Viewsonic VA912

The panel in this screen is built using MVA technology, so the first thing we did upon turning it on was view it from sideways angles. We found that the colour became only slightly washed out as we wandered from left to right and looked down onto it, but the picture was still beautifully viewable. It wasn't as good as the Sony or PolyView monitors (which are also based on MVA technology) from these angles, but it was nevertheless impressive and provided a very uniform display across the screen.

As for the rest of its specifications, the VA912's 700:1 contrast ratio produced excellent black levels. It also clearly displayed dark grey shades on black backgrounds in the extreme greyscale tests, without drowning out those levels. Likewise, its 300cd/m² brightness level helped produce vibrant images and made this model a joy to use in our office environment.

You may not want to use this screen for playing games though as its 20ms response time is slow and it did indeed produce very noticeable blurring in our motion blur test. The 20ms response time is odd, considering that the panel used in this screen is a 6-bit one, which means the screen can only produce 16.2 million colours (dithered).

Usually, colour reproduction is sacrificed to provide a panel which is less susceptible to motion blur, and vice versa. Nevertheless, while our tests in DisplayMate turned up noticeable banding in the 256-level colour intensity ramp, the VA912 fared very well in the colour blending tests.

Physically, the VA912 sits on a solid base that allows for easy tilting. Its bezel is just over 2cm thick across the top and along the sides and also has an external power supply.