Viewsonic VA1931wma LED Monitor Review

omes with built-in speakers

Pricing, built-in speakers, nice design, built well, good color reproduction

No DVI port, slight banding issue is noticeable, ancient OSD

Expert Rating :

   

While we were quite impressed with the Philips 192EL LED monitor, it's now Viewsonics turn to take the hot seat. The VA1913wma is Viewsonics budget LED monitor, which happens to fall in the same price bracket as the Philips. This 18.5" screen comes with a resolution of 1366x768, 250 candelas brightness and a 5ms response time. The build quality is good and so are the aesthetics, you can think of it as a miniature version of the VA2431wm, which was also LED based.

Design and Build

The full glossy bezel and stand help it stand out, but also attracts a lot of dust and fingerprints. The stand is wide enough and offers a good base for the monitor. There isn't much of a wobbling effect even when nudged from the side. It also has a tilt feature (about 30 degrees backwards and forwards) for optimal viewing angle.

The monitor isn't as slim as the Philips for whatever reason. There's quite a bit of protrusion at the back. Here you'll also find the VESA mounting points. The monitor comes with two built in 2W speakers as well for those who care. There's only one VGA port facing downwards.

The physical buttons are lined up in the front but don't have any backlight. They are also placed a bit too close to each other, so when navigating the menus you do hit the wrongs button. 

Performance

We first ran the Lagom test to calibrate the monitor. Despite a lot of tweaking of the Contrast and Brightness levels, the monitor wasn't able to reproduce the lower end values very well. It fared well in the response time tests although the grayscale tests did show some discoloration in the transition from light to dark. Display Mate also showed some level of banding in the color spectrum. Compared to the Philips monitor the Viewsonic has a warmer color tone by default. So in order to achieve a more neutral color, you'll have to switch to 'User Color Profile' instead of the default 6500K.

This is one thing that Viewsonic simply refuses to change. The menu is very outdated and lacks any refinement. Also, the buttons are placed a bit too close to each other; a little more gap between them would have been nice.
In our multimedia tests, HD as well as SD movies looked good with no noticeable ghosting or excessive banding. However, in dark scenes you'll notice some amount of noise due to the analogue connection. The monitor also did well in our gaming tests with no visible lag. Colors were bright and vivid with no blurring or ghosting.

Pricing and Verdict

You can find Viewsonic VA1931wma LED for a street price of Rs. 5,600, which is similar to the one from Philips. This is still a decent price for an LED backlit monitor, but we feel Philips has a slight edge over this one due to the DVI port. As far as picture quality is concerned the Viewsonic does a slightly better job with the whites, but overall the Philips feels like a better package. One thing going for the Viewsonic is the built-in speakers which are useful for those not looking for a separate system on their desk.