Excellent monitor

Author's Rating:

Pros: Excellent visual quality, good gaming monitor, attractive look of monitor

Cons: Short warranty, Needs powerful videocard to drive recent games at native resolution, 1280x1024 max resolution

The Bottom Line: 
Excellent quality monitor at great price. Good for gaming and other computing tasks. Beautiful onscreen graphics and the monitor is attractive too.

Author's Review
I purchased this monitor from Best Buy and love it. I replaced my 17" CRT with this 19" LCD. The specs are good: 16 ms response time, 1280 x 1024 resolution, 19" screen, 500:1 contrast ratio, great Viewsonic reputation, and good price ($499 after rebate at Best Buy.)

I'll break out the Pro's and Con's.

Pro's:

Picture Quality
The picture is sharp. Digital photos look very crisp and vibrant. I'm very happy with the visual quality when going from my CRT display. My wife was amazed at the difference in photo quality between her CRT and this LCD.

Gaming
For gaming, this monitor is very good. I would say it's about 95% of the quality of my previous CRT. There's a tiny bit of blurring during fast action in certain games but it doesn't really bother me. I was able to play Painkiller and Unreal Tournament 2004 (3D games) on this monitor and they looked great.

DVD's
DVD's look great on this monitor, even the fast action scenes. With the 16 ms response time, the specs say that it is able to handle video up to 62.5 FPS which is well above DVD's which are generally less than 30 FPS.

Screen Size
Having a LCD of this size has allowed me to work in different ways. For my college homework, I often have multiple documents and used to switch back and forth between them. I can now line two or three documents side by side on the monitor and look at all of them at the same time without having to switch between them.

The best way to accomplish this is to launch the various applications, hold down control and click on the taskbar icon for each application that you want to tile on your desktop. Then right-click over one of them and select either Tile Vertically (to run them side by side) or Tile Horizontally (to run one above the other.) It's a big productivity booster!

Desk space
One of the unexpected perks about having a LCD monitor is that it frees up a lot of desk space. My desk feels a lot more spacious now.

Video connections

The monitor supports both analog and digital (DVI) connections which means that whatever video connection you have on your video card, it will work with this monitor.

A DVI cable is not included with the monitor but is available online for around $15.

Build Quality
The build quality of this monitor is very high. It feels solid and looks to be made of high quality materials. My monitor had no stuck pixels and is (so far) unblemished by any defects.

Con's:

Monitor adjustments
The monitor isn't adjustable for height or angle. But it comes at a good setting for me.

This monitor can also be wall mounted by removing the attached base and using it as the wall mount. I haven't tried this but it didn't sound too difficult from the provided instructions.

On the software side of adjustments, the Viewsonic website has a web application for configuring their LCD's, however, it hasn't been updated yet for the VX910 so I wasn't able to try it.

Desktop Resolution
As with all LCD monitors, they look best only at their native resolution. For this monitor, its native resolution is 1280 x 1024. For those wanting 1600 x 1200, you will need to look at a larger LCD, e.g. 20". I'm not aware of an 19" LCD's that support 1600 x 1200 so this isn't a criticism of this monitor.

At this resolution, you will also need a powerful video card to play the latest 3D games as you'll be playing them at 1280 x 1024.

I found that using "Large fonts" inside Windows was the best way to use the 1280 x 1024 resolution without straining my eyes at small fonts.

Warranty
The Viewsonic warranty is only 1 year for parts and labor. If you're concerned about this you may want to purchase an extended warranty or buy it with a credit card that automatically doubles the manufacturer's warranty.

Conclusion

I am extremely happy with this monitor. I was a little apprehensive about switching to LCD from my CRT due to gaming concerns, reading about people's problems with stuck pixels, and price. However, this Viewsonic monitor allayed all of my concerns and I'm a fan.

For those who really need 1600 x 1200 resolution, this monitor is not the one for you. Consider at least a 20" LCD as this one won't work above 1280 x 1024.

I highly recommend this monitor. If you've been holding off from switching from your CRT monitor, this could be the LCD you're looking for.


Official Viewsonic page for the VX910:
http://www.viewsonic.com/products/desktopdisplays/lcddisplays/xseries/vx910