 The Viewsonic VP150 can be had for as little as $920 ($860 to $990) on the
street, making it one of the least-expensive 15" flat-screen LCD monitors around. The
VP150 utilizes the traditional 15-pin VGA connection which means that you won't need to
purchase a special video card for it. Digital flat-screens, on the other hand, require a
video card such as the ATI Xpert LCD that sport a 20-pin Digital Flat Panel (DFP) digital
connection.
Typical of most LCD monitors, the VP150 is light, weighing a mere 15.6 pounds (7.1 Kg).
This allows for increased portability where desired (e.g. a roving workstation).
Image quality was excellent. The VP150 is capable of up to 1024x768 and true color. With
that combination at the maximum refresh rate of 75 Hertz, text was readable down to 6
points. At 5.5 points, the letter "e" became a rectangular dot. On the
comparison CRT monitor, the Panasonic S17, the letter "e" looked more like a
"c" at 5.5 points. Typical of LCD screens, flicker on the VP150 was
non-existent, even at 60 Hertz. At the
other two supported resolutions, 800x600 and 640x480, anti-aliasing reduced the jagged
edges of fonts which made text very readable although the overall picture does not look as
satisfying as 1024x768. Note that some LCD monitors in this price range do not even
have the anti-aliasing feature meaning very ugly text at the lower resolutions.
Although featuring anti-aliasing, the VP150, however, cannot accommodate those of you who
prefer to view 800x600 or 640x480 in a reduced image area at the center of the screen
Graphics on the VP150 was vibrant and bright, and action
games played without any refresh problems that plagued earlier model LCD screens. At over
30 frames per second, first-person-shooter games Half-Life and Quake II ran smoothly
without any observable visual quality degradation nor ghosting. AVI and MPEG movie files
also looked fine. This is impressive considering the VP150 uses the slower analog
port.
A time-saving feature of the VP150 is that it automatically resizes the visible screen to
the maximum allowable area. This means the user will not have to manually alter the
horizontal and vertical size/shift settings when changing to a new resolution/refresh rate
combinbation.
The VP150 is backed by an industry-standard 1 year warranty on the LCD backlight (the part
that's most likely to break) and 3 years on everything else.
The VP150 is a terrific value for those of you in the market
for an analog 15" LCD display. It has no geometric distortion whatsoever, while
producing a very bright, super-flat image. After working with VP150 for some time, even
the image displayed by the no-too-shabby CRT-based PanaSync S17 seems unusually distorted.
Those of you looking for a LCD display with speakers may want to opt for the
VPA150, which also has the ability to physically rotate between landscape and portrait
modes. The VPD150 is the VP150 with a digital interface instead. |
