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Asus PW191 LCD Review
Tom's Hardware has quite the flattering review of one of the latest LCDs coming from Asus, the Asus PW191. From the review: "I won't mince words. The PW191 is the handsomest monitor I've ever seen. It's true that people's tastes vary, but no one can deny that the Asus designers have talent. While a lot of their competitors are using a white Macintosh look for lack of better ideas, Asus is innovating, offering designs that are both personal and novel. And they've applied that know-how to good effect in designing the PW191. The monitor's lines are superb, and the choice of colors is elegant and restrained."
to paste the subtitle of the article "Looks can deceive", the tag: "Unfortunately, its performance is not always on par with its design." and the performance section, then slam slashdot and Tom's Hardware for shameless advertisement, and watch the karma arc from +5 informative to -1 troll.
But I'm lazy. So I'll just point out that they laud the design, but not the performance, and the review is not quite as gushing as the slashdot summary suggests.
without the tiny tinny speakers?
Who's your user, program?
They just HAD to add speakers....
"While a lot of their competitors are using a white Macintosh look for lack of better ideas, Asus is innovating, offering designs that are both personal and novel."
The first thing came to mind when I saw this Asus PW191, was this Apple's Mac mini.
Innovating? Personal and Novel? what a laugh...
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
Sorry, but it doesn't look any nicer that the Xerox monitor on my desk.
Not that I think it looks bad. It just doesn't look special to me.
Why is this on slashdot?
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Weird...
- Andrew
The article it talking about Asus not Acer...
Beings aspergers AND pulling chicks... I enjoy the challenge!
The fat borders around the screen are really not nice, IMO. I wait for the day when somebody makes a monitor with zero border. I just bought a Fujitsu-Siemens Scaleoview C19-1W, same design as the W19-1 in the picture, and it only has a 1.5cm border.
I have a ViewSonic monitor in front of me from a couple of years ago, it is mixed black and silver ... Personally I find the look of this large CRT monitor to be superior to that thin acer one.
The black plastic, beyond looking cheap, also has sharp edges which is very old fashioned... As is the polished base... The thing looks like a late 80's television...
I wouldn't buy that monitor just because of the way it looks. Dell, Apple and some of ViewSonic's range look far more attractive. As do some of the other monitors in Acer's range.
I can't believe people are sat around discussing the aesthetics of a monitor that looks just like every other flat screen monitor on the market. It looks like a monitor. It has all the bits a monitor typically has in the same place that a monitor typically has them. That's it.
What an ugly monitor, inch thick bevel, eighties shiny brushed base. It has a semi-retro "lampstand" feel that could have really worked (especially if it had a wall attachment or desk clamp) but is poorly executed looking a cheap childs toy.
Here are a few more selected quotes:
Asus has decided to follow the trend and use a panel with an optical filter. That was a mistake. Despite the manufacturer's claims on its Website that the reflectivity of the optical filter is especially low, when viewing a dark picture, the LCD panel is as reflective as the gloss-finished shell.
As always with panels that use filters, the colours are showy. They're well saturated, but imprecise, as our calibrator test shows...
The colour rendering was far from being ideal. Frankly, I can't understand why LCD manufacturers insist on using these filters when the results are always so mediocre...
Asus didn't use overdrive technology for this panel. The result is that it's not really a contender as far as responsiveness is concerned... It's no catastrophe, but this kind of latency takes us back a year or so...
I was waiting to see how the PW191 would perform screening movies. And sad to say, video noise was still much too evident. A lot of sparkling was visible. Note that Asus offers a sharpness adjustment (which is rare on an LCD monitor) that lets you soften the focus slightly. That helped a little, but the sparkling didn't disappear completely... We hate to harp on this issue, but the optical filter means that you'll have to watch your movies in total darkness, especially if the film tends to be dark (e.g. Sin City or The Matrix).
And finally, from the conclusion:
The finish is exceptional. It's probably the best-looking monitor available on the market today. And beyond the good looks, the picture is very sharp and the colours are very good in video games. In itself, the PW191 is a good product, but it's obvious that the panel was poorly chosen. It's slower than its competitors, yet doesn't solve the video-noise problems that plague them.
So, it's a good monitor, apart from the LCD panel. Forgive me if I don't rush out to get one... (Or am I completely out of touch and all LCD monitors are this bad?)
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Woops, my bad. Guess I shouldn't read things as fast... (or pay more attention to what my hands are typing perhaps).
, , , , , karma elon
The review praises the monitor for its looks, but then states how slow the panel is compared to the competitors. Not to mention that It has built in speakers which are probably worth no more than 5 bucks a piece. It may look nice, but then again, so does my 2005fpw. I sure as hell won't be trading it in anytime soon. Bwahahaha, my dream realized! Tom's bites the dust!
Get a Samsung SyncMaster 930BF. I like it very much, and they also have a 2 ms variant that is a bit more expensive. Okay it doesn't look very dashing, but it performs :)
PC reviewers have no taste. News at eleven.
(And the Xerox 7 series mentioned by some other poster here looks better, too)
Is it just me or is the bezel on that thing huge. I know that they're technically not measuring the bezel in the size of the display anymore but still, is there no way it could be made smaller?
Umm, it's a regular black plastic LCD monitor with a metalic silver base. Wh00p.
The real question: is this slashvertisment for Toms Hardware or for Asus? Or for both?
I can't even use my login anymore, at least not if I want to get a shot at some replies...I went from +2 Karma to 'Terrible' after I upset an "Editor" with mild criticism. *cough*MichaelSims*cough*. Now everything I post from my User ID is automatically modded -1.
Slashdot is a site that should be praising developments in technical ability, not slightly overdesigned monitors that suck in actual usage.
ScuttleMonkey, you can get away with this shit, but that doesn't mean we are going to eat it. I gradually get to the point of almost subscribing, and then another stunt like this comes along.
Wow, that must have been the most [next page]
interesting and informative [next page]
review I have ever read on [next page]
any site!
Every mainstream LCD monitor I have seen has very subtle hue or brightness changes with even very small changes in head position. Because of this each eye actually sees a slightly differently lit picture, due to the slightly different horizontal position of each eye relative to the monitor. This leads to what could be described as a "glare" effect. It subjectively appears like a glare, becaue it is similar to how a shiny surface appears in the sun, with different amounts of reflected rays hitting each eye. It is most noticeable on the outer horizontal edges of the screen which often appear slightly darker than the rest of the screen. Perhaps I am particularly sensitive this as no one else seems to mention it. Then again most people don't raise concerns about the visual effects of 60hz refresh rates on CRT either.
This like most desktop LCD's res is still too low.
I would like a screen for my desk that can do 1600 x 1200 may thinkpad can do it.
Since glass is bigger I don't think that I am asking too much.
Anybody have a desktop LCD with "HI Res"?
Thanks -Jason
But I'm with the guy who said he wants a zero-border LCD. Right now I've got a Samsung SyncMaster 930b and while it was probably downright midrange when I got it, it's a solid performer and I'd choose it over that any day.
Also: Why aren't there any monitors with real 16:9 aspect these days? (Do the math: 1440:900 is 8:5.)
The problem with your idea is that it makes sense.
The foot looks like the one we have in samsung's 173P model.
My boss just got himself a widescreen LCD (against my better judgement of course) now he's discovering the main drawback for people who use their machines like we do.
Its a lovely display, running local applications in the natural resolution (1440 x 900) is a pleasure to the eyes and having the extra width is nice, however he spends approximately 50% of his day using VNC onto machines with 1280*1024 displays.
This wasn't a problem before because he could just full screen it, now all I hear is muffled cursing because the screen no longer fits.
Its amusing really, and proves sometimes higher sounding specs really aren't all they are cracked up to be.
liqbase
Posting a story whose link bounces off an intermediate website is dishonest without an explanation as to why. The assumption is that someone is exploiting Slashdot readers to score referral dollars. It is really no different from a journalist who buys shares in a company the day before he writes an article saying how wonderful it is. The next day he sells the shares. I hope I am wrong about this and look forward to ScuttleMonkey adding a note of explanation to the summary.
I'd already seen this article. It is a minor piece of no great interest and pretty well tells the reader not to buy the monitor anyway because Asus have put a crap screen inside a very nice case.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
It's true that people's tastes vary, but no one can deny that the Asus designers have talent. While a lot of their competitors are using a white Macintosh look for lack of better ideas, Asus is innovating, offering designs that are both personal and novel.
Er... Apple displays haven't been white for a long time now:http://www.apple.com/displays/
It's probably the best-looking monitor available on the market today.
I guess they posted the wrong picture then...? Quick, someone point him out that's actually a 1980s TV!
1. Pleasing and dignified in form or appearance. See synonyms at beautiful.
2. Appropriate or fitting: a handsome location for the new school.
So which one is it?
Well, it may catch the eye at first, but that is not necessarily a sign of beneficial ergonomics.
Two things that are noticeable within the first second:
- The base is exceptionally shiny, bear in mind that this is something that you are designed to stare at for hours on end, shiny is a big no-no. There are consumer reports of people patching up the tiny little chrome Apple symbol on Apple's screens because they reflect light and distract. This thing will likely be much worse.
- The bezel around the screen is amazingly thick - it may be because it houses speakers - but considering these are only 19" screens, and all of the noise being made recently about dual monitors ("30% Performance increase" etc. etc.), these look like very poor performers when it comes to using more than one together. That bezel x 2 must be over a couple inches thick.
This sig has been deprecated.
The gateway 21" Widescreen. Sure it's more but it's the best monitor out there today in that price range and size. PiP is so slick.
I tried to think of a good sig, and this wasn't it.
This is NOT a breakthrough design. Looks adopted from the Samsung 970P to me.
I fail to see any "innovation" in the monitor's design. The review seems to be saying: "OMG!!! They made their monitor *black* instead of *white* how astonishing!!! This is an amazing innovation!!!"
I say, BFD. The monitor isn't ugly, but it looks exactly the same as every other flatpanel monitor I've seen except a) its black, and b) its based is burnished metal. I admit that there isn't really much room for artsy design in monitors, the function has fixed the form pretty severely, but are people really so desperate to see something new in monitor design that a simple color change is viewed with awe and astonishment?
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
Like all of Tom's (and most other reviews) this is a lot of verbage for not much information. I didn't notice it with this one, but many reviews repeat the same thing over and over. All (I presume) in an effort to get the review to spread over as many short pages as possible to deliver as many ads as possible.
But this one is even worse: "We rate the unit's suitability for gaming on a scale of one to five for FPS, RTS or RPG titles" and again "Here again we use a five-point rating system." But where are these numbers? First page? No. Last page? No. Where referenced? No. Not anywhere that I could find.
Tom's site is just not really worth it anymore.
The LG L1980Q looks much better
Not to mention that I haven't even seen a White LCD in years. The closest to white was a 6 yr old beige 15" Syncmaster (570V).
For $400, wouldn't the Dell 20.1" LCD be a better pick given the higher resolution and larger screen? Plus I've heard that the 20.1" is a superb monitor. I personally own a Dell 24" LCD and love it. Plus with the panel having problems, why are they ranking this as the 'best' LCD they've seen.
HD Trailers
I think the main drawback to oversize bezels (apart from staring in the showers) is that, when using multiple monitors, it makes the "continuous desktop" mode look discontiguous.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
The first page of the review shows that the color count is 16.2M, this typically means that each channel is only 6 bits or 262,144 true colors dithered up to 16.2M. If you spend much time editing pictures, 6 bits per channel can drive you nuts. More details here On the positive side, Asus's website shows a 1 year ZBD (zero bright dot) warranty, and a 3 year panel warranty. link
I tried this monitor and found most of the things mentioned in the review. 1440x900 was just not enough resolution for a monitor of this price. Half-Life 2 looked nice in wide-screen mode but I just didn't find the monitor to be worth the cash ($470 CDN). I didn't find the response time to be horrible but did notice it. My eyes are very picky and most 8ms monitors aren't fast enough for me.
The menu controls were annoying (I had 2 PCs hooked up to it and it was painful switching).
Positives:
Warranty is pretty good.
DVI and analog connectors
Looks nice
Negatives:
Screen has lots of glare
Slow response time
Menu buttons are unresponsive at times.
If editors don't like something you say, they will mod you down.
Unless they use a different LCD with higher quality/response times, they'll just be offering the same crap... but bigger.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
This is another of those Slashdot articles that seem to make no sense, except if you assume that a Slashdot editor took a bribe.
The Tom's article says "Asus didn't use overdrive technology for this panel. The result is that it's not really a contender as far as responsiveness is concerned."
Another quote: "I was waiting to see how the PW191 would perform screening movies. And sad to say, video noise was still much too evident. A lot of sparkling was visible."
Another: "We hate to harp on this issue, but the optical filter means that you'll have to watch your movies in total darkness, especially if the film tends to be dark..."
Another: "At low brightness, the monitor was comfortable to use with office applications. But you'll have to take care not to place it too close to a window. You'll also have to be careful of the location of wall lamps, halogen lamps, etc."
2001 called -- they want their stupid try-for-first-post Slashdot joke back.
Dudes... I could hardly care less how the effing bezel looks. Why gush over the industrial design if the panel itself has problems??
Many manufacturers often use for their advertising premium photos of the (non working) aluminium model, specially crafted for that photo session, which of course looks significantly better than production line models made of plastic. Do not believe ad photos.
There you are, staring at me again.
I'm sorry but the reviewer should keep his mouth shut instead of saying things like "You can't deny blah blah". .. watch me. That is one of the fugliest monitors I've seen in a while - yeah the stand is decent, but the rest would NEVER find it's way onto my desk :)
And why aren't there more reviews of bigger monitors. It was almost impossible to find any reviews of the Acer AL2416W that I ended up buying. The Dell 24" had more reviews but half the performance. The other competitors cost more but the Viewsonic 23" might be worth that few hundred extra.
I come here for the love
Awesome for gaming. Native resolution is low for general use if you are a 1600x stickler but its made for gaming. At least as good as a nice, but maybe not ultra high end, monitor and running in the low 300s. On the high side but not for what you get, and only $50-75 more than a good 19" monitor.
A friend of mine who works with design (photoshop, illustrator, CorelDraw and so) was hunting for a 19 inch LCD. Question is, he is used to 1600x1200. Most (in fact all) 19" LCDs I have seen are either 1280*1024 or 1440*900, if they are widescreen. Is there any constraint on the native resolution of LCDs? I understand most people that are serious about graphics will not use LCDs due to worse color reproduction and such, coul it be that there isn't yet a market for higher-res LCDs?
Where is that guy who'd die defending what I had to say when I need him?
Links in summaries should include their [domain], just like any slashdot post.
:P
As long as we're going that far, perhaps the summaries should also be moderated...
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
I've heard bad things about the life-span of LCDs, and that they're not repairable. I don't mind my $130 dollar crt croaking after 2 or 3 years and not being worth fixing, but if I'm gonna drop $400+ on something it damn well better hold up for at least 10.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
SGI 1600SW. Superior.
..imagine a beowulf cluster of these babies.
I have an Acer al2914wd. It does 1900x1200. It's super bright, maybe too bright. I just do programming on it and it works well for me.
Aspect Ratio: 16:10
Resolution: 1920 x 1200
Response Time: 6 ms
Contrast Ratio: 1000:1
Diagonal Size: 24 in
Viewable Size: 24 in
Color Depth: 16.7 Million Colors (24-bit)
Contrast Ratio: 1000:1
Brightness: 500 cd/m2
Pitch: 0.27 mm
Horizontal Viewing Angle: 178 degrees
Vertical Viewing Angle: 178 degrees
Wow. Who the hell posts a monitor with built in speakers on slashdot - unless you're buying it for your mom, most nerds are generally pretty disgusted with speaker laden monitors.
These incremental LCD improvements are welcome. But where's the "tileable LCD" already? I want to tile any number of LCDs in any multiple of their resolution. I remember in the late 1990s reports of bezel tech that allowed a slightly larger surface layer than the one facing the actual display. Extending out past the frame edge, so edge pixels could appear adjacent to the edge of the next tile. With just a tiny seam fastened by a tiny cylindrical edge sliding into a cylindrical notch in the adjacent edge. Driven by an array of cheap VGA cards, possibly even in multiple machines linked by FireWire or other highspeed interconnect bus.
But it's already 2006, and the displays are all monolithic. It's news for a new dual-display card to work well, and revolutionary for a triple-display. When I should have a video wall made of cheap, defect-free little QVGA tiles driven by a few racks of $20 cards.
Mobile devices and especially phones have produced the $billions in LCD R&D reinvestment once the bottleneck. What's taking so long?
--
make install -not war
Are you Apple Computer? Are you going to sue me?
Yeah, I know, that was pretty shameless.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
But I think "handsomest" is a pretty well-butchered word.
gadgetophile.com
the Asus VX2025wm, which is a lot better. For a bit higher price, you get:
* 800:1 contrast.
* 1680x1050 resolution.
* 176 degree viewing angles.
Higher contrast, size, resolution, viewing angles -- precisely what you want in the thing you'll be staring at for the next few years.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
How are they innovating? From what I see, they took a commodity low-resolution (1440 x 900) panel and put it in a chassis with NO VESA mount, and added a few user-selectable brightness/contrast profiles. Sure the case looks nice, but before I dump my 21" CRT monitors I want:
- VESA compliance (so I can remove the desk mount and SUSPEND them over my desk on a custom mount)
- a resolution at LEAST as high as 1920x1440
- VGA and DVI capability, S-video would be a nice to have
- I'll skip the TV tuner, thanks, especially if it's analog
- contrast ratio, viewing angle, and color purity to match the CRT
I know I won't get what I want until OLED monitors become available, or unless I'm willing to go with heavier plasma monitors (which will make suspending them on an adjustable mount unweildy).
It seems monitor quality has gone backwards lately in the name of saving desk space. Thin panels are nice, but why haven't higher-resolution models hit the mass market yet? It's hard to find anything in a higher resolution unless you're willing to go to a 23" wide monitor, and the ones I've seen a) cost way too much and b) have very wide bezels on the sides.
The PW191 is a fairly nice monitor as far as LCDs go (lack of VESA mount points nonwithstanding), but in the meantime I'll stick with my ViewSonic P815s, even as old and large as they are.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Maybe this is the wrong forum to expect high-end consumer electronics to be sold because most of the readers are in college, but this looks like a clearance item that they've desperately asked slashdot to push.
The 24" Dell is regarded as the best of the best, but it's the monitory you'll encounter in your day jobs as soon as you get jobs. You don't want to pay for the same thing at home that you get at your day jobs. You want to pay for something better and that only leaves the 30" Dell.
Only 2 resellers have licenced the 30" panel for US and that's Dell and Apple, but Dell sells it for $300 less. While you can't see the Dell in person without going to Taiwan, you can see the same panel in the Apple store. It has problems with vignetting due to the sharp viewing angle imposed by its size, but it's still very good.
As long as LG restricts its licensees due to the collapsing dollar value, the 30" panels won't go down in price.
Err. Has the reviewer in question seen the Cinema line from Apple? No? Okay.
Because this Asus is not even playing the same game with regards to design. My 2 year old Dell 2001FP looks better. Oooh shiny brushed metal base. Pity about the rest of the monitor though.
Huge black borders with speakers for the wtfpwned, bbq'd, loss. If I wanted sound, I'd get 5.1, not 0.0 on my monitor.
In Soviet Russia, first post joke tries for you.
A B A C A B B
To me an achievement would be a completely borderless monitor or something like that. I don't know if borderless would work out in practice - perhaps a wide black border is better ergonomics - but I could understand reviewers going nuts over one.
PS: I would never, ever buy a monitor with built in speakers. Not ever. Fool me once, shame on you, etc. If I see speakers, I move right along to the next one without even looking at the specs.
No sig today...
Or just fuck off and die.
So the display quality sucks, but it's got real purdy trim.. grrrrr.. LCD bases are interchangeable thanks to the VESA mounting standard. Just sell me the sexy aluminum base and keep your sub-par LCD panel.
Ironically I'm using an el-cheapo Benq display and it's nicer on the eyes than any other entry-level 19" display I've seen, and I've seen lots working in a retail PC shop. You'd think the manufacturers would have figured out which panels are best by now.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Dude, third grade called. They want their snappy comeback back.
While the reviewer clearly fawns a bit over the look of the monitor, I disagree in general that the review is that great. Tom concludes:
... The same monitor without the filter would perform much better.
The selling price, around $400, is far from excessive for a monitor of this quality. The finish is exceptional. It's probably the best-looking monitor available on the market today. And beyond the good looks, the picture is very sharp and the colors are very good in video games. In itself, the PW191 is a good product, but it's obvious that the panel was poorly chosen. It's slower than its competitors, yet doesn't solve the video-noise problems that plague them. We're waiting for the 20" version in the hope that these problems will be taken care of.
The touch-sensitive buttons are not sensitive enough, and if you change adjustments often, they are a problem. And why did Asus have to use the glare-filter technology?
So, all in all, not a bad review. But besides the fact they think it looks real cool, it seems like a normal B, B+ monitor.
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*I* happen to like beige CRTs without speakers. I also happen to like beige, boxy cases *without* doors on the front. Call me a square. (or maybe an old fart)
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