the new wave of LCDs
ViewSonic’s VX2240w is unwatchable at its
factory default setting—the screen’s bright-
ness is cranked beyond the point of accept-
able image quality. Fortunately, we were able
to tweak the display’s settings to produce an
image that was at least similar in quality to
the Gateway HD2201’s. While the VX2240
matched the HD2201 tit for tat in its ability
to produce lighter shades of gray on a solid
white background, the former exhibited bet-
ter color saturation in the lighter shade levels.
Flesh tones on the VX2240 appeared
more lifelike compared to those of the
HD2201, and the former even off ers two
additional color temperature settings
for picture customization. This monitor
displayed no banding issues and only a few
color tracking discrepancies on the most
demanding black-to-white gradients, but it
does suff er from a critical fl aw.
When you change its color tempera-
ture, the VX2240w is sometimes unable to
produce its full range of dark or light con-
trasts. This sucks the quality out of a normal
picture, but fl ipping the display on and off
brings back normal settings. Still, it’s the kiss
of death for the VX2240w.ViewSonic
VX2240w
Get ready to tweak
Something unusual happens when you adjust
this monitor’s coloration options.The Gateway FHD2401 hits a ball or two out
of the park, but we’re not terribly impressed
by this 24-inch panel’s overall performance.
The display’s grayscale performance
favors the darker side of the spectrum.
The FHD2401 is able to distinguish among
shades of gray against a black background,
but a below-average showing in lighter
grayscales hurts overall performance.
Worse, banding and color-tracking discrep-
ancies permeated the darker end of the
grayscale when the monitor was tasked
with producing 256 diff erent shades.
The 1920x1200 display touts a 92-per-
cent color gamut, which made for rich color-
ation in our real-world suite of tests. But the
display’s visuals aren’t the best we’ve seen—
in our movie, game, and image-quality tests,
the images were lacking minor details on
both ends of the grayscale spectrum com-
pared to the best panels we’ve tested.
The FHD2401 off ers support for HDMI,
VGA, and DVI inputs, but no component
input. You can’t adjust the monitor’s height
either, a sloppy omission for a monitor in
this size class.Gateway
FHD22401
Its glossy panel doubles
as a mirror
The FHD2401’s mighty speaker bar wins the
sound portion of our display testing, no question.48 | MAXIMUMPC | OCT 08 | http://www.maximumpc.com
SPECIFICATIONS
VIEWABLE AREA 22”
NATIVE RESOLUTION 1680x1050
INPUTS VGA, DVI
PANEL TYPE TNSPECIFICATIONS
VIEWABLE AREA 24”
NATIVE RESOLUTION 1920x1200
INPUTS VGA, DVI, HDMI
PANEL TYPE TNVERDICT$410, http://www.viewsonic.com^5
VIEWSONIC VX2240WVERDICT$470, http://www.gateway.com^7
GATEWAY FHD22401Acer’s native-1080p display wins points for
hitting the widescreen 16:9 formfactor, but
the P244w treats its colors with the same un-
pleasantness it treats its grayscales. The mon-
itor’s color saturation suff ers from a reduced
range on both the top and bottom ends of the
spectrum: Colors lose their vibrancy as they
get darker and become washed out as they
get lighter.
The P244w offers acceptable detail
in its grayscales in our synthetic tests but
still displays less detail in an image than
other monitors we’ve tested in our real-
world routines. And we didn’t enjoy how
dark scenes in our real-world movie tests
always looked tinted by a bit of unnatu-
ral brightness—we much prefer a richer,
deeper black.
Start saving your phone books: You
can’t adjust the height of this display. And
we dislike how the display’s presets don’t
appear to vary the image quality very
much at all. The P244w’s list of connec-
tions—DVI, VGA, and HDMI—lacks the
component option that higher-quality dis-
plays often come with. We’d prefer a moni-
tor that has more: picture quality, connec-
tions, ergonomic options—anything.Acer P244w
Adjustable height is a
requirement, not a bonus
When the P244w is on, you’re treated to bleed-
ing backlight on the screen’s top and bottom
edges during darker scenes.SPECIFICATIONS
VIEWABLE AREA 24”
NATIVE RESOLUTION 1920x1200
INPUTS VGA, DVI, HDMI
PANEL TYPE TNVERDICT$360, http://www.acer.com^6
ACER P244W