Review: View Sonic Monitor VX2770Smh LED
Picture quality, screen size and value for money. When talking computer displays these factors are often at odds with one another. In general, quality doesn’t come cheap, especially in larger monitors.
By Lachlan Thompson
Picture quality, screen size and value for money. When talking computer displays these factors are often at odds with one another. In general, quality doesn’t come cheap, especially in larger monitors.
Enter the ViewSonic VX2770Smh-LED, a charmingly named product that promises large screen real estate, vivid image quality and style to boot, all for a very reasonable price. But how well does it deliver on these promises?
Performance
Lets start with the screen itself. The VX2770Smh features a 27 inch (69 cm) IPS (in-plane switching) panel. In the past if you wanted a quality monitor of this size you were limited to pricier, higher resolution offerings from competing vendors.
Thankfully the prices of IPS displays have been falling which is great news for consumers.
If you’re like me you like to work with a lot of windows open at once. Being able to have your web browser, email client and word processer all open side by side is a real boost to productivity and once you’ve used a larger screen it’s hard to go back to something smaller.
The VX2770Smh provides a pleasing image. It has a Full HD resolution of 1920 x 1080p – great for viewing your movies and home videos.
Photos and videos displayed beautifully on this monitor. Colours were bold, vibrant and accurate with good black levels and contrast. Fine details such as small text did not fare quite as well which is to be expected on a monitor of this size and resolution. Don’t be scared off by this – text is perfectly adequate and readable, however if you’ve been spoiled by the super sharp detail found on Apple’s retina devices you’ll want to consider stepping up to the more expensive 2560 x 1440 resolution 27” monitors on the market such as the Dell Ultrasharp range or ViewSonic’s own VP series.
One area where the display stumbles is its brightness, which is rated at 250 cm/d2.
In a large, well lit office full of natural light it peformed well though I did find that even with the brightness switched all the way up to 100, whites such as those found in Word document pages had a tendency to look a bit washed out.
The screen has a non-reflective matte coating that did a fantastic job of cutting down on glare. The coating itself is very subtle which is nice, as I’ve come across displays in the past from competitors that laid it on a bit thick. Here, it did the job without affecting the image quality, which is a win in my book.
I was surprised at just how good the viewing angles were. The image remained clear and colours stayed bright even when I moved my head well off centre. Top marks here.
The display comes with a built in 1.5W speaker featuring SRS Premium Sound, an audio processing technology that provides improved audio on smaller speakers. In practice the speaker delivered a decent sound but one that was light on bass. The bottom line – use it at your desk at a reasonable volume and you should be satisfied. Expect it to pump out tunes at your next house party though and you’ll likely be disappointed.
Design and Build Quality
The unit is handsomely designed, with what ViewSonic calls a ‘frameless bezel design’. It’s not quite ‘frameless’ as while the black plastic housing is just 0.3 cm on the top and sides, there is another 1 cm of black before the usable screen space begins. Despite this caveat the screen does feel expansive and is much nicer than the monitors of the past with chunky bezels.
The display is light and extremely thin – 1.6 cm at the top widening to 2.2 cm at the bottom, not including the stand. The bad news – the build quality is a bit flimsy. Its all-plastic design feels somewhat insubstantial compared to more solid offerings from competitors and simply touching the screen causes it to wobble around disconcertingly. When stationary on a desk, there is no issue. On balance, for the price the build is satisfactory.
The display is adjustable for tilt but not for height. There is no option to wall mount the display so buy this for desk use only. In terms of inputs it features HDMI, DVI, D-SUB, a 3.5mm Audio Out jack for your headphones and a 3.5mm Audio In jack. There is no webcam and no extra inputs such as USB ports.
The speaker is unobtrusively located on the base of the unit. Positioned on the speaker are 5 touch sensitive buttons. The button placement is unfortunate. At a normal seated height they are hidden beneath the screen forcing you to crouch down awkwardly to see them. Couple this with the lack of tactile feedback of the touch buttons makes operating the controls harder than it needs to be.
Summary
The VX2770Smh-LED delivers on many of its promises. It provides a large, good quality screen for a decent price, slightly let down by its awkward control interface.
If you’re looking for a large screen on a budget and don’t need all the trimmings and extra features then this View Sonic is worth a look.
$450 RRP
3.5/5 Shacks
