Cheap cable ruins an otherwise excellent monitor
Written: Dec 13 '06
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Pros: Outstanding picture quaity, vey low price
Cons: Included VGA cable is UNUSABLE - cannot drve even a 15". Shame on you Viewsonic!
The Bottom Line: The monitor itself is top-notch, but the unusable VGA cable makes it impssible to recommend this monitor except for DVI applications.
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| lawman67's Full Review: ViewSonic VA903B (Black) 19 inch LCD Monitor |
I run a small law firm that has slowly expanded from just a single attorney (me), to where we have two attorneys, a paralegal and an office manager. My second attorney spends most of her time doing legal research and writing, and as such has a dual-monitor system that may even increase to a third video card and monitor in the near future. My office manager uses a computer with a built-in monitor (20” Apple iMac) that more than meets her needs, while our paralegal spends most of her time with PDF forms and checking various government web sites, tasks accomplished well on a 19” LCD monitor. My own setup is a 19” monitor at work (the laptop’s LCD functions as a 12” secondary monitor) and eventually, a 19” LCD at home. Oh yeah, we also have a desktop computer at home that mostly belongs to my daughter, but gets drafted occasionally for work on account of its 19” widescreen LCD. The server in the office makes do with an almost ten-year-old 15” LCD monitor, bringing our external LCD monitor count to six.
So I have six external monitors, five of which are 19” and four of which conventional aspect ratio (not widescreens). Of those monitors, all of them save one are Samsung (the 15” is Dell-branded, but is a Samsung monitor). When I hired my paralegal two-months-ago, I bought this Viewsonic VA903b monitor both because it was lower priced than the Samsung monitors and because Viewsonic has an excellent reputation. I bought another monitor this week, and as my review of the Samsung Syncmaster 931BF will indicate, I went back to Samsung despite the slightly higher price. Here is why.
When I buy a monitor, I want to open the box, plug it in, maybe spend a few minutes setting up the color and contrast settings, and then not ever worry about it again. The problem I had with this monitor was that I had to exchange it for a new one (wasn’t defective, I’ll explain below) and ultimately waste a lot of my time and use a VGA cable from a different monitor (you guessed it, Samsung) to make it work acceptably well. After that, the monitor was terrific, with image quality every bit as good as Samsung’s, but the out-of-the-box experience turned me off.
What was the problem? Simple, Viewsonic in trying to save a few pennies, included a VGA cable that is not up to the demands of a 19” SXGA monitor. As monitors get larger and resolutions increase, more and more information is moved between the computer and the monitor at higher and higher speed. There is also interference from other equipment, like speakers, the computer itself and all of the other toys on your desk. If you were to buy a VGA cable, you would see that most of them are rated by monitor size, though of course the other factors matter as well. Viewsonic’s cable was not even up to the standards of a 15” XGA monitor.
Let me explain. When hooked up using the included cable, the 19” Viewsonic monitor could not hold a steady picture, instead there was a wave-like distortion of both image shape and color that moved up and down the monitor. At first I thought I had a defective monitor, and when I hooked it up to my laptop at the store (using the same cable), the store agreed and gave me a new one. The new monitor, coming with the same cheap cable in the box, did the exact same thing. The only reason I now knew it was the cable was because before leaving the store with the new monitor, I insisted on testing it, and so we hooked it up to one of their display computers, using the cable already placed in the display rack (a better cable). The image was terrific and I took the new monitor with me.
Back at the office, I had the same distortion again, and so knowing what was wrong, looked in my old Samsung boxes for an extra VGA cable. Since two of my Samsung monitors are connected to their computer with DVI cables, I had extra VGA cables and hooked one up to the Viewsonic. Problem solved.
I wanted to see just how bad Viewsonic’s cable was, so I moved it to the 15” LCD that was at that time working as the second monitor for my associate attorney. Sure enough, it was much better than on the 19”, but still had some minor shape distortion on the image and a mild color band that moved slowly up and down the monitor. This cable is a piece of junk, not even up to the bandwidth requirements of a 15” XGA monitor, let alone the 19” SXGA that it was packaged with. Shame on you, Viewsonic.
Okay, so the cable was the problem, what about the monitor itself? First I have one more word about cables. The VA903b came with two cables, a VGA and a DVI. The DVI cable does not have any of the problems of the VGA cable, gives a terrific image and had I used this monitor on a DVI-capable PC, I would never have known anything was wrong. If your PC is DVI-enabled, then you can ignore all of my complaints about the crappy VGA cable. Now, on the monitor (finally).
The VA903b is a budget monitor, costing only $200 for a full 19” and SXGA resolution (1280X1024). At that price, I wasn’t expecting much, and since it is used only for dealing with text, my needs are modest. That said, this is a VERY good monitor. Color is more vibrant than on the mid-level Samsung monitors, though Samsung gives deeper blacks. Contrast is about the same as well, except for the 931BF, which along with the iMac’s built-in display is far better than any of the others. The VA903b matches the more expensive Samsung monitors in every area except response time, which is 8MS instead of 2 (931BF) or 4 (913T). I don’t use this monitor to play games, but I did test it with a DVD movie (Star Wars Episode III) and response time was not an issue, the picture was just gorgeous.
The front panel controls were about the same as Samsung’s, which is to say easy to use. I did have to fine-tune a bit in the menus to get the color balance right after using the auto mode, but it was easy to do and looks terrific now. The monitor is well built, attractively styled and generally just goes about its business without drawing any attention to itself, other than the bright and vivid picture, which is just how a monitor should be.
So would I buy another Viewsonic monitor? It really depends on application. For a computer with a DVI port I would certainly consider it, but I must say the company’s attitude of including an unusable VGA cable really bothered me. A comparable dual-input Samsung monitor averages about $40 to $50 more, but on a VGA-only computer, most of that savings is consumed by a good VGA cable, which Samsung includes. Still, I can’t really let a $5 junk cable take away too much from an otherwise excellent value-priced monitor.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 200
Operating System: Windows
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Epinions.com ID:
lawman67
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Member: Andrew F
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Reviews written: 206
Trusted by: 62 members
About Me:
Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl but she doesn't have a lot to say.
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