By default, the monitor has 100% brightness and 70% contrast. I achieved a 100nit level of white by lowering both to 47%. Lights are distinguishable at any settings while darks are displayed the same as black at a contrast of 40% and lower. Color gradients are reproduced without banding but jitter somewhat in the area of darks. This is perhaps due to incorrect emulation of 24-bit color on the 18-bit matrix. The monitor seems to control its brightness with the matrix because I could not spot any trace of pulse-width modulation.
The backlight brightness is quite uniform on both white and black. On white, the average deflection is 6.9% with a maximum of 16.2%. On black, the average and maximum are 6.1% and 17.4%, respectively.
The gamma curves are good at the default settings.
The overall shape of the curves doesn’t change at the reduced settings but they become flat in the left part of the diagram. It means that darkest halftones are indistinguishable. I noted this drawback above, though. This problem concerns the blue curve the most: about 20% of all blues are going to be displayed as black at such settings.
The monitor offers five color temperature modes, each with the same problem: the actual temperature is about 700K lower than the name of the mode. You should just be aware of it. Otherwise, you can easily select a suitable mode. The temperature dispersion is within 700K excepting the coldest 9300 mode that is suddenly warm on dark colors.
The monitor’s color gamut is standard overall. Perhaps it is somewhat smaller than usual in reds if compared with sRGB.
The ViewSonic VG1930wm does not have response time compensation and shows a very modest speed: the response time average is 15.6 milliseconds (GtG) with a maximum of 32.5 milliseconds. These numbers are quite depressing after you have dealt with RTC technology.
The contrast ratio is rather low, sinking to 119:1 in one test mode.
The ViewSonic VG1930wm can do as an inexpensive multimedia monitor but it doesn’t have significant advantages over its opponents. Its ergonomics is far from perfect, too.
Highs:
- Good color reproduction setup
- Screen height adjustment
Lows:
- Slow matrix
- Low contrast ratio
- Some darks are indistinguishable from each other at reduced contrast
- No factory-set image modes
Recommended usage:
- Text-based applications (documents, spreadsheets, Internet)
