The monitor has 77% brightness and 50% contrast by default. I lowered both to 31% to achieve a 100nit white. You should be careful with the contrast setting of this model: when it is as high as 60% and more, details are lost in lights. And when it is 20% or lower, details are lost in darks. Color gradients are reproduced correctly through the entire range of settings. The monitor regulates its brightness by means of pulse-width modulation of the backlight lamps at a frequency of 239Hz.
The brightness of white varies by 5.5% on average, reaching a maximum deflection of 17.5%. That’s acceptable especially as there are no conspicuous spots on the screen: the brightness is smoothly diminishing from the center towards the edges. For black, the average brightness uniformity is 5.8% with a maximum of 14.1%. That’s quite okay, too.
The gamma curves are good at the default settings, differing but slightly from the theoretical curve.
The gamma curves remain almost the same at the reduced brightness and contrast. They are still good, but not ideal.
The monitor’s color temperature setup is far from perfect. It doesn’t really offer a low-temperature mode because the temperature is over 7000K even in the warmest mode (called Warm). There are also huge deviations of temperature between the different levels of gray – up to 10,000K! This model should be set up with a calibrator or at least manually.
The monitor’s color gamut is quite what you can expect from a model with ordinary backlight lamps. Perhaps it differs more than usual from the sRGB color space in reds.
The response time average is 12.6 milliseconds with a maximum of 22.5 milliseconds. These are typical values for TN matrixes without response time compensation. They are even good as such matrixes go. On the other hand, RTC-enabled models are incomparably faster.
The brightness of white and the contrast ratio are quite satisfactory. It’s good that the contrast ratio is never lower than 250:1. That’s not something extraordinary, yet noteworthy anyway.
Now let’s check out the factory-set image modes.
The monitor is too bright even in the Text mode. To remind you, the screen should be 80-120 nits for you to work with text comfortably. So I’d recommend you to set the monitor up manually for text-based applications and switch to the factory-set modes for games and movies.
Unfortunately, the Graphics and Movie modes do not deliver correct colors as the diagram above shows. The contrast setting is set too high, making light halftones indistinguishable from white. The image is overall too whitish. Added to that, the curves go far from each other, so there is no talking about accurate colors. Thus, the Text mode may be the most demanded one because the gamma curves retain their good shapes in it (as at the default settings).
The Acer AL1916W A model will only be good for those people who can put up with its unassuming design, low matrix speed and color reproduction (the AL1916W Asd delivers much better colors) just to save some money. You should consider other models if you can spend more money for your monitor.
Highs:
Lows:
- Unassuming design
- Slow matrix
- No digital interface
- Bad color temperature setup
Recommended usage:
- Text-based applications (documents, spreadsheets, Internet)
