great quality -- a good choice for the price
Written: Sep 26 '06 (Updated Sep 26 '06)
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Pros: great color, contrast, response time, viewing angle, brightness, ergonomics, design, and value
Cons: flaky calibration software
The Bottom Line: Great color, contrast, brightness, viewing angle, and response time. Viewsonic is a quality company and this is a quality monitor -- professional functionality at a good price.
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| chippringle's Full Review: ViewSonic VP730 1 inch Monitor |
I did a lot of research about monitors before making this purchase, and decided the Viewsonic VP730b was the best match of functionality and value.
The colors are good, the images crisp, the screen is bright, the stand is well-designed and sturdy, the response time is fast, and the contrast is great. The monitor can be seen from a very wide viewing angle -- 140 degrees, which is great. It works with both DVI and Analog signals. It arrived with no dead pixels about 7 months ago, and I have been using it happily ever since.
I wish it offered 1600 x 1200 resolution, but for that you have to pay much more for a monitor at least 20" in size. I couldn't afford it. Instead, the VP730b offers 1280 x 1024 resolution, which is enough for most people unless the work you do requires a lot of real estate.
Something anyone purchasing a monitor should know: There is a BIG difference between monitors that can display 16.2 million colors (also sometimes described as "more than 16 million colors") and those that can display 16.7 million colors. It doesn't sound like a big difference, but it is. The 16.2 million color monitors accomplish that color depth only through dithering. The 16.7 million color monitors have the power to deliver this many colors without dithering.
Color depth is one major reason why some monitors look much better than others. Macs always ship with 16.7 million color monitors these days. People who don't know the difference between 16.2 million color monitors and 16.7 million color monitors, or who don't notice the difference in the specs, often make the mistake of buying a cheaper 16.2 million color monitor only to wonder why other monitors look better.
I do have one complaint about the monitor.... The monitor calibration software that shipped with it worked fine on the first PC I installed it on. But I am running the monitor through a KVM switch, so it is shared by multiple computers. For some reason, once I calibrated the monitor on my first PC, I was unable to calibrate the monitor on the second PC... All the calibration tools were greyed out. I don't know if the software has some sort of incompatibility with sharing the monitor through a KVM, but it is a situation I hope Viewsonic addresses.
Aside from that, I have no complaints. Viewsonic is a quality company, and this is a quality monitor.
However, you should know before you buy it.... Prices on LCDs have come down considerably since I bought it, and some stores are selling the 19" VP930b for less than I paid for this 17" model. I bought one of those a few months ago, and I am just as happy with that model as I am with this one. And for the price, it is an even better deal.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 309.99
Operating System: Windows and Macintosh
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Epinions.com ID:
chippringle
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Reviews written: 6
Trusted by: 0 members
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