Customer Reviews

ViewSonic VX2835wm 28-inch (27.5-inch Viewable) Wide LCD Monitor

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Length:: 1:16 Mins

SEE MY VIDEO OF 4 Monitors all displaying the same problems. This was sent to ViewSonic, and They have ignored me since. No one in the company will admit to this problem, and now that I have recorded it for them, they have just ignored me from this point on. Since this is the way they want to play it, I decided to share my experience with everyone.

I purchased the VX2835wm from Circuit City Online site unseen, because no one had one of these to see. Mostly to get a near 30" Monitor for 1/3 the price of others I went for this. Since its a ViewSonic I felt comfortable with my purchase. I got the VX2835wm in July 2007. It was a problem right out of the box, and I've had 4 replacements of this model with each of the replacements being worse then the one it was replacing. Its Dark at the top of the Monitor, and bright and washed out at the bottom. You can't see at more then a 80 degree angle despite reading it's a viewing angle of 170. Colors are muted at the top third of the screen, look fair in the middle, and are washed out at the bottom. You can't Calibrate the Color of the monitor with anything external like a Pantone Huey, or a full professional Color XRite system. Several calls to support just got my head bit off by a very angry Support Tech, which seems to be the status-quo. I was barked at several times about not calibrating the monitor, and it was already calibrated! (Right!, Calibrated by the Blind.) I went an purchased the ViewSonic Extended 5 Year Warranty hoping to get better service then the standard Support Line - NOPE! Just got a nicer person telling me the same old thing.

After several months of calls, Emails, and third party non-ViewSonic Techs coming onsite to look at the problem they finally sent me a replacement under my additional Purchased Contract Guaranty of 48 hour turnaround that took a month to get! The Replacement came packed well, and was such a P.O.S. too in that it was a Demo Unit all scratched up on the Screen, Base Broken, Silver Paint all rubbed off - I called them and said you got to be joking! This model kept Popping and Hissing with the connection. Then I waited for another one to arrive under the Purchased Contract Guaranty of 48 hour replacement to arrive 2 weeks later. This time they sent me a new in Box VX, and at first it finally looked like the nightmare was over, but this one had vertical lines running top to bottom in all the light areas of the screen where a picture would be on the screen. It was suggested it was my Computer this time, But I had already tried the screen on 4 different computers (PC's and Mac's).

Then Since I'm determined to get this to work somehow, I go and purchase another VX2835wm from Amazon, and what I get is the same nightmare of the washed out colors at the bottom, and Muted at the top. So 4 of these VX2835wm's in my office, and NOT one of them have ever worked as they state.

This is a the worst waste of Money I have ever gotten involved with. I've been in the Prepress & Printing Industry for over 20 years, developing Color Correction Applications to the largest printers in the world. After spending first top dollar for this Monitor, plus a high shipping price, Tax, and then the purchase of the 5 Year Extended Warranty. I spent double what this should have cost me. I ended up sitting 2 of these on my floor unplugged because they are worth nothing because they are so bad to look at.

ViewSonic Should Recall this Touted Top of the Line VX2835wm, and do the right thing and return our hard earned money. PLEASE SAVE YOUR MONEY AND LOOK AT SOMETHING ELSE!

At a price of $700 it surely is the best value in its class with a wide range of connections for just about anything and not having DVI is not an issue since it comes with a DVI to HDMI adapter. That is a definite strength. It's 27.5 size is large enough for bedroom HDTV viewing. It is also ridiculously bright. Too bright is never a bad thing. Not bright enough is the kiss of death for a monitor. That is very hard to compensate for. As far as I'm concerned an overly bright monitor is just fine. You will have to tone down the brightness all the way and adjust the gamma settings in either your video card control panel or in each game where applicable for the best black levels. With tweaking this is a very good gaming monitor.

On the negative side, do not expect to be able to use the preset color controls such as "Cinema". I discovered this while watching HDTV broadcasts via the component video input. Cinema mode offers tremendous color that looks so great for sports but god awful for most movies. I think it is funny that they even call it Cinema mode because you will most certainly not be able to see any shadow detail thus making movies impossible to enjoy. So be prepared to use only your custom settings for all sources and generally I recommend turning the brightness all the way down. This is not a monitor for people who want great results right out of the box. Be prepared to tweak.

Another quirk is that the viewing angle is a bit narrow. I can see that as I move from side to side even just a little bit causes some apparent lightening or darkening of the edges of the screen on each side. That is not a big deal for a PC Monitor but if you want it to double as a 1080p HDTV it will be somewhat unforgiving unless you sit right in front of the monitor. While other reviewers might think the processing is poor for 1080i broadcasts I found the picture quality to be very worthy of watching especially for anything like CGI or cartoons. Now the monitor did struggle with Monsters HD, an all horror movie channel, but that is to be expected for any LCD with just an 800:1 contrast ratio. Horror movies are very dependant on black levels so that is to be expected.

Of note, I wanted to mention that this LCD monitor is a 6 bit panel meaning that it will not offer the color accuracy of the 8 bit panels like Dell and others have in 24" sizes. Yes, the 24" monitors are using higher quality panels. I can say first hand that the choice is yours. I have one of those Dell 24" monitors and I can say that I think that the color accuracy is close enough be offset by the fact that the extra 3.5" of viewable area more than makes up for it. That is why my main gaming rig is viewed on the Viewsonic VX2835wm. From several feet away I can read this review at 1920 * 1200 without squinting. Oh and the 3 millisecond response time aint too shabby.

This monitor is perfect in every way I can think of, and I am a power user and can think of a lot of things. I was really worried that blowing up 1900x1200 this much would pixelate or there would be notable space between pixels... none of that, picture is awesome. I was also worried about ghosting in fast action games and there is none.

The problem I have is that the monitor's viewing angle is pretty small. So, for example, when sitting behind me desk, the top of the monitor is dimmed a bit. If I stretch my neck or stand up, I can see that the picture is not dimmed and it is only the angle. Since the stand is not adjustable, I can't bring it down the last few inches for which there seems to be room, so specially when playing games, the top two inches look inversed and blacks look weird because my head, level with the monitor, is out of the view angle of the top couple of inches.

Finally, the colors while gaming aren't that great. I play WOW a lot and blacks and shades look not so great to pretty bad.

I "settled" for this one because I couldn't afford a 30" and a dual link card to run 30 inches. It's a spectacular deal and a really big piece. I have it hooked to my MacBook without issues and get the full 1920 x 1200 resolution. Also tried it with Vista and XP. The only problem: the sleep doesn't work with Windows or Mac - it goes blue and stays that way--so turn it off with the button front and center. The thing is huge. Good thing it has speakers because my 2.1 will not fit my desk. It's also bright enough to face a window and the non-glare screen is good. You can feel the heat on your face with this thing if the bright is way up.

Looked very promising on paper; price and specs seemed great. Bought it sight unseen. Works well with regular computer use and light backgrounds only. However, if you visit black-background websites, watch "dark" movies or play "dimly lit" games such as "Gears of War", "Resident Evil" or "F.E.A.R." you're out of luck. Playing these games (and others) is more of a challenge than usual. Dark images or backgrounds are viewable only near the center of the screen. The edges (especially the top) show a "negative image" that your eyes simply can't focus on. These parts of the screen look like older flat panel monitors viewed from a severe angle. Changing the position of your head or the monitor's angle only make the previously viewable areas un-viewable. You need to stand back several feet to see the entire screen clearly; which is not an option most of the time. Fiddling with the video card and monitor settings was no help. Some reviewers on this site seem to be very impressed and happy with the monitor's size and brightness, but size isn't everything! As other Amazon reviewers have noted, this monitor should no doubt be recalled. Now, strangely the 24" version is more expensive than this model; I wonder why... Regardless of low price, big screen or bang for the buck, these problems are completely unacceptable for a reputable monitor company. If you are 2 feet from the screen, looking at it dead-on, everything should look good no matter what the color of the image may be. No excuses. Otherwise the company should change the monitor's specs to: 28" LCD (17" viewable). One more thing, this "computer monitor" has almost all types of video inputs except DVI. No kidding! So if you just bought the latest high end videocard for your computer, you'll have to use an adapter. Simply embarrassing.
I'm selling mine as soon as I can.

I bought one of these about 6 months ago as a replacement for another monitor that was unreliable. From the beginning this one wasn't much better. Right away I had problems with it recognizing the computer and refusing to display or switch out of standby. This occurred on two different machines with two different video cards. When it was synced, the picture has a limited dynamic range, and has trouble with dark areas, often losing all detail in shadows.
Ultimately it died unceremoniously and without warning when the video plug was accidentally pulled from the machine. Now it refuses to even power on, showing no activity at all.

Complete waste of money.

First of all it should be noted that it is a monitor, not a computer monitor.
It works better as a monitor for your dvd player or 2nd generation console (using its component video inputs) rather than a serious computer monitor.
The VGA input is very poor: computer images are ghosted and faded. I have a couple of laptops with HDMI output and had hoped that the picture from a digital output would look much crisper. It didn't; from both laptops the HDMI at monitor
s native resolution, the pictures look even worse than on VGA input and there is no way to adjust that (the adjustment menus are disabled when on HDMI input).
It also doesn't automatically detect the active input (you have to manually select it). Very disappointed as I had used very good quality 22" Viewsonic monitors (VG2230WM).

First of all, I did not purchase this item from Amazon... rather this review is for Viewsonic support. I purchased a Viewsonic Factory Refurbished VX2835WM 28" LCD Widescreeen monitor that was delivered to me on August 20th. 48 Hours later (yes, a mere two days folks!) the monitor was dead. It would not power on, nor display any sign of life. Power cords and outlets checked out okay. Nothing. As this was a refurbished unit the vendor was unable to replace it as they were out of stock, but I was told to contact Viewsonic. My first call to them resulted in an clueless rep telling me there was nothing they could do. I called back and spoke to someone else who told me the refurb unit carried a 30 day warranty. I snidely asked him 30 days from the time it left their factory or 30 days from date of purchase? Suprisingly, they issued an RMA but I had to ship it back to their factory in Walnut CA at my expense ($50. I was told it would be approx 14 days before I got it back. I shipped it on Aug 22, 2008 and it arrived on their dock on Aug 27, 2008. I checked the RMA status online a couple days later and there was no record of receipt showing. I called viewsonic and was told it sometimes takes up to 72 hours for an item to be checked in. (Mine took 120 -- or 5 days) Today, September 10, 2008 I called to check status, as surely one would think it would be repaired by now... I was then (politely) informed that the 14 days are 14 BUSINESS DAYS.. and they commence from the date the item is checked in.. meaning I will have to wait until at least September 23, 2008 before I can expect any update. If at that time the monitor could not be repaired, I will be offered a comparable model replacement if identical model is not available...
If this is any indication of the level of support you receive when you purchase a Viewsonic product, you should keep my experience in mind...

I purchased the ViewSonic VX2835wm 28 for my husband for Christmas. Found it elsewhere for cheaper but purchased it through Amazon because of their customer service. It arrive before Christmas day. We set it up and low and behold - several dead pixles. The monitor itself looked great and my husband was excited but then disappointed at having to return. We initially contacted ViewSonic - let's just say 40 min later - not helpful. Amazon however was. We returned the monitor, and a replacement in less than week. Much to our disappointment however - more dead pixles! We returned this one as well because I'm not going to pay 650 plus for something that isn't perfect. Amazon now says they will give us a refund and are not shipping out more replacements. Good luck. We aren't sure what we are going to do now but I'm starting to see enough reviews of this problem to make us think this just won't be the monitor for us.

After checking out various web sites for large size monitors I decided to go with ViewSonic. The price was comparable with the other brand once you factor in the shipping costs plus you have a reputable name behind the product.
Once you power this puppy up you will just sit there and admire its brilliance. Mine powered up without any problems and no dead pixels. The nice thing about this model is that it has S-video and also component inputs. I just wished I would have bought it sooner.