ViewSonic VX2025WM 20-inch Widescreen LCD Monitor

by ViewSonic

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 18 x 17.4 inches ; 19.7 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 19.7 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B000EN4CVQ
• Item model number: VX2025wm
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,348 in Computers & Accessories (See Top 100 in Computers & Accessories)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: December 19, 2005

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

When productivity is key, look no further than ViewSonic's 20.1-inch VX2025wm. This monitor shatters conventions with its widescreen aspect ratio and fast 8-millisecond video response time. The widescreen aspect ratio enhances productivity because it lets you work in two applications side by side without toggling.

The sleek and stylish VX2025wm fits with any decor.

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View larger.

Of course, you can also take a break from the work to play a video game or watch a movie with no blurs or ghosting thanks to ClearMotiv video response, which enables smooth, ghost-free HD broadcast-quality full motion video. Meanwhile, digital and analog inputs let you connect multiple components. This multi-mode input technology supports both digital (DVI) and analog (VGA) signals for ultimate compatibility and configuration flexibility.

The VX2025wm's high brightness and contrast ratio allow you to see images in crisp, sharp color. 300-nit brightness and a 800:1 contrast ratio allow for rich, detailed images. You'll also enjoy up to 176-degree viewing angles (horizontally and vertically), which provide enhanced image legibility from all directions. Meanwhile, advanced Amplified Impulse technology accelerates grayscale transitions for superior video and gaming. Add all that to Full 20.1-inch viewable area with 1680x1050 resolution and you've got a monitor that can handle any task you throw at it.

You also get integrated speakers and VESA wall mount-compliance that helps alleviate desktop clutter. Plus, the latest display control functions make it easy to tune the monitor to your specifications, as screen adjustments are precisely made via an easy-to-use on-screen menu. A power lock prevents accidental changes to your monitor settings, while the Kensington security port offers theft deterrence.

A monitor that goes well with your decor is also important. The VX2025wm is perfect for any application where aesthetics and design are key. The thin, stylish bezel lets you see more without taking up valuable desktop real estate, while the high neck and floating head design accentuate the visual experience.

The VX2025wm is VESA wall-mount compliant, and it offers PC and Mac compatibility. The monitor is TCO'99 and ENERGY qualified.

What's in the Box
LCD display, power cable, 15-pin VGA video cable, DVI cable, Quick Start Guide, and ViewSonic Wizard CD.

Product Description

Viewsonic VX2025wm 20.1" Widescreen LCD - This extremely large, 20.1", widescreen LCD computer monitor enhances any computer application. In a work setting, you can have two applications up side-by-side for increased productivity. When you're having fun, PC games and movies are larger than life, giving you an extremely immersive experience. Brightness - 300 cd/m2 Viewing Angle - 176 degrees horizontal/vertical Native Resolution - 1680x1054 (PC) / 1680x1050 (Mac) Analog & Digital Connection ( VGA / DVI-D ) Built-in Speakers PC and Macintosh Compatible Color - Black & Silver Unit Dimensions (w/ stand) - 19 (w) x 17.3 (h) x 7.9 (d) Unit Dimensions (w/o stand) - 19 (w) x 13.4 (h) x 2.6 (d) Unit Weight - approx. 13.9 lbs. (w/ stand)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

139 of 140 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent LCD monitor, April 13, 2006

By 

Michael S. Urvan (Marietta, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: ViewSonic VX2025WM 20-inch Widescreen LCD Monitor (Electronics)

I've been using this new 20" wide LCD for about two weeks, and it's great. This is an awesome monitor. It's much better than my old Viewsonic VP191s for playing games, reading text, etc and the VP191s was a really high quality monitor of the previous generation of LCD monitors. Playing games and watching movies is significantly clearer than my previous monitor. This is an excellent gaming or movie monitor.
From what i've read, I believe this is a P-MVA panel technology LCD monitor. If you read articles about P-MVA, IPS, TN, etc it may help you decide whether this monitor is right for you because each type of panel technology has drawbacks. Although they say MVA panels are supposed to be the slowest of the types, this monitor is extremely fast and I don't notice any ghosting or blurring when playing games or watching video. I believe the newer generation monitors are using technologies (P-MVA, S-IPS) that narrow the gaps between the technologies especially LCD response times.
There's a tiny amount of blacklight bleed from the bottom left and bottom right corners, but it's only a small amount and only with the lights turned off and with a pure black image on the screen. I've been playing Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and I don't notice any backlight bleeding while playing even with dark scenes and the lights turned off.
There were no dead or always-on pixels that I could find (compared to the VP191s which was an excellent monitor but still had about 3 or 4). I viewed the monitor from all different angles using several different colors (R,G,B, black and white).
I haven't used the built-in speakers, and I probably don't plan to. The speakers in LCDs are only meant to add very basic sound playing capabilities so that you don't need to have speakers separately.
The buttons are great, much easier to work with than my previous LCD monitor.
The high contrast ratio is great and the monitor is bright.
The monitor's native resolution is 1680x1050. This monitor displays a warning whenever you are not in the native dimensions which is a nice idea. You can disable the warning message so that it no longer shows up if you tend to work in other resolutions a lot. It seems like when working in non-native resolutions that it displays better than my previous LCD, but I haven't had much experience. Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, Half-Life 2, World of Warcraft, and EverQuest II all support the 1680x1050 resolution.

Possible Cons:

The screen looks great, although the bezel is wider than my previous LCD which had a very slim edge/border. The bezel is about 1" thick all the way around the screen edge. The bottom of the monitor bezel has an extra half inch for 3/4 the panel width for whatever reason.
Some other new LCD monitors that I have seen have Picture in Picture capability, so it's too bad this one doesn't but I'm not sure I would have used it anyways.
The monitor doesn't have a USB hub. It would have been nice to have a USB hub built into the monitor.
The stand does not adjust height, although the stand can be removed and the monitor can be wall mounted. It is a fixed stand, but allows the monitor to lean forward or back to adjust the vertical viewing angle moderately.
The stand permanently holds the monitor 4 inches above the desk/table. The actual LCD viewable screen will begin approximately 6 inches above the desk/table.
My previous LCD was great and allowed you full height adjustment including lowering the LCD all the way down onto the desk, which is where your monitor really should be. It also allowed you to flip the monitor sideways. This ViewSonic VX2025WM monitor does neither.
Of all the things I might want to deduct points for, only the lack of an adjustable stand bothers me. I might pickup a "Neo-Flex LCD Stand" from Amazon to see if it is a good replacement for the stand on this monitor.
ADDED INFO: I am using the DVI input for this monitor.
UPDATE - I purchased the Ergotron Neo-Flex LCD Stand ( 33-288-CBL ) and it's an excellent LCD monitor stand when combined with this VW2025WM. It's a great stand and will allow you to lower the height of this LCD all the way onto the desk surface (which is how I like it. The top edge of a monitor should be about 1" to 2" below your own eye level for better ergonomics / less neck strain) or much higher above the desk. The stand allows tilt forward/backwards and even 180 tilt for vertical viewing. I recommend buying the Ergotron Neo-Flex stand if you need a flexible monitor stand rather than the fixed stand that comes with this LCD. The stand is available for purchase here on Amazon.com

168 of 173 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great LCD Monitor. Rich color and fast refresh rates., March 23, 2006

By 

D. Miranda (NYC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: ViewSonic VX2025WM 20-inch Widescreen LCD Monitor (Electronics)

The Monitor.
The Viewsonic VX2025wm is a wide screen 20.1 LCD monitor. It has a native resolution of 1680x1050. It has a display area of 17.1" horizontal x 10.7" vertical; 20.1" diagonal
The contrast ratio is at 800:1 It has a response speed of 8ms-FAST. It has DVI and VGA connections.

Setup.
It worked great out of the box. All the cables needed are included. No drivers needed on the Mac, not sure about the PC. But it was fast and simple. No dead-pixels on my monitor. I did not have to use the manual, since the Mac did everything automatically.

What it looks like.
Great. The default screen colors are a bit bright for me. I adjusted the monitor colors and contrast to my liking using the Macintosh monitor settings. The Macintosh also comes with the color sync application that walked me through adjusting the monitor settings that is appropriate for the lighting condition in our office. The monitor is great for graphic applications, Photoshop and illustrator, etc.

The screen uses the antiglare coating on it. I find this better than the new Sony and Samsung with their xbrite LCDs, by coating the screens with a glossy coat. It looks great at the stores, but has a lot of problems when it comes to glare.

Energy Efficient.
This monitor consumes 35 watts an hour in use. About a 75% less than my previous CRT monitor, and half the energy consumption of the comparable Dell UltraSharp 2005FPW monitor.

Audio.
The monitor has built-in speakers hidden underneath the screen, which are adequate for general use. But are not loud enough for listening to music or watching movies.
I also found it strange that there is no audio output jack for plugging in headphones, considering there is an audio in.

Monitor Controls.
There are five buttons underneath the screen: 1.) Power on/off 2.) Audio/Up 3.) Audio/Down 4.) DVI select. 5.) Analog select. The last two allows you to switch between analog and digital. Pretty useful if you have two computers and would like to share one monitor.

Foot Print.
Small. 19.0" wide x 13.4" tall x 2.6" deep. The stand is about 8" square and is heavy enough to keep the monitor grounded in place. The space above the stand is also a perfect nesting space for my G4 Powerbook and Wacom tablet.

The Design.
The monitor is well built and feels sturdy. The casing is made out of nice sturdy plastic and is black with a silver metallic trim. The design of the monitor is simple and clean with a simple hinge on the back to tilt the monitor up and down. A small Viwesonic logo is on the top left corner and some icons for the buttons. Okay this is not as attractive as a cinema display, but then again it is also half the price. This is a handsome monitor compared to Dell and other LCD monitors.

Overall I'm happy with the monitor. Great color depth and rich color plus fast refresh rates and most importantly energy efficiency. The monitor also has a small footprint, great for those of us here NYC with small spaces.

41 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Versatile, fast LCD monitor, April 23, 2006

By 

C. Haswell (Texas, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: ViewSonic VX2025WM 20-inch Widescreen LCD Monitor (Electronics)

For quite some time now, I've been looking for a display to replace my 22" CRT. Because one of the primary uses for my PC is gaming, I've been dissatisfied with LCDs due to their slow pixel response. I recently purchased the ViewSonic VX2025wm due to its purported fast (8ms) response time and large display size. I was a bit put off by the widescreen (16:10) aspect, at first. But, given the fact that there are few standard (4:3) aspect 20" LCDs with response times as low as 8ms, I decided to take the plunge. I'm happy to say that I am very satisfied with the VX2025wm.

Features: The display offers a bright screen with crisp text display. The widescreen aspect takes some getting used to, but I acclimated after about 30 minutes of use. If you've used ViewSonic monitors before, you'll feel right at home with the simple 4-button control schema. Press (1) to activate the menu, the up or down arrows to select an option, and (2) to confirm. The display options are fairly standard: image adjustment, color temperature, brightness/contrast and display setup. Both DVI and VGA inputs are available. ViewSonic also included a nice cable-management feature at the rear of the monitor which essentially keeps your cables out of sight.

Performance: The display is connected to my primary PC: Athlon 64 4000+ processor with 2GB DDR SDRAM and an nVIDIA GeForce 7800GTX graphics adapter. I subjectively tested the performance of the display with a number of first-person shooters like Battlefield 2, Quake 4, Half-Life 2 and Unreal Tournament 2004. None of these exhibited any ghosting or smearing. Tearing was minimal to non-existent. Less-fast paced games like Battle for Middle Earth II and World of Warcraft performed admirably as well. DVDs also displayed well, with no tearing or ghosting apparent in my test material (Revenge of the Sith and Return of the King). As noted above, text is very crisp for productivity or Internet applications. Some may find that the text is too small at the default font size - this can be adjusted within Windows to accomodate for the higher-resolution display (it didn't bother me, however).

The display does have a few shortcomings, most of which aren't a big deal to me, personally. First, the monitor does not support HDCP. While this isn't a big deal now, it's something to keep in mind if you will be migrating to Windows Vista next year. Windows Vista will require video cards and monitors to pass an HDCP token when viewing protected content (e.g. HD video). If you don't care about watching movies on your PC, then this won't be a big deal. The second shortcoming is the lack of height adjustment on the stand. The display height is just about perfect for me. And, I plan to purchase an adjustable arm for the display. But, some users like more flexibility in the display height, so it's something to keep in mind. Finally, the monitor does include integrated speakers hidden under the display. I didn't bother hooking them up, as I have a set of Klipsh Promedia 2.1 external speakers. Personally, I would have preferred that ViewSonic omit the speakers and offer the monitor at an even lower price.

Minor quibbles aside, this is an excellent display for both gaming and general use. Highly recommended.

Pros:
? Bright, crisp text
? Fast pixel response
? No dead or stuck pixels
? Simple, intuitive controls
? Clean design, built-in cable management
? Excellent price and value

Cons:
? No HDCP support (not an issue until Windows Vista hits the market)
? No height adjustment in stand
? Speakers are an afterthought