While widescreen monitors are better for entertainment, particularly watching movies, the large screen size puts a lot of people off using them on a desk. ViewSonic's VA1912w, with its 19" screen, is just big enough to offer a large viewing space, but small enough to fit on your desk without dominating it.
It comes with two stereo speakers, which sound good enough for standard Windows noises, but should be replaced by a decent set by anyone who wants to listen to music or play games.
There are analogue and digital inputs, so you can use this monitor with any PC, although you'll get the best picture with DVI. Picture quality is pretty good and standard Windows applications look vibrant, with sharp text.
Viewing angles aren't the best, though. We found that we had to be directly in front of the monitor, otherwise the image lost brightness and colour accuracy. The VA1912w also struggled with our greyscale test and displayed a lot of banding in the darker shades, but the lighter shades were displayed perfectly. Our colour wheel test produced a far more satisfactory image, although there was poor transition from light blue to dark blue. For normal use, though, you'd never notice these slight anomalies and the Windows desktop and games we tested looked fine.
The response rate of 8ms is very good and means that you won't see any ghosting when viewing fast-moving scenes, such as games. The best thing about the VA1912w is its massive 1,440x900 resolution. It means that you have enough desktop space to use two applications next to each other, so it's great for work as well as entertainment.
While this monitor may not have the best image quality that we've ever seen, the price alone means a lot can be forgiven. If you're looking for a cheap, large monitor then the VA1912w is an excellent choice.
System Specifications
19" widescreen LCD, 1,440x900 resolution, 8ms response time, 500:1 contrast ratio, DVI and D-sub inputs
Author: David Ludlow
Computer Shopper Online