By default, the monitor has 100% brightness and 70% contrast. I achieved a 100nit white by lowering both to 54%. The monitor regulates its brightness by PW modulation of the power of the backlight lamps at a frequency of 271Hz. Interestingly, you can increase the contrast setting up to 100% without losing details in lights.

Color gradients are reproduced without banding.

The color gamut resembles those of Samsung’s 43 series models discussed above: the entire triangle is shifted upward relative to the standard sRGB space. As a result, the monitor’s gamut is inferior to sRGB not only in reds but also in blues. By the way, the color gamut cannot be changed by setting the monitor in some special way because it is only determined by the employed RGB filters and the phosphors of the backlight lamps. The manufacturers seem to experiment in this area not only to improve the gamut (there are no enhanced-gamut monitors in this review, for example) but also for some other reasons, perhaps to make the backlight more economical or cheaper.

The average white brightness uniformity is 5.6% with a maximum deflection of 15.8%. For black, the average and maximum are 8.1% and 20.5%, respectively. The pictures above show you that there are bright spots, nearly merging into bands, along the top and bottom of the screen.

The gamma value is too high by default. The curves go lower than the ideal curve. It means the monitor produces an image which is darker and has more contrast than necessary. The monitor doesn’t offer a gamma adjustment option, so you can only correct this defect in your graphics card settings.

The curves improve when you reduce the brightness and contrast settings in the monitor’s menu, yet each of them, and especially the blue one, goes lower than the theoretical curve for gamma 2.2 (it is black in the diagram).

The color temperature setup is good. The temperature dispersion is within 500K in the 6500 and 7500 modes, which are the most important from a practical point of view. Curiously enough, the sRGB mode, which is obviously meant to meet the requirements of the sRGB standard, is set up worse than the 6500 mode as its temperature of white is too low.

The max brightness and contrast ratio are quite what you can expect from a modern monitor. The VG2030wm is not exciting from this aspect.

The monitor lacks factory-set image modes.

The RTC-less matrix cannot be fast, of course. Its response time average is 12.3 milliseconds (GtG) with a maximum of 25 milliseconds.

Summing it up, the ViewSonic VG2030wm would make a good enough monitor if it were not for its terrible ergonomics (such as its very tall stand, super-bright LED, and unhandy tiny controls).

Highs:

• Good color reproduction setup (for this product class)

Lows:

• Terrible ergonomics all around
• No factory-set image modes
• Slow matrix

Recommended usage:

• Text-based applications (documents, spreadsheets, Internet)
• Viewing and simple editing of photographs
• Movies and games that do not require a fast matrix