Acer P243W 24 inch Widescreen Review

Testing:

LCD Test Script:

DisplayMate proves how unique and useful it is by coming with a lot of scripts that can be run to test your CRT or LCD monitor, projectors, printers, and video cards. I ran the LCD monitor script twice, once before I ran all of the tune up and setup programs, and once afterwards. There's an adjustable timer in the LCD script that allows you to change the time per screen, so I set it to 30 seconds per screen. After running the script the second time, I noticed the brightness and contrast settings were set a bit higher than they were before. I also noticed that the colors seemed a bit more vibrant.

Subjective Viewing:

• Gaming
• Video
• Applications (Photoshop CS3 & MS Word)

Gaming:

If you haven't gamed on a widescreen monitor yet, you really need to do yourself a favor and buy one, because they are absolutely amazing to game on. The large 24" screen really put me into Counter-Strike: Source and Call of Duty 4. I really was amazed by how everything just looked so glossy and smooth. This monitor makes everything crystal clear, and I had absolutely no issues with either monitor during the gaming portion of the subjective viewing. The BenQ monitor wasn't quite as smooth and glossy looking as the Acer monitor was. I played both of those games at 1920 x 1200, which is the highest resolution on both monitors, and I must say that I have never gamed like that. I honestly felt like I was playing my games in HD because everything was so crystal clear. It was a close battle, but I would have to say that the Acer monitor looked slightly better than the BenQ's offering. Also, the Acer has a 2ms response time, while the BenQ has a 6ms response time. I couldn't tell a difference between the two, but it's good to know that the Acer has one of the fastest response times on the market.

Video:

One of the coolest movies that I have ever seen is "Face Off", starring Nicholas Cage and John Travolta. I hadn't seen this movie in a long, long time, so I decided to pop it in and watch it. I was amazed at how clear the movie looked on the Acer! It was definitely better looking than my 52" Mitsubishi TV - looks like I now have no use for my huge TV! I honestly could not tell any difference between the two monitors during the video test.

Applications:

I constantly use Adobe Photoshop CS3 to edit my pictures for reviews, so it is a must that I have the most vibrant colors, and a crystal clear display that can show me every detail of my pictures that I would miss on smaller monitors. Another application that I use a lot is Microsoft Office Word 2007, and when I ran it with both monitors, I was amazed at how much more clear and sharp the letters were on the Acer. I also would like to mention that Microsoft Windows Vista looks absolutely spectacular on this Acer monitor - even better than the BenQ monitor. Vista is known to have a lot of eye candy, but with this monitor, I was really blown away by how good everything looks. If you use Vista, you need to see how good it looks on the Acer P243W 24" monitor!