First off to address the complaints of "graininess" observed by some owners due to the matte finish: Lower your brightness! The pearly shimmery effect is only noticeble at the maximum 100% brightness which is around 270 cd/m2 (~20 cd/m2 higher than advertised). However, at the max brightness level, most users would find it uncomfortable to use for more than 30 minutes anyway. The factory settings are only set to this max limit to impress buyers in stores and when they turn on the monitor for the first time! The recommended comfortable brightness level for any monitor during regular use is 120 cd/m2 which translates to a setting of 35-40% brightness on this model. The user can easily change this setting through the OSD menu using the built in buttons.
Pros:
Price - Comparable e-IPS displays from other manufacturers are $200+ (see LG)
e-IPS panel - Viewable from virtually any angle
Matte display - Reflections from nearby lights do not impact the display. Great for nightime/sunlight users.
Negligible ghosting - 5ms response time combined with the built in Trace-free feature set to 60 eliminates most ghosting. This makes the monitor great for gaming and HD video watching. Only professional FPS players would need a higher response time.
Thin - Roughly the thickness of a MacBook Pro! Very slim on a desk or a mount
100mm VESA - Standard mounting holes w/ removable black rubber covers to hide the holes for users that prefer to rock the stand (blends in if not mounted)
Power efficient - 24-30 W after calibration
3 yr warranty/exchange: Asus will replace your monitor within 3 years and pay for shipping both ways. I haven't tried this myself, but I hear Asus customer service is above average for the industry.
Thinner than average bezel
Matte back - Has a carbon-fiber-like texture on the back that makes it look modern
Cons:
No built in gamma correction - Must be adjusted using your video card
e-IPS - Unlike higher quality IPS panels there is a very small amount of color/gamma distortion if viewed at an angle. However it is still exponentially better than any TN panel. Higher quality panels that completely remove thus effect cost $400+ currently and only graphic designers/photo editors really need that level of color accuracy.
$40 more than cheap TN panels - Extra cost for the latest gen display. Better viewing angles and colors. You be the judge.
Recommended calibration settings:
Brightness: 35
Contrast: 80
Red: 100
Green: 100
Blue: 98
Trace free: 60
These are the settings I came up with after calibration. They can be used as a starting point or ballpark figures if you don't feel like spending hours reading up on monitor calibration techniques. Your actual ideal monitor might vary slightly.
TL:DR
Best price/value monitor currently on the market <$200
So far I am very satisfied with the monitors. These are actually my first IPS and I can say I am simply amazed and the picture. Before I go on let me post my settings because out of the box settings are the WORST and will make you want to return the item.
Splendid: Theater
Sharpness: 45
Trace Free: 80
ASCR: ON
Brightness: 90
Contrast: 78
Saturation: 70
Color Temp: User Mode with all colors maxed
Skin Tone: Natural
Smart View: Off
With those settings everything should look great IMO. I actually bought 3 monitors because I am running SLI configuration for programming and for gaming. Because I have such a small desk, at the moment, I had to angle the monitors 75 degrees from the center monitor. So if you can picture that in your mind, I want to say I have NO problem seeing anything. The colors still look great and gaming is just as fun. Only problem (this is not the monitors fault) is my head hurts from turning lol, just wanted to share that :P
Some might ask if the 21 inch is too small. I can say I was worried about this too because I was using my PS3 3d display beforehand and can say that text is a fraction of a bit smaller. Unless you have really bad eyes, these monitors are perfect size. I also like the size because I have heard the bigger you go, the more you can see the LED backlight. In my case I can say on a totally black screen I see MINOR backlighting; nothing that would make the screen look awful, don't let that turn you away from the monitor.
Some reviewers have had bad outcomes with dead pixels and what not, I bought 3. Not one of them has had any problem except for user error. This user error was I thought all 3 monitors were dead because when I "touched" the power button it didn't respond. Don't fall victim like I did, the power button is under the screen, it is not a fancy touch sensitive button like I thought, again user error. You have plenty of connection options except display port but that is alright because I prefer DVI and HDMI so it really is user preference. No speakers but again doesn't bother me, I use a headset. Lastly, the design is sleek but the stand feels cheap. Just touching the monitor a little and you will notice a bouncing effect (monitor rocks back and forth). This could have been made better but I don't plan on moving them or touching them so not a big deal breaker.
So overall I am very happy with the purchase. The picture looks great at all angles, the frame rate if perfect (even for hardcore gaming, tested BF3 with ultra-settings, SLI 670s, and all three monitors in surround mode and it was PERFECT/BREATHTAKING), and the price couldn't be any more appealing for IPS. You will easily tell the difference from TN to IPS and you will never go back. Thank you for reading the review, if you would like to know more and any questions PLEASE leave a comment. I tend to check my amazon comments often and will do what I can to better help you.
Posted pictures, comment if you need more or anything else. I also want to update that the first thing I did when I got these monitors was run over to YouTube and play a Dead Pixel Color Test. This allowed me to check every pixel and confirmed that all 3 monitors were flawless.
[Edit: 4/10/19]
2 years in and the monitors are still doing great. No dead pixels, no unforeseen issues. original review still holds.
---Original---
Great light monitors for mounting onto monitor arm stands.
I bought a pair of these for a dual monitor setup. The menu and presets are easy to get to and use.
The contrast isn't as great as my previous ASUS monitor and this one has better specs. I've tried several calibrations as posted on the reviews but I just can't get the clarity of my older ASUS monitor. Since I use this primarily for gaming I notice it the difference in the extreme, but hope that maybe there is another setting i'm just not seeing, however, At this price point, it was difficult to pass up.
PROS:
+ Very light weight monitor
+ Easy to attach to monitor arm stands. Use paperclip or thumb tack to remove the rubber protectors.
CONS:
- even with better specs, the colors for this seem to have less vibrancy and contrast when compared to my 5 year old ASUS monitor.
- Blacks don't seem quite as black as they should be leaving some games looking a little washed out.
So my main rig died after about 8 years of faithful service and so it was time for some upgrades. I decided that while I was upgrading the one rig, I'd build a pair of new ones for my wife and I, relegating my old rig to standard downloading/streaming tasks.
One of the new parts to be considered was a monitor, as mine were dying a slow miserable death. Enter, the ASUS VS229H-P. I basically had a short list of requirements for this monitor:
>20-25"
>HDMI
>VERSA compatible
After reading through a metric ton of reviews I settled on this ASUS, and I've not been disappointed. In fact, I liked it so much that I ordered two more, and will likely order another one or two, making it the standard monitor for my house.
The stand it comes with is decent, but I intended to mount it from the start (hence the need for VERSA compatibility). So I picked up one of these to mount it to ( VideoSecu TV Wall Mount Articulating Arm Monitor Bracket for most 12"-24", some up to 27" LCD LED Plasma Flat Panel Screen TV with VESA 100/75mm ML10B 1E9 ) paired with a 10' HDMI cable, and mounted it above my computer desk.
The picture is beautiful, paired with my 980Ti it blows my old setup away. And for the price, you can't beat it. Picked all of mine up for around $110 a piece.
Honestly, the only thing I would change if I could is the finish. It's that glossy black that is impossible to keep clean. I would have preferred a matte black finish. But honestly it's hair splitting at this point.
The monitor is totally perfect now for my purposes. I take off 0.2 for the pain in the butt of going through the huge number of steps and the eight week delay in getting the $10 rebate on a temporary Master card unless you want to get $9 in one week instead. You could reasonably decide just to ignore getting the rebate.
Anyway, I am a retired professional. For over 15 years it was part of my job to select computers and monitors for 10 to 25 person businesses. I am careful. I selected this based on days of research, with the decision finally based on an extended review at wirecutter that says that THIS ONE IS THE ONLY ONE until you get up to paying $246 for a 24" monitor from a different company. The review advises saving up the $246, but I was in a hurry.
As warned in many reviews of a number of monitors, the default setting was WAY too bright. Just be prepared to fix that. The monitor has control buttons, and you have whatever graphics properties controls that you have in your operating system. To get the visibility perfect, I set the brightness control on the monitor to zero (0), the color temp to "warm," and the brightness control under "Graphics Properties" in Windows 7 to minus 18 (-18). Black is now black and near white is near white, not totally whited out. The colors are excellent. I fiddled with the contrast a bit, but not a lot. I am VERY HAPPY with my purchase and am happy that I have no doubts at all. It is mainly for me to be able to work, but I also look at pictures and watch movies. I have a big old serious quality sound system hooked up to my computer for music and movies, so the lack of speakers in the monitor is a plus for me.
P.S. Never mind about the non-existent height adjustment. I have this sitting on my desk on top of a six inch (6") high stack of six very hard and flat 8" X 11" paper-bound seminar books so that the top of the monitor sits even with the top of my head when I am sitting upright. That is the professional recommendation, and I can attest to it being the best way to work comfortably and to see for hours at a time day after day. The height can be adjusted by adjusting the number of books in the pile. :-)
UPDATE: Amazon product support was the only easy part of the experience so far of doing what is necessary to get that little $10 rebate. I called to find out whether sawing the shipping label with the bar code out of the box and sending it to the ASUS rebate center as demanded for the rebate was going to deprive me of something that I might need if I ever need service under the ASUS warranty. I reached a tech support person. The woman was lovely and explained that no, I would not need the bar code again, just the invoice. She kindly sent me the direct link to the invoice at Amazon. I imagine it will be there if and when I might ever need it.
I ran the monitor continuously for a week and now have been turning it on and off. It is still super and making me happy with the monitor and Windows 7 settings that I did when I first set it up 10 or 11 days ago.
Again, DO buy this monitor if you are looking at it, but you might want to skip the rebate part. I did not know what I was getting into with trying to redeem the rebate until I had already invested significant time and effort, more than it's worth. I feel as though ASUS should be paying me $100 or so for my trouble!
Feature Product
- Slim design 24" Display with 1920x1080 resolution and quick response time of 2ms (GTG) eliminates ghosting and tracers for more fluid video playback
- Smart view technology can adjust color parameters to deliver the same image quality and colors with straight viewing
- Exclusive splendid video intelligence technology automatically optimize image quality with intelligent color, brightness, contrast and sharpness
- 50, 000, 000: 1 ASUS smart contrast ratio dynamically enhances the display's contrast to delivering lifelike images. Inputs of HDMI, D-Sub, DVI-D
- Corporate stable Model program, the vs Series is guaranteed to remain in stable supply for a minimum of 1 year.Vesa wall mounting: 100x100mm
- Industry leading 3 years warranty with rapid replacement
Description
ASUS VS248H-P 24" Full HD 1920x1080 2ms HDMI DVI-D VGA Back-lit LED monitor
I do wish it didn't default to full brightness among other things. That full brightness default is really really bad and probably will cause light bleedthrough and other such things to be far worse in a far shorter time than it should be. I googled around a bit (I don't have proper calibration tools) and read a review that said to set it to standard mode with 99, 96, 100 colors with a brightness around 35-40% (I ended up finding 35 to be the best balance.) The default contrast of 80 was about right, but I found it a bit easier on my eyes to go down slightly to 75%. With this it's about as close as it's going to get without needing special adjustment software to get white balances and such exactly right. It should default to something closer to this sort of level and let people adjust away from ideal to suit their tastes rather than having to adjust towards ideal. If they do this for the sake of store displays (and come on, who puts an IPS panel like this up in a store display?) then it should simply have a store display mode like most devices have that set settings appropriately.
But I won't knock off a star for bad default settings. It's a matter of a few minutes for the user to adjust settings after all (though quite a few more to figure out what actually is right. Still, their sRGB mode isn't too bad as far as presets go.) That's just a minor annoyance. Similarly, I will state that actually operating the menus is very confusing with the button layout they've chosen (plus it would be nice if the buttons were on the side -- or perhaps just the up and down) but again, that's something you do once when you first get it and likely never again. Putting that aside, everything else is just wonderful. Obviously you're not getting a true professional photographer level IPS panel display here, but for this price range you're getting shockingly close. Given that this is priced almost exactly the same as a TN panel display of comparable quality (or less even) it's simply an amazing bang for the buck choice. The colors are far far better (not "more saturated" just clearer and more accurate,) the grays (lines and etc) look better, and blacks even look blacker (I didn't even realize how bad my old TN panel display was at blacks! And it was LED backlit too, so it has no excuses at all.) Also, on my previous TN panel display I could see the dithering it was using every time I did anything with a lot of motion such as moving a window around. It drove me insane. No visible dithering here. Probably it has to compensate less since it can more accurately produce a wider range of colors. That or it's just a heck of a lot faster in its dithering such that my eyes simply can't pick it out.
I was a bit concerned about the latency rating. After some study I've come to realize that latency ratings are very poorly reported anyway however. In fact, most TN panels claiming as low as 2ms latency can still be closer to 10ms in aggregate rating (it's not just about one color to a similar color, but large changes particularly when changing brightness of a pixel significantly.) Anyway, one of the first things I did after I stopped wowwing at how much better everything 2D looked was to fire up an old game, Unreal Tournament 2004. Now, you might be thinking "oh, that's an older game. It's not pushing things as hard as a newer game would do!" Actually, in respect to testing a monitor it's just the opposite. Newer games are slower paced with slower movements (more body awareness in particular) and generally lower range movements with smoother animations. In other words, a newer game is designed to change less per frame than an older game. (In fact, many go so far as to enforce a 30 FPS framerate limit. Then they change even less obviously...) Unreal Tournament 2004 can get extremely fast-paced with many movements being done more by a quick very slight flick of the wrist on a good high DPI mouse (and I disable mouse smoothing and acceleration and set USB polling higher for as close to a 1:1 response as I can reasonably get -- thankfully my drivers support disabling it for the system since you can't simply hack the USB driver DLL anymore with Windows versions past XP) and I started up an "instagib" session where a single shot with the "laser" style weapon is enough to kill -- or be killed. This requires one to move fast and act faster. In other words, I tested this screen with a _LOT_ of motion. If there was any ghosting at all, it was beyond my eyes to pick it out. The game ran just beautifully with me having absolutely no problems whatsoever (other than being a bit out of practice.) Oh, and it looked a heck of a lot better than it used to (too bad I had gotten rid of my CRT in favor of a TN panel back before 2004.) In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the better handling of blacks makes it much clearer in games where sometimes you might have a lot of shadows in some areas.
Also a plus is the fact that it supports not only DVI, but VGA and HDMI as well. With HDMI audio is output to a line output audio jack (analog only I think) so it actually can handle audio (which is more than most monitors with no speakers can do.) Obviously that's inconvenient if you rely on HDMI for audio, but overall it's actually the best possible way a display like this could possibly handle HDMI without actually having speakers and frankly I'm impressed that they thought of it. Hopefully not many people rely on HDMI audio with computer systems anyway, but I am thinking of connecting a Roku stick to it some time just to enjoy how much nicer it would look on this screen.
I don't recommend this for a professional CAD designer or photo editor to use on a regular basis, but for this price range I can safely say that this screen would be a beautiful replacement for all the TN panel displays people are buying.
Way better than the Acer models in the same size and a tad bit better than the LG's. I have three monitors at 24inches, all different brands. This is by far the best one. The best display and the best set of options for input and output ports. Believe it or not most monitors don't come with hdmi slots, I have no idea why but they don't. I guess the companies feel it is cheaper not to have them. Problem is hdmi is what everything is transitioning to so if you only have dvi and vga, you most likely will need a converter. The converters tend to cause issues as well. Not only that VGA and DVI ports are way more likely to break. This is what happened to my Acer of the same size, both of the ports stopped working so you're pretty much out of luck. This monitor also has a an audio output slot which is very very useful. I use it when I play PS4 by putting in USB charged speakers to the PS4 while the audio cord is plugged into the monitor. If you need some speakers to go with these get these, AmazonBasics USB Powered Computer Speakers (A100). They do well with this monitor and are only 14 bucks. The ASUS also blows the other two's lighting and picture out of this world. I had all three of them going at the same time and you can clearly see the ASUS has way better picture quality. Not even close. So the fact that this monitor is about 30 bucks more than the cheapest 24 inch monitors, buying this is way worth it in my opinion. Burn the extra 30 and not waste your time on the cheap brands because they suck.
Update 10 days later: Still loving the monitor, no issues at all. So far, super happy with my purchase. Images look great in high end photo editing software.
Original Review Aug 18. 2016
This is my "first impressions" review, I'll update once I use it more (3mos, 6mos, etc)
After spending a day reading reviews, I finally came to the conclusion that this was the one I needed. Since I can't afford an expensive photo editing monitor, I was able to conclude that this was my next best bet. It has the IPS which I've read is what you want for editing so that's a good thing.
It was very easy to use right out of the box. The monitor is very lightweight. The stand came apart from the display and screws in with a screw that has a loop so you don't need any tools. There is a slight wobble, but nothing that I should really even mention. The base is nice and wide which gives plenty of stability.
The picture is pretty sharp, you can barely see the pixels when you look up close. My previous display was an Asus and I liked it so much that I had no problems buying another.
Like I mentioned before, I will definitely be updating this as time goes on. Usually I like to wait a while before reviewing but I did want to give a "first impression" review while it was still fresh in my mind.
Disclaimer:
This product was a PERSONAL PURCHASE for myself at the normal retail price. I am reviewing it solely because I want to share my experience with other potential customers. I have received no compensation for my review nor do I have any relationship with the seller or manufacturer of this product.
My tweaks for a better experience with this monitor
After receiving this item I noticed that the colors were off, and after trying some of the tweaks suggested by the reviews here in Amazon, I eventually came up with my own settings and also downloaded and tweaked the NVIDIA control panel software in my particular application, since I have an NVIDIA video card. I do photo and video editing, and did not like the colors from the default settings.
These are the settings that I used:
Splendid: Standard
Brightness: 85
Sharpness: 0 (the default for Standard mode)
Trace Free: 60
ASCR: OFF (On is not available in Standard mode)
Brightness: 85
Contrast: 80
Saturation: 50 (the default for Standard mode)
Color Temp: User Mode with R:100 G:87 B:83
Skin Tone: Natural (default for Standard mode)
*The defaults in Standard mode stay that way, so don't worry about them*.
After installing the latest driver from NVidia for my videocard (NVIDIA GT-440).
Then, using AVS HD 709 videos (free screen calibration recommended by avsforum) under the basic settings videos of AVS HD 709 I used the ¨Black Clipping¨ to adjust the contrast on the NVIDIA software to 80%, and with an online gamma the gamma calibration tool (for example, search for photoscientia's gamma calibration from its UK website. I adjusted the gamma to 1.23. These two adjustments on the NVIDIA control panel software made a great difference, since adjusting the black level is one of the best adjustments to make to a monitor, since they normally come very bright and from my point of view this helped me with this monitor.
This monitor is one of my favorite electronic purchases I've gotten in the last year or two, the 24" size is great to sit in front of and it's perfect for Xbox/PC gaming (or any console). Everything looks fantastic in 1080p on this monitor and I use it daily - never had any issues so far. It was also fairly easy to calibrate, the out of box calibrations were good, and I used some tools to sharpen everything a bit (everything is SO clear and the colors POP!). I absolutely love it and the 1ms response time is great for online gaming. Will continue to use this brand for any monitors I need.
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