Review on Asus VN279Q 1080p DisplayPort Monitor with 60Hz Refresh Rate for Improved SEO. by Marcelo Farmer

Before my review, let me say that I am very picky when it comes to monitors. I used CRTs during the LCD era due to the shortcomings of LCDs and the reasons CRTs are superior to LCDs (response times, black levels, etc.). The first LCD I ever bought was an MVA Viewsonic panel, a good screen but it had an anti-reflective (AG) coating that was too aggressive. I replaced this monitor with a 24" Samsung SyncMaster 244T. Perfection in the monitor. I have been using this monitor for many years and this monitor had to be replaced with the VN279Q. I thought a small increase in the screen size might help. Unfortunately basically everyone has New monitors of this size have an aspect ratio of 16:9, be it 1920x1080 or 2560x1440.I can tell you the aspect ratio doesn't bother me that much, but sometimes things feel extra wide compared to 16:10.This Asus VN279Q uses an AMVA+ panel which is in stark contrast to most IPS screens available such as premium panels which now have IPS glow and poor black quality (compared to VA. My 244T is an S-PVA panel, which led me to this panel due to similar technology.Size wise this is a good sized monitor.supposed to be very thin and looks great.The Nitor has a nice AG feel to it htung, which I think is discreet and does a good job of preventing glare. The buttons are on the back, which is a bit awkward to use and caused a bit of pain in my wrist when I made a lot of adjustments, but thanks for not using touch controls. The power LED is pleasantly bright white and doesn't get in the way. The VN279Q uses recessed connectors that are great for wall mounting, but it is very difficult to connect the cable. I recommend turning the monitor upside down with the lid on, plugging in the cables, and then installing it right side up. Connectivity is good, but I would have liked a DVI connector so that it can be screwed in and doesn't fall out. Asus includes pretty much everything you need in the box, which is a nice touch. Included in the box was an HDMI to DVI cable, speaker audio cable, HDMI cable, and VGA cable (DisplayPort cable not included). The monitor comes with a 3 year warranty which is excellent for this price range. I plugged it in right away and there wasn't a single dead pixel. There was no backlight leaking either, and I'm very sensitive to these issues. The factory colors are very strange, they look messy, but I can't figure out how. I've wrestled with the menu for a long time and am still unsatisfied with the results. The monitor can be very bright, but unfortunately uses PWM for the backlight. If you are unfamiliar with PWM, this will dim the LED backlight, and if your monitor uses PWM at low brightness, you may see screen flickering, which can cause eye strain and discomfort. No brightness and contrast adjustment will provide an acceptable level of contrast for me. For example, if I highlight text on a blue background, there is too little difference between those colors and the blue that highlights the text selection. Even now when I look at white against Revain it looks too bright but when I adjust the brightness it doesn't look right. No fine tuning can make the contrast really good. This display really hurts the eyes because of the brightness, and dimming it causes the PWM to flicker and wash out the colors even more. When I open Excel or Word, the vibrant greens and blues of my 244T pale in comparison. Black levels are decent, but not as good as the 244T I've used before. Very dark scenes show that black has a blue tint even when I adjust the RGB levels. I mainly used sRGB mode for gaming and my own mix with night mode, but couldn't get rid of the red cast in night mode. . The saturation adjustment also has a very unusual effect: the screen flickers red, green, blue, and then flattens out with each adjustment step. This makes it useless if you don't want to mess around with the RGB balance after adjusting the saturation. I noticed that the left and right edges look a bit blue compared to the rest of the screen. Viewing angles are good, but performance is stable from any angle. I'd like to think I got a bad one, but those contrast errors seem to me to be something that's probably present in all of these monitors. Some people might not notice these shortcomings, but then again, a cheaper TN panel might work for them. All in all, I'm disappointed with this display. I really expected the performance to be close to my old SyncMaster 244T, but unfortunately that wasn't the case. I'll probably go back to my trusty workhorse 244T and just live with a slightly smaller screen size. For me, these monitors are too bright (even at low levels), due to the use of PWM for the backlight, the inability to properly adjust the contrast and slightly inaccurate colors even when using sRGB, completely ruined this monitor for me . I am very thankful to Asus that at least the backlight does not show through and there are no dead pixels, but there is still nothing that can compete with S-PVA panels and unfortunately there are several monitors in the US that all still use these panels . who is not even a few years old. UPDATE 05/09/13: I bought a used Dell 3007WFP-HC and can tell that there was definitely something odd about the Asus VN279Q's poor contrast (mainly because it had such a high contrast ratio that everything was blended and it was very harsh was able to distinguish bright white from dark white etc. I didn't think about it but since my Dell doesn't have an OSD I have to use the Nvidia control panel to adjust contrast, RGB etc. The effect I had on the Asus was, that the gamma was too high because even at low brightness everything still seemed light gray instead of black. If I still had this monitor it might benefit from using the control panel for your particular graphics card to adjust the brightness/contrast settings of the ST and Adjust gamma to maybe balance it out better.