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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....
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 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.
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 :)
Yes... good heavens, by all means let's nail any manufacturer that releases anything that has a brushed metal finish to the wall. Right to the wall baby! With Aqua(TM) nails!!
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?
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!
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
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.
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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 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
2001 called -- they want their stupid try-for-first-post Slashdot joke back.
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
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...
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