Viewsonic VX912 Mini Review



Review by: Mark Stevens - Original: 31/01/05 - Last Update: 01/02/05

I decided to write this mini article because of the lack of reviews on the VX912 available on the web. Of the few reviews I found there were only a few
paragraphs talking about the technical aspects of the picture quality and very few images or discussions from an general end users perspective. I hope this
will be of use to others considering buying one of these. I would be grateful for any feedback or notifcation of errors etc. you could give me.

This review is not intended as a technical article, more of a first hand practical review based on my experiences with it so far.
All image quality conclusions were drawn using the supplied cables along with a 256mb Sapphire Radeon 9800XT graphics card.

Box Contents




Viewsonic VX912 TFT (x1)
Three Pin Power Cord (x1)
Two Pin Power Cord (x1)
VGA Cable (x1)
DVI-D Cable (x1)
Setup Manual with Driver CD (x1)
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Specifications



PANEL
Display: 19” colour TFT active matrix SXGA LCD monitor
Display Area: 37.6cm horizontal x 30.1cm vertical, 48.3cm diagonal, Glass Surface, Anti-glare
Tilting Angles: Down 5° and up 20 °
Viewing Angle: 140° horizontal, 140° vertical (at 10:1)160° horizontal, 160° vertical (at 5:1)
Pixel Pitch: 0.294mm horizontal x 0.294mm vertical
Optimum Resultion: 1280x1024
Pixel Clock: 135Mhz (max.)
Contrast Ratio: 500:1 (typ.)
Response Time: 12ms (typical)
Brightness: 250cd/m² (typ.)

VIDEO INPUT
Analogue: RGB analogue (0.7 Vp-p, 75 Ohm) via RGB (15-pin mini D-sub)
Digital: DVI-D (TMDS, 100 Ohm) via DVI-D (detachable cable)
Frequency: Fh: 24-82 kHz, Fv: 50-85 Hz
Synchronisation: H/V separate (TTL), composite, sync on green

POWER
Type: Internal power supply, TCO’99, ENERGY Standard compliant
Voltage: AC 100-240 V (50/60 Hz), auto switch
Power Consumption: 40 watts (max.), under 1 watt in suspend mode

COMPATIBILITY
PC: VGA/DVI up to 1280x1024
Mac®: Power Mac™ (up to 1280x1024)

DIMENSIONS AND WEIGHT
With Stand: 431 x 468 x 201 - 6.7kg
Without Stand: 431 x 370 x 66 - 5.3Kg
(W x H X D in mm)

CONTROLS
Basic: Power (soft), 1, menu up, down, 2, (enter)
OSD: Auto image adjust, contrast, brightnessanalogue/digital input select, colour adjust (sRGB, 9300K, 6500K (default), 5400K, user RGB), information
(resolution, H/V frequency, pixel clock, model number, serial number, website), manual image adjustment (H/V position, H size, fine tune, sharpness), setup
menu (language, resolution information, OSD position, OSD timeout, OSD background), recall

WARRANTY
3 Year (UK): http://www.viewsoniceurope.com/UK/Support/warranty.htm


Setup


Setting up the TFT was simple, as expected. The driver disk had a quick and simple installer that sets up the drivers and colour profile in one shot,
which is handy when you're desperate to try the thing out :-) The driver cd also includes the full manual, which like most people I didnt bother to read.

The back panel of the TFT reveals a compartment that hides away (left to right) the power connector, DVI-D and the VGA connector. As the panel can
switch between the two interfaces via the OSD I plugged them both in for some quick comparisions between the panel's DVI and VGA output. The plugs fit
snug and stay well connected without the thumb screws being used. The spine of the stand is thick and conceals the wires coming from the back of the tft
from the users sight.
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Concealment cover
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Underneath the cover


The VGA cable appears to be quite cheaply constructed whilst the DVI cable is a little better. The cable lengths are good for those who prefer to hide their
base away from the screen and are approx 1.75m each. It's probably not worth buying a new set of cables as they yield perfectly reasonable results on their
own.

Upon switching on the screen I was praying to the tft gods that there would be no dead pixels and I was pleasently surprised... not even a half dead one :-) I
personally havent heard of anyone with a dead pixel on a viewsonic but there are of course many tft's out there with manufacturing defects, viewsonic included.
Viewsonic's pixel defect tolerance for subpixel errors is a standard ISO class II, which means there must be 2 always lit, 2 never lit or 5 'other' sub pixel errors
before they will exchange the panel. For 'complete pixel' errors Viewsonic has a zero pixel defect policy.

There was no visible difference between DVI and VGA input that I could see, so anyone lacking a DVI capable graphics card should not be disappointed at
not being able to use the DVI input feature on this panel. Those that have it may aswell use it as you wont lose out at all by keeping the whole path digital.

First Impressions



The first thing I noticed when getting the TFT out of the box was the sheer size of the screen, it's quite large even though the monitor I was replacing was a
19" (18" viewable) ADI CRT. It is also considerably lighter. The design is modern and yet has a kind of retro 80's vcr look going with the long
silver buttons on the black bezel and the simple fonted silver 'viewsonic' branding. Still, it doesnt look out of place.
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Full frontal
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Side shot


Upon switching on the screen I was greeted with an OSD message indicating 'Analog' which indicates the panel is currently using the VGA input, a quick trip
the ATI control panel allows the output to be switched to DVI. Shortly after switching I was presented with another OSD message telling me that for optimal
image quality, 1280x1024 should be used. This message can be dismissed or disabled, no choice results in the message disappearing after a few seconds.
1280x1024 is the native resolution for the panel and is a comfortable size for the screen dimensions. Die hard gamers or graphic designers will no doubt want
above and beyond this resolution and modern CRT's are still superior in colour reproduction and refresh rate whilst providing higher resolutions. In these cases
a CRT is probably still the better choice. This is not to say that the VX912 is not capable of either good gaming or graphic designing as I feel it does a great job
with both.
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Stand and control bezel
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Close up you can see the matt surface



The default pixel refresh is 60Hz which equates to a pixel rate of 108Mhz. The panel is capable of 135Mhz max and so upto 85Hz can be used.
Currently I am running the panel at 1280x1024 @ 85Hz via DVI (135Mhz) and the image is stable and crisp. Due to the way the individual pixels refresh rather
than a full scan on a CRT there is no noticeable flicker even at low refresh rates.

The screen is very bright by default and turning the brightness up to max causes the colours to become a little washed with bright white light. Turning this down
and adjusting the contrast allows a sharp, vivid image with good tones to be displayed. I was very surprised at the colour reproduction of this TFT, images are
far more colourful and vivid in comparison with my CRT. One negative point to note is that either side of the panel has a slight lighting imbalance that causes
blacks to appear slightly greyed when the brightness is high. It is vertical along the edges of screen and no more than 2cm wide. This is only really noticeable
when the brightness is set very high and is not a problem at reasonable levels of brightness and contrast.

The text is pin sharp at 1280x1024 and lines are appear very crisp. Scaling down through resolutions is good rather than excellent due to a very slight blurring
around smaller fonts caused by the filter at lower resolutions. This was also the same with my LG tft and is to be expected when running non native resolutions.
As long as your hardware can run games at 1280x1024 this shouldnt prove to much of a problem, even if you cant the picture is still perfectly viewable, you will
just miss out on that extra little bit of clean crispness that the native resolution provides.

The panel is fairly quick to display the picture after pressing the power button or receiving a signal from the video card, this allows things such as bios screens
to be read before they disappear - an annoying problem I had when using my CRT.
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Taken at around 160 degrees.
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Taken at about 130 degrees.

The viewing angle is satisfactory both horizontally and vertically and is certainly enough for a decent angle of viewing. You would have to question
the need for a viewing angle anymore extreme than the first picture anyway... If you have sit at that angle to use it you should be looking at getting a room
extension rather than a wide angle tft.

DVD's




DVD playback is smooth with no noticeable blurring or ghosting of images. Blacks are dark due to the 500:1 contrast ratio and colours are just as rich as
on my CRT. The colour is also far less washed than my LG 1725S TFT panel. It wasnt really until this point that I realised one of the LG's most useful
controls was absent from the Viewsonic; the one touch user settings. These are particularly handy for switching between a brighter profile for say DVD's and
a less bright profile for word processing/browsing etc. without having to alter the brightness and contrast manually each time.


For the 16:9 images I have chosen Dawn Of The Dead:
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Note: The moire lines that the digital camera picks up aren't visible to the eye.
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Very close up. The curving is due to the digital camera.


The only good quality 4:3 DVD's I own are The Simpsons:
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Homers night time snacking :-)
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Again very close up.


It's not recommended that you base all your buying decisions on this set of screen caps because the camera really doesnt do the image justice, I included them
mainly for the curious. The playback on these screens is very nice however :-)

Gaming



Gaming was the area that I was most concerned about, however the TFT has so far coped with everything i've thrown at it. Halflife 2, Doom 3, Far Cry,
FIFA 2005, NFS: Underground 2 all played without any picture lag or ghosting thanks to the 12ms response. Fortunately my hardware was able to handle
the tft's native resolutions for gaming otherwise it may not have been such a good choice of upgrade.
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Note the good black tones
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The bright outdoors

Doom 3 is a very dark game and thus makes a good testbed for the contrast; in the shadowy areas the darkness is just as black as the panels outer bezel.
Meanwhile the whites are bright but not glaring and help Doom 3's eery lighting remain immersive.
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The overcast Nova Prospekt
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Water ride

HL2 runs as expected without any visual glitches, atleast none caused by the tft anyway. I changed the mouse response in this game and moved as quickly as
possible left and right and the screen is able to keep up without any problems so im pleased as punch here.


Conclusion



I couldnt be more pleased with the quality of display that I got, especially for a price tag of £305 inc vat (from microdirect.co.uk, as of 1/2/05, who incidently
I will never buy from again... appalling customer services, but thats another matter). If it wasnt for my tight budget at the moment I would love to own a second
VX and run a dual display/extended desktop.
Aslong as you dont require resolutions higher than 1280x1024 this is a great all round tft. My only complaints are that there is no rotate feature on the stand
and the lack of user defined presets means a bit of hassle playing with brightness/contrast levels. For the money I dont think there is a better all round 19" tft
(at the time of writing atleast) and I wouldnt hesitate in recommending one.



Copyright (c) Mark Stevens, 2005. I will be happy to donate any of this content, providing you ask nicely first :)
Sources: www.viewsonic.com, www.ati.com, www.valve.com, www.idsoftware.com, www.fox.com, www.universal.com