A Great Widescreen LCD at an Amazing Price

REASON FOR PURCHASE
I have historically preferred working on flat CRT monitors. I had a dual 19” LaCie CRT setup in work and a 19” Viewsonic CRT at home. Recently, I changed jobs and for the first time was working on an LCD (18” Cornea) and noticed that I didn’t have a headache at the end of most days, a change from my days with the twin LaCies. I wasn’t under fluorescent lights in either office so I couldn’t attribute it to the lighting, and the work and workload is similar so it’s not likely to be that either. Plus, to be honest, I was never totally happy with the Viewsonic for non-graphic design work. The text was never sharp enough for my liking (even with ClearType on). So my mind was made up, I was going to upgrade to an LCD.

TESTING & COMPARISON
As usual, the plan was to go out and play in the retail stores (CompUSA, Best Buy, MicroCenter), make my decision, then shop online for the best price (usually NewEgg or TigerDirect). Now since this monitor is attached to a 4 port Compaq KVM (1 workstation, 2 Proliant servers, 1 file server), DVI was not only unimportant, it wasn’t even an option. I needed an analog capable LCD that looked good! Looking at all of the monitors at the 3 stores referenced above I fell in love with the widescreen format. My Presario laptop has a 14.1” wide screen (1440 x 900) and I love it. I never considered a wide format desktop monitor for some reason until I saw a couple of them on display. My favorites were the Acer 161869 (24”) and the Apple 23” Cinemaview HD, but considering the $350ish budget, that wasn’t going to happen this time. I ended up narrowing it down between 3 19” widescreen LCDs; the Acer 1916W, the ViewSonic VA1912wb, and the Envision H191W. All of them sport similar specs: 19” wide screen, 300 cd/m brightness, 500:1 contrast ratio, same adjustment options, etc. They probably all have the same exact LCD display, which explains why they all looked on par with one another. I ended up buying the Acer because it, like the others, has positive reviews, it had the lowest price online but tied with the Envision. It came down to me trusting Acer for support more than Envision due to past positive experiences with Acer.

**NOTE: One thing to note about widescreen monitors is what it actually means to have a 16:10 aspect ratio. Standard screens (and TVs) are 4:3 aspect ratio, HDTV is broadcast in 16:9 aspect ratio, and widescreen LCD monitors are usually 16:10 aspect ratio. The difference in resolution between a 19” standard and widescreen is usually 1024 x 768 (std) vs. 1440 x 900 (wide). This means that the widescreen will only be about as tall physically as a 17” standard LCD, but much wider. What this does is give you more surface area to have multiple apps on-screen at once, side-by-side. If you are sitting there looking at your 19” and desire something that height but wider, you will be looking at a 23” widescreen ($800 ~ $1300 range).

SETUP & OPERATION
The packaging that the AL1916W came in was good enough that NewEgg just put a shipping label on it and sent it out. The screen comes with the top of the stand attached, the only assembly required is snapping on the base of the stand and plugging in the power and Dsub cables. The stand has no height adjustment, only tilt, and it is pretty short (base of the monitor sits maybe 5 or 6 inches off the desk.) My desk has a raised monitor stand built-in, so this was actually a good thing for me. It is of note that the stand appears to be easily removed for either an aftermarket adjustable VESA stand or a wall mount.

To set this monitor up properly I did have to do a bit of setup, mostly because of my video card, a GeForce FX 5200 (yes, kinda old, but it’s a workstation [Athlon XP 2600+] and other than Warcraft 3 I don’t use my PC to game). I installed the OmegaDrivers.net drivers, set a custom resolution of 1440 x 900 and it worked like a charm. The Auto tune setting worked ok, but left the screen a bit too bright and slightly off kilter to the left. Literally 20 seconds of adjusting made everything perfect, and I have a feeling that the Auto tune didn’t work 100% because this resolution had to be forced upon my dated video card. That said; it looks spectacular. I did have to manually install the drivers as well to get this resolution working. Windows did not detect it as being this specific model, but the downloaded drivers from the acer.com site solved this.

The only negative part about the OSD controls to make adjustments is that the Auto tune button is also used for menu navigation and is very easy to hit one too many times, which wipes out your custom settings. Annoying, but once you get used to it I don’t think it’s much of a problem.

I am still running my servers at a 1024 x 768 resolution and they do scale pretty nicely to this screen. I’m not sure if I can get them to go into a wide screen format (maybe1280x768) but I’m going to try at some point and will update this if it works.

PERFORMANCE & DESIGN
The first thing I noticed when I set up the AL1916W is that it is very bright and it is very sharp. The second thing I noticed was that there wasn’t a single bad or slow pixel on the entire screen. That is a beautiful thing. Anyway, I digress…regular desktop apps look great, Photoshop images were clear as could be, and video in Premier was smooth as silk. A DVD test (Super Troopers) yielded excellent results with no ghosting whatsoever. The only game I had that would be a decent test of wide screen gaming is UnReal Tournament 2003 which I manually configured (edits to UT2003.ini) to run at a widescreen res of 1280x720. I didn’t try the native res of 1440 x 900 because I knew for a fact that this one would work, but I plan on trying it soon. Even scaled to this non-native resolution the game looked very clear with fluid motion. As I said before, the only game I really play on a PC is Warcraft 3, but this display may get me going with UT again :o)

Aesthetically, this is some pretty nice eye candy. The slim black bezel around the screen really makes it pop. Being an LCD, it is also very thin and light. I have seen some people complain that the base feels a bit flimsy, but I don’t see the problem. It’s on par with other LCD’s I’ve seen. The built-in power converter is also a nice touch and eliminates the need for an inline “power brick” or a “wall wart” converter.

OVERALL IMPRESSIONS
I am actually a little surprised that the Acer AL1916W is as nice as it is. The MSRP is only $280 and I bought it from NewEgg (who was precision perfect, as usual) for $240, so I think I was a but skeptical that my expectations would be met. Even if this monitor cost another $100 it would still be one of the best in the segment, in my opinion. A Samsung will likely be nicer overall (and at a price), but this thing will hold it’s own.

Overall I am very happy with this purchase. I am giving it a 5 star rating, if only because it is so nice at such a ridiculously low price that I almost feel like I’m stealing it. I have seen reviews knock it’s lack of DVI input and even silly things like the overall size of the screen, but that comes down more to consumer education (or lack thereof) and knowing what you are looking for and at moreso than anything. I was looking for an analog 19” widescreen for $350 or less so I am rating this as such.

If you buy one of these I highly doubt that you’ll regret it.