of making a large display at a reasonable price. I bought the Viewsonic VX800 because of my experience with Viewsonic monitors (always has been good) and the glowing reviews on several sites. I did a lot of internet research and went to three computer stores before I purchased the Viewsonic from Amazon.

I am running Windows XP on a 2.4 Gig HZ P-4 machine with 512 Meg RAM NVidia GeForce Ti 4200 high-end graphics card with 128 Meg, so the necessary horsepower was there.

So, how did I fare with this monitor?

First, the positives. It arrived quickly within a few days. The packaging was terrific, never seen better. All necessary cables were included. I hooked the monitor up to my computer - first with the D-Sub analog input and then used the DVI cable. Clarity was definitely better using the DVI input. (Hooking up the cables was easy - the panels came off in a snap and connections were all clearly labeled.) The display is very bright and contrast is excellent. I actually had to turn down the brightness setting. Colors are rich and saturated. Beautiful. And, as other reviewers have stated, not one bad pixel. I didn't bother connecting the speakers as I have a much better sound system. The front panel controls were easy to use. A software driver disk was included. However, this monitor is plug and play for Win XP, so the Win 95/98 drivers were not needed. I tried playing a game and did not see any streaking or ghosting. The weight is less then half of a comparable CRT and it was nice to have less clutter on the desktop, although the screen had to be moved up just as close as with my CRT display. Finally, the monitor looks sleek and well designed. Overall, I would say quality is top-notch.

Now, the downsides. I do a lot of work with spreadsheets and word processing. I wear glasses and my eyes are not great, so text and graphics clarity are really important to me. To get small fonts to show clearly, the pixel dot pitch should be .25mm or better. On all 18" LCDs, the equivalent dot pitch is about .28mm. (The Viewsonic VX 800 is .279mm.) Also, LCDs, as opposed to CRTs run at an optimal resolution - for 17 though 19 inchers, it's usually 1280 by 1024. While this my be OK for many users, it made the text and images too small for me. I like my displays at 1024 by 768. Running the monitor at this resolution did not produce very good results; only acceptable at best. Therefore, I changed to the optimal resolution and got a much better display. But, I had a hard time seeing the small print. Not good! To try and improve matters I also turned on XP's "clear type," which really helped. After some more fiddling and several calls to my local computer pro, I changed the DPI setting from the normal 96 to 120. Again there was improvement as the type was enlarged on Excel, but not when viewing websites or e-mail. Ariel displayed well; New Times Roman was hard to read.

To be fair, I lived with the Viewsonic for several more days to try and adapt. Unfortunately, I couldn't and am returning the item. My conclusion is that while LCDs are really getting good and prices are reasonable (I paid $575 with free shipping for atop-of-the-line model), if you are a demanding user who needs really sharp text or wants to run at various resolutions, stay with a CRT. LCD technology is not ready for prime time for these applications. Maybe in another year or two it will be. Right now, I'm going to buy a Viewsonic high-end CRT to replace my 5-year old Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 900u Otherwise, this LCD may be just the ticket.

Rating:
Summary: Nice LCD quality for a decent price
Review: I spent several weeks researching and evaluating different LCD monitors to replace my 19' Sony Trinitron CPD400 CRT. (Grew tired of moving around with the 75 pound mammoth!) I use my computer extensively for programming, and occasionally for web surfing, word processing, spread sheets and DVD viewing. The specifications of most LCDs are pretty close to one another, so I decided to go with the one that was easiest on my eyes. I looked at Sonys, NECs, Samsungs, and Viewsonics in multiple stores. In the end, I liked the Viewsonic VX series, and went with their 18' model for my home computer (Windows XP & Redhat Linux 8 on a Pentium 4 with 1GB memory). The image resolution was even quite decent when I ran some graphics-intensive games on it at the store.

I've had the display since September 2003, run it at the native resolution & refresh rate of 1280x1024 @ 75Hz rate, and have been pleased with the quality. Mine did have one dead pixel, but most people who have seen the monitor don't even notice... I was just a bit paranoid knowing the dead pixel policy on LCD monitors and examined it closely.