Introduction

There have been a lot of exciting advances in LCD technology in the last year.  We have seen LCD's decrease in size, power consumption, and most importantly, price.  When ViewSonic told us they had a sub-600USD 18" LCD for us, they definitely got our attention.  Unfortunately, many people are saying it is too little, too late. 

ViewSonic has always been an interesting company to deal with because in their variety of products.  No other company in the LCD sector has been as criticized and as praised as ViewSonic.  When it comes to hit or miss, they are the elite.  For the most part, ViewSonic has done a good deal of blending quality with price, giving the end user an easy balance of both.  Furthermore, ViewSonic ranks the largest in LCD/CRT sales in the US, but the industry giant Samsung dwarfs ViewSonic several times over.   

ViewSonic has had almost no problems gaining acceptance in the CRT world, but they still are having troubles breaking into the world of LCD monitors.

Enough about politics and marketing.  In the computer industry, even one maverick product alone is enough to spur competition and new product definitions.  However, is the VG800 the answer to High Performance Value LCD's?  Find out as we take a look at ViewSonic's newest line!

Construction

We mentioned before in our Daewoo LCD review that the LCD manufactures must have all gotten together and decided on silver as the color of the year.  Apparently ViewSonic did not want to let the LCD world down and thus put a dull silver finish over the bezel of the LCD.  Moving onto more important things about the monitor, we found ourselves with a plethora of unusual substance.

The major difference between this monitor and other LCD’s on the market right now is the unusual aspect ratio.  For whatever reason, ViewSonic chose a very unconventional path with the VG800 monitor when they decided upon a 4:5 aspect ratio as opposed to the near standard 3:4 ratio in currently available LCD’s on the market.  This is hardly a bad idea, since the native resolution of 1280 x 1024 matches a 4:5 aspect ratio.  Even though next generation LCD monitors are creeping toward 13:9 ratios, it is nice to see an LCD that supports the same aspect ratios of their CRT counterparts without distortion. 

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The major discrepancy we had with the monitor was its contrast ratio of 600:1.  To date, we have not seen an LCD with this high of a contrast ratio, so we were fairly skeptical when we saw this rating.  As many of you may know, contrast ratio is the judgment between the lightest light and darkest dark that the LCD can produce.  The unfortunate problem with contrast ratios is that everyone seems to judge them differently.  When looking at contrast ratios, it is also important to notice the brightness, which is measured in candela per sq meter. At 250cd/m2, the VG800 should be much brighter than the average CRT (with the exception of Samsung’s MagicBright series).  However, while comparing the VG800 against other LCD and CRT monitors in the lab, we found that the monitor appeared dimmer and seemed to have a lower contrast ratio than advertised. 

Our major disappointments with this monitor lay in the contrast ratio and brightness advertisements.  When we pitted the VG800 against the Samsung 172T, which has an advertised contrast ratio of 500:1 and a brightness of 250cd/m2, the VG800 appeared significantly dimmer.  We found no evidence that substantiated the unusually high contrast ratio.

Further along the lines of the monitor brightness, we had several issues with the time it took the VG800 to start up.  When we turned the monitor on, or the monitor came off standby, there was sometimes up to a 2 minute delay before the LCD was able to shine its brightest.  Needless to say, this did not improve on our opinions of the monitor.

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Our other impressions of the monitor were fairly average.  The monitor does incorporate a guard on the back for cabling to run down.  This keeps clutter to a minimum and really is a nice feature; however it cannot compete with the Samsung 172T which simply places the ports are the bottom rear of the unit.  The LCD itself has a large bezel, around 1.5” along the sides.  We do have to give ViewSonic credit for keeping the monitor depth down, the depth of the footprint was around 6.5” inches. 

Features

For ViewSonic’s high end solution, the VG800 seems to be very light on features.  The VG800 has only one D-sub 15 pin VGA input, no TV capabilities and no outstanding qualities that make this monitor much different than other middle of the road LCD’s on the market right now.

We have seen a few monitors with internal speakers on the market lately.  We have not been very impressed with other implementations of internal speakers on the market, and the VG800 is not much of an exception.  These 3W speakers have no competition with any sort of enthusiast solution on the market right now, and they really cannot perform well enough to justify their use in gaming.  Our speakers remained unplugged for the majority of the time we had them.  On the other hand, if you do not need high fidelity audio on your computer, these speakers will work just fine.  Mute, Volume Up and Volume Down are all accessible on the front of the monitor, and other features such as treble and bass adjust can be found in the menu. 

Arguably one of the more innovative features on the monitor was the rear bezel.  The VG800 came equipped with a small plastic component that locks on top of the rear cabling.  Thus there is less of a tangled mess as wires come out from the rear of the unit on the bottom.  Once again though, we are plagued by a monitor that seems to have forgotten a DVI connection.  ViewSonic targeted the VG800 as a low cost, high end solution.  Unfortunately, as we have pointed out several times before, LCD solutions without DVI are unacceptable for high end use.  We are expecting a fair amount of ghosting/streaking in the benchmark and most likely a dimmer image than could be obtained with a DVI connection.

No DVI connections here

The VG800 came with an expected 30 degree tilt.  This has become the standard on most LCD’s, but the VG800 is a little different in the fact that the cabling runs down the rear of the monitor, as not to become tangled while tilting.  Unfortunately, there is no height adjustment, which would have really complimented the cable coverings on the rear bezel.

OSD and controls

The on screen display and controls on the VG800 performed very well. The menu was simple and clean to operate. We saw a very striking resemblance to the Samsung OSD’s we have seen lately, but there were several key differences as well. From left to right the menu controls are: Mute, Volume Up, Volume Down, Menu/Exit, Select Up, Select Down, Select, and Power. For the most part, the menu options were straightforward and there were no particular options that struck us as revolutionary.

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Perhaps the most noteworthy feature of the OSD was the Information menu. Calling this option enables a small menu that displays information such as Serial Number, Resolution, and Frequency. This makes for easy identification of the monitor, and a Serial Number that can’t be tampered with or scratched off. Anyone who needs to call product support is also going to appreciate this feature as all of the information needed during a service call pops up easily and without hassle. We would definitely like to see this feature on more monitors in the future.

While there were a lot of issues we had with the brightness and contrast ratio of the LCD, the real annoyance we had with the monitor was the “Auto” correction. Almost all LCD’s we have seen this year have some sort of Auto balance function. Basically, this function aligns the image to fit on the screen while correcting for brightness, contrast, etc. The large problem we had with the VG800 was that this function was incredibly slow. Auto alignment would usually take over a minute, but to our horror it was usually incorrect. When a black background was set on the VG800, the alignment would set the boundaries of the monitor to the nearest lit pixel. For example, if we had a black background with a menu open in the middle of the screen, the monitor would align the top of its screen even with the menu border. What was especially annoying about this bug was that any time the monitor went on standby it automatically performed the Auto alignment. Thus, we found ourselves correcting the image 3 to 4 times a day.

Benchmark

For comparison purposes, we ran a combination of CheckScreen and DisplayMate on the ViewSonic VG800 18.1” LCD against the previously reviewed Samsung 191T LCD. Below is a table with the tests performed and notes we made during testing.  Our test machine is composed of an Inno3D GeForce4 4200 using the VGA 15 Pin D-sub, remember there is no DVI on this model.  We ran all of the tests at 1280x1024 pixels with a refresh rate of 60Hz.  Before the final benchmark, we calibrated the monitor as per the instructions included with DisplayMate; any changes to the LCD during the initial calibration run are noted in the observations.

Surprisingly, most of the benchmarks on the VG800 were right on par with the 191T, which should make ViewSonic happy.

As expected, we saw a large amount of streaking and ghosting on the unit.  Again, this is another telltale sign of the absence of digital inputs.   Unlike the Daewoo L700C monitor we saw last month, the VG800 really has a tough time with streaking; Max Payne was almost painful to play.  Likewise, Photoshop did not quite look right as almost all of our images had unusual artifacts in Adobe’s grey background.  These were products of severe streaking. 

On the positive side, the monitor had very little trouble with screen uniformity.  Darks were really crisp on the monitor, and we could not detect the backlights at all.  If this monitor had a digital connection and slightly lower response time, it would be excellent for gaming. We plan on obtaining revised versions of the VG800 for the future so that we can see how ViewSonic has progressed in their development of an affordable performance monitor.

Conclusions

Performance from the ViewSonic VG800 was basically what we had expected.   There was definitely a large amount of room for improvement, although the major problems the monitor had resided in the fact that there was no DVI.  Had this monitor come with a digital connection, there is no doubt that we would rate it as an excellent buy.  However, we still think favorably of the VG800 since it retails around 550USD.  You will not receive the same quality of a monitor as a Samsung, but for the average user, the price remains the driving factor.  Gamers and graphic designers might want to shy away from this monitor though.    

As far as gaming goes, we noticed decent image quality but the speakers did not cut it.  The Albatron L17AT we reviewed last month also had similar problems with the speakers.  Perhaps for a LAN party, the speaker set would be acceptable, but unless you plan on only using your computer for email, do not use these speakers for everyday use. 

Coupled with the long auto adjustments, higher response time and shifting screen, ViewSonic seems to have just missed the mark; but barely.  Given time and revisions, a derivation of this monitor could truly be something to see.  If money is tight but you really are anticipating an 18” LCD, this LCD might appeal to you.  Even though there were several problems with the monitor, they were for the most part annoyances rather than hindrances.

Special thanks to PCProgress.com for providing us with a sample VG800 to use for this review.