sevry's Full Review: ViewSonic A91F+ 19 inch CRT Monitor
This is a monitor that seems to demand the right contrast and brightness settings. Normally, for example when setting Adobe Gamma, one is told to set the monitor's Contrast to 100% and then adjust Brightness down. You try that with this monitor, and you'll never get your small or small bold text in focus. If you get up close, you'll actually see fringing on the text on the bottom corners of the screen. It is after all an A-series. Viewsonic typically kept its best in the G/graphics or P/professional monitors. But this A-series monitor is surprizing, I think.
So instead, you set the Contrast only about 2/3, or even a bit less than that. And you set Brightness to 1/3. And go from there to adjust your Adobe Gamma. Too much Contrast is the killer, here. In Windows, it is recommended that one use 2.2 for gamma. Save the profile, and that should work. When you hit the 3x, the text will probably look slightly fuzzy, but no more than that. At 5x, the text should be slightly more illegible by comparison - and everything is mostly washed out for a web page, or spreadsheet, or whatever.
I also didn't like the font choices Windows made when trying slightly smaller text for the 'skin/appearance'. I had just finished with a Viewsonic 17", a G-series graphics monitor, the 775. It had been in almost continuous daily use for close to 7 years. And it shorted out. And while that provided almost a genuine 17" screen, and the A91f only an 18", the difference seemed remarkable. So, instead, I kept the old appearance for the 17", and backed off the horizontal and vertical size of the screen so that I had about 1/4" all around. I wanted to hit the edges. And except for some slight correction with Hook on the monitor's menu, it was straight and distortion free as could be. But the menu-bar text was just clownishly large.
At first use, the monitor didn't recall the settings I had used. But it has ever since. It also isn't supposed to go to 1600x1200. But it does - just fine. But the problem is, beyond the now standard 1280x1024 for Windows, the display is not flicker-free. Perhaps it's a driver problem - and it can be. But it's only 60 at 1600. Not that I'd prefer 1600. The only reason, that I see, for escalating resolution is to incorporate clearer graphics. If one is mostly using text, even the old 1024x768 standard is just fine.
The other thing I still don't like is that the aperture grill is too easy to see. It's like being too close to a non-trinitron TV set. You can make out the grill. It's not that you can make out the pixels in a letter or image. But you can see, even at some distance, that the screen is broken up into tiny vertical slits. You can make it almost go away by setting the H/V Moire setting to a vertical of about 1/3rd (the horizontal only messes up the display at most anything greater than 0). But then you have this very, very slightly darker band on a white screen at left. If you shrink the vertical size so that you have 1/2 inch per side, it shouldn't be a problem, though.
I would still recommend the monitor. Apparently my old 775 either didn't have, or lost, a good portion of mid-range. And it was set to full contrast, and high brightness. This A91f revealed a number of things in my photos that I didn't know were there, and needed to be smoothed out. And I can also use 3x and 5x to check them out ever better, so that even on any washed out over-bright LCD monitor (which is all anyone is selling these days), the photos will look decent enough.
The old 775 was also something of an energy hog. This A91f promises to be less so. The on/off button is a little bit concealed, requiring sort of a thumbnail push - or really small fingers. I see some might recommend just leaving it on in standby mode.
As I said, I got this because my other monitor burned up, and while I had a good old 15" Sony ready to go in emergency, I didn't prefer it as any long-term solution. This A91f+ was picked up at a local Fry's, at discount, though I was surprized that California tacks on an automatic $8 'monitor recycling' fee, never mind the tax. I didn't want to spend the extra $200 for what seemed roughly a comparable 17-19" LCD thin-panel, and thought the dynamic range wasn't full on the LCDs. Fry's was almost exclusively selling just the LCDs, by the way. And so I didn't get the adjustment right, at first, for the A91f+ and could not escape from the fuzzy text. And I thought about taking it back. Then I stumbled upon the correct settings. And if all stays as is, I think it's a keeper.
Ultrabrite Technology Enables Optimized Viewing Of Video And Graphics Applications. For Work, Engage Normal Mode To See Text And Spreadsheets With Per...More at Target
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2010 Shopping.com, Inc.