As part of an effort to find an affordable replacement for the
ViewSonic Q7B-3 17" LCD Monitor at my company, we purchased this monitor. Side by side, this new 17" monitor appears much better with a solid stand, circular base, smooth abstract frame and lack of seams. You need to be aware that 17" monitors work best with 1024x768 resolution. If your business is using Dynamics AX or your personal usage requires a lot of text manipulation, a 19" or greater monitor would be the best way to go because they can display higher resolutions without straining the eyes.
What's In The Box?
The box contains the LCD monitor in its protective packing. Also in the box has a RGB analog video cable of approximately 5 foot length, a 120VAC power cable, an informative quick start guide and a View Sonic wizard.
Appearance
The VA703B is a 17 inch black bezel (frame) standard screen monitor with a 3/4 inch frame around the screen. The frame depth is 2.5 inches until it meets up with the 8 inch diameter base about 3 inches from the bottom where the depth becomes 1 inch. The stand is not vertically adjustable but can pivot backwards about 30 degrees and forwards 30 degrees. The monitor is a little top heavy and if on an unsecured surface can wobble while typing. At the top left of the frame is the View Sonic logo which is appealing to the eye. On the top right of the frame is the product model VA703b and an Energy Star logo.
At the bottom of the front frame are five buttons. From left to right, the 1 button triggers the Main Menu. The 2 button triggers the
Auto Image Adjust. The center button is the On/Off switch. The next button with a down arrow triggers decrease value of the Contrast ratio or Brightness. The final button with an up arrow triggers the increase value of the Contrast ratio or Brightness.
The back of the monitor features the main power input plug and the RGB cable port. As an added feature, a Kensington security port provides theft deterrence when coupled with a lock-and-cable apparatus that must be bought separately. It is a small, metal-reinforced hole seen on almost all laptops and similar electronics equipment.
Setup
Using Windows XP Pro or Windows Server 2003 64bit, you simply plug the monitor into an available RGB port on the computer. You do not need any drivers, but if your video card cannot detect the available frequencies for the monitor you will have to install or select the monitor from the Windows driver lists.
Display Quality
First, before you purchase a new monitor consider getting a better video card for your computer as well. The reasoning is simple, if you want to display crisp text or play video games that need high refresh rates the video card can hold back the potential of any new monitor.
I found the lighting of the monitor particularly good, from corner to corner the lighting was even making reading of text fairly easy in 1024x768. The monitor features 280 nits of brightness and a 600:1 contrast ratio; these features combine to make a very enjoyable viewing experience. A 8ms video response ensures the monitor can handle most high speed video scenes as well.
Unfortunately, my eyes became tired when working with our company's newest software suite Dynamics / Axapta. The multiple forms in the product forced me to run the View sonic in 1280x1024 mode which this monitor simply does not have enough viewable area (pixels) to display without causing eye squinting.
Adjustments/Settings
Pressing the far left button labeled
1 on the bottom on the monitor you can bring up a menu you can scroll through settings as follows in order:
Auto Image Adjust Performs operation.
Contrast/Brightness (Contrast or Brightness from a range of 0-100)
Color Adjust (sRGB, 9300K, 6500K, 5400K, User Color {Red (0-100), Green(0-100), Blue(0-100)}
Information (Shows Horizontal Frequency, Vertical Frequency, Pixel Clock, Resolution, Model Number and Serial Number)
Manual Image Adjust (Horizontal, Vertical, Fine Tune, Sharpness)
Setup Menu (Language Select, Resolution Notice, OSD Position, OSD Timeout and OSD Background)
Memory Recall Performs operation.
Power Consumption
Using a Kill-A-Watt energy monitor, I analyzed this monitor's power characteristics. I found this View Sonic monitor to be very energy efficient. Energy efficiency to the software developer is important because of brown out conditions that routinely hit industrial offices. Low power draw means you can connect it to the UPS of your office computer without worry of draining its capacity during brown or black out conditions.
While connected to wall power but in the off position this monitor pulls 0 watts. A great feat considering most computer monitors have a power supply that consumes power when simply connected to wall power. In the Windows Marque Screensaver with black as the background, 1280x1024 resolution, the VA703b monitor pulls 30 watts of power. While displaying the desktop of my Windows 64bit server, the monitor pulls 28 watts of power. While running performance monitor in full screen the display, with a grey background pulled 58 watts of power. In conclusion the monitor appears to vary wildly in power consumption depending on the amount of rendering it is doing and the dominant colors being displayed.
Product Website and Specifications
The product's website is http://www.viewsonic.com/products/lcddisplays/valueseries/va703b/
Once there you will find an overview page containing several pdf links and a driver downloads link, features page, specs page and accessories guide which lists several products such as keyboards.
Summary
Overall, I was pleased with this monitor's performance and pricing. I had to give the monitor a four star rating because of its deep frame and average performance while displaying scrolling text. We decided against using these monitors because Microsoft Dynamics AX requires higher resolutions than this monitor can easily display. However if you just need a low cost monitor for basic web surfing and email this is the monitor for you.
