VX922

Viewsonic's latest and fastest LCD monitor is the VX922, with its big selling point being a 2 ms response time. With gamers being the target market, we put the VX922 through a variety of response and quality tests and it came through with flying colours, showing off a crisp image and colour response, although falling short of its specified viewing angle.

The design of the VX922 is clean and attractive, with a thin black bezel, which does not distract from the image. It arrives with the stand attached, although the monitor can be wall mounted using its VESA standard mounting configuration. The monitor has both VGA and DVI input, located on the back of the unit, along with an internal power supply. With the two inputs, two separate sources can be plugged in at the same time, and the display can be toggled between the two by pressing the 1 and 2 buttons located on the front of the panel. These controls also reveal the menu and configuration system of the monitor, which is not very comprehensive, but does allow for adjustments such as colour temperature, contrast, brightness and image position adjustment. The most important and commonly used configuration option is the image auto adjustment, which resizes the image to fit the screen.

In gaming tests, we could not find any amount of ghosting, shadowing or streaking. This is definitely a monitor we could become comfortable using as a primary monitor. Playing back fast action DVD's confirmed the acclaimed 2 ms response (which is for grey - grey and white - black - white). One slight problem we did find with the monitor is a significant amount of light leakage from the back lights of the LCD. This was most noticeable on consistent colour backgrounds, such as a black background, and each of the four edges of the screen appeared brighter due to the non-uniform lighting. Users sitting directly in front of the monitor will not notice this, but for users who sit in the wider angles of view (above 140 degrees), some colour shift will be noticeable. This could be an annoyance if you plan on sitting back and watching the occasional DVD.

In all, we had a pleasant experience with Viewsonic's VX922. Running in its native resolution of 1280 x 1024, we viewed some very clear and responsive images as well as experiencing the fastest response time available to date. The VX922 does come at a significantly higher price than most other 19" LCD's, due to its unique specifications.