151 of 153 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Satisfied with my purchase, March 17, 2006
I am very happy with my purchase of the Viewsonic VA1912wb. I found it to be a GREAT value in that I got a great widescreen at a reasonable price. A few things to mention.
** Amazon shipped it in great shape...double boxing via FedEx.
** Screen is very bright. I had to lower the brightness to near the lowest point. That is good...so there is room to the upside if I ever need that.
** The back of the monitor is very attractive. Sounds odd...but not for those that have the back facing outwards and visible. Mine happen to be in a study that is near the front entry...so having an attractive appearance is important to us. Cables are well concealed and routed behind a beauty plate. No odd cuts or stickers/tags...clean lines.
** Included instructions are minimal...but hey...there are only three items to hookup (power, input, speakers). There is also the web and customer support if necessary.
** KEY ITEM...this monitor has both analog and digital inputs. Clearly digital is the direction of future hookups...so make sure to ensure whatever monitor you purchase...it has digital inputs.
** The monitor includes the DVI cable. Many monitors do not and will cost you easily $20 more.
** The display is clear, crisp...and better than my monitor at work. Don't notice any dead pixels...no flaws observed.
I highly recommend this monitor and would purchase it again. I am happy with this purchase.
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41 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A FINE monitor for a very fair price, November 18, 2006
This review is from: ViewSonic VA1912WB 19-inch Widescreen LCD Monitor (Black) (Electronics)
First off, let me say that this is a VERY impressive monitor. My points of reference for that statement are my other three LCD monitors: three Samsung models, two of which are 913Ns and the other is a 712N. These two Samsung models are advertised to have the same contrast ratio rating as this ViewSonic, and their advertised brightness ratings are 20 points higher than this ViewSonic. Surprisingly, I actually can see the brightness difference between the Samsungs and this ViewSonic, but, for my taste and needs, the Samsungs are simply too bright, and I end up turning down their brightnesses anyway. For high light, daytime use, I have found that I do like to have the brightness all the way up on the ViewSonic, but I truly do not see any need for it to be any brighter than it is capable of being.
Installation was simple: in fact, something that might be helpful to those of you who are buying this would be that, interestingly again, the drivers that are on the ViewSonic website are actually older than the ones that came with my installation CD, even though the driver package that is posted on the ViewSonic website claims to have been posted only a few weeks ago. When I first installed this monitor and turned it on, I truly do not think the picture was as clear, or the graphics as rich, as any of the Samsung monitors that I own. But, and this is another tip for new users of this product, the default setting for the ViewSonic screen contrast was set MUCH lower than the maximum setting. When I increased the contrast up to its maximum setting, I believe the clarity and quality of the picture to be nearly equal, if not fully equal, to those on the other LCDs that I own.
One big plus about this monitor is that it comes with a DVI cable included, so you save that added expense (this isn't true with all ViewSonics). And, especially with the digital connection, I have no doubts about ViewSonic's claim that this monitor has nearly twice (5ms versus 8ms) the refresh rate as the Samsungs. I have to admit that I wasn't sure I needed a widescreen display, but I believe it's going to be a challenge going back to the standard ones! This is a really a fine monitor!
Now for a few small negatives. One reason I haven't purchased ViewSonics in the past is that they put a fairly tall bar on the bottom of these screens to accommodate speakers. I already have a fine speaker system set up and connected to my computer, so I really have no use for monitor speakers. Additionally, those ViewSonic speakers always raise the monitor height up much higher than I'm comfortable with. Strains my neck. The reason I really didn't worry about it on this monitor was because, while there are speakers, they appear to be nearly half the height of the normal ones on other ViewSonic monitors. With that said, I have to admit that even this speaker accommodation bar added a bit more to the screen height than I had expected. For example, on the 17 inch Samsung monitor, the bottom of the screen is 3 3/4" from the desktop. On the 19 inch Samsungs, it is 4 inches. On this ViewSonic, the bottom of the screen is 5 1/2 inches above the desktop. It's not bad, but it's going to take a bit of getting used to. If all else fails, other monitor stands are available.
As with most electronic products these days, there is very little in the way of documentation. The 87 billion language installation card tells diddly. The .PDF manual that is installed on the computer simply says the standard self-explanatory things. However, I found the interactive help program on the manufacturer's website be quite useful in helping fix a few small problems, surprisingly.
All in all, I'm very impressed so far, and I'm really looking forward to using this monitor! By the by, shipping from Amazon.com was amazingly fast: it shipped the next day, and it arrived the day after that. I can't complain about that speed! My only question is why they would need a weight surcharge on this but could ship an extremely heavy wood lathe for free? Go figure! Anyway, a solid four stars for this monitor.
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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hawaii 3D Animator/video Editor, March 31, 2006
Plugged it in turned it on, and auto adjusted to wide screen, all my software looks like it's made for widescreen, 16:10 is perfect for editing and animation rendering, from timelines to tools, perfect. Auto color at startup, is exceptionally good. Shades of the same color can be seen to create 3d image in bryce5, in rendering the scene, diagonal lines are clean, images are sharper if you bring down the brightness a bit, better to have to dim than to brighten. Played Ghost Recon, detail animation is clear and obvious. It is true, in real time or moving scenes like games or movies, no ghosting or back light, colors are vivid, white and black shades are pretty good, gray is a little washed out. You should not care what color monitor or the stands adjust or the built in speakers not good(you should by now have 2.1,3.1,5.1)? black with silver small buttons extremely nice. It does what it says, oh, and read instruction #1.remove back cover to plug in cords!! plugs go in easy(some of you were trying to plug in with the cover still on). Remember what your buying and primary use, example in this case is it sight or sound your buying? buy smart(va1912wb), think(va1912wb) and research, "buythis1" wink, wink.
Considering I have an Nvidia Quadro4 980xgl video card DVI inlet, ecc 2g ram, intel p4 ht 3g, mbaord AsusP4c800E-Deluxe, sata raid-1 baracuda 120.
I gave my computer specs so you have an idea about computer monitor compatibity.
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