Viewsonic VX1940w

Viewsonic's VX1940w monitor is a 19in LCD display that performs reasonably well without being particularly impressive. It did well in some tests, particularly when handling fast motion, but there were some contrast and colour balance issues that hurt the overall image quality.

Despite only being 19in, this panel has a 1650x1080 resolution — comparable to many 22in monitors. This allows you to fit that little bit more on the screen and will be useful for people wanting more desktop real estate without the extra physical bulk.

The panel's biggest downfall is its contrast ratio. With just 1000:1 native and 3000:1 dynamic, it really struggles in this area. In our DisplayMate Video Edition tests, the black and white contrast charts were well rendered, but the coloured charts lost all definition towards the darker end of the scale. A little tweaking brought detail in at the light end, but the last few bars all blended together into black. This was also obvious in our film tests, with significant detail lost in dark areas. There is a dynamic contrast mode, which alters the contrast based on what you're viewing. However, it was a little flaky at times and we conducted our tests with it deactivated.

Colour reproduction was reasonable, although we had a little difficulty achieving an accurate balance on our Windows desktop. In DisplayMate the block colours looked a little on the soft side, rather than the vivid reproduction you'll find on some other units; however, some may appreciate this. There are some basic colour calibration options but they aren't as extensive as we'd have liked. We also spotted some very minor flickering and noise in several of the moire charts. However, in our real world testing this was not evident, indicating it probably won't cause any issues.

Fortunately, the image was extremely sharp and clear. Text looked great at all sizes and edges were crisp and clean in all our tests. Black levels were also quite nice, although the poor contrast performance means film buffs may still be disappointed.

We were particularly pleased with the VX1940w's motion performance. It has a quoted response time of 2ms, which makes it one of the fastest panels on the market and in our tests this definitely proved to be the case. There was basically no ghosting during games and our standardised tests only revealed the barest hint of trailing.

Viewing angles were good from the side, with several people able to watch at once with no real quality loss. However shifting up or down on the vertical axis even slightly caused some significant colour shift.

Aesthetically the unit is relatively plain. It has a black bezel rimmed with silver at the bottom. It looks fine but it's not particularly eye catching. It has both DVI and D-Sub for connectivity and a basic array of menus and buttons for calibration.