Viewsonic VE175 17" LCD Monitor

Two years ago I bought a 15" LCD monitor from Viewsonic, and it's still in great shape. I thought I would get a 17" now for my other computer. The resolution is very good and the monitor contrast ratio is very high. The picture quality looks like a photograph, which beats the flickering image of a CRT screen.

The exterior of this monitor is different from the VE150 (15"). I like the other one better. Also this one appears bulkier. Though the edges are rounded off to make it look thinner, I'd rather have them flat - now I have no place to stick my webcam.

Another issue you need to keep in mind. The size ration of this monitor is very strange - optimized for 1280x1024 resolution. If you want to operate it at 1024x768 resolution to get bigger text, you can, but everything will be stretched vertically in a wierd way. So what I don't like is I have to use the higher resolution, but even with large fonts on Windows, the text looks very small. what I ended up...Read more

I purchased this monitor a few days ago. At first I found the picture quality mediocre but acceptible. However, after using the monitor for a few days I now realize that it is not acceptible and I plan to return the monitor. As I mentioned in a previous review, there are fuzzy halos around type. Also, reds and greens in certain areas are blurry. In general, this display is not nearly as clear and sharp as other LCD displays I've seen, such as the displays of laptops I've owned. I made sure that I had my machine set to 32 bit color. I called Viewsonic tech support, and after confirming that I was running it at the optimal refresh rate (60 hz) and resolution (1280 by 1024), they had no suggestions except to try it on a different computer or return it.

I received this monitor a few days ago. Setting it up was very easy. The software installed fine on my Windows XP machine. There are no dead pixels as of now. On the whole I'm pretty happy with it, however I'm not giving it five stars because the picture quality is only so-so. The colors are bright but there are minor artifacts around the letters in black text against a tan or grey backgroud. They're like the fuzzy blemshes that appear when you apply a sharpening filter in an image editing program such as Photoshop and you set the amount of sharpening too high. There may be a way to improve the image using the monitor's controls. I haven't been able to get a really good setting so far. The controls for adjusting the picture are fairly primitive and the documentation is minimal.

This monitor is OK but if I ever get another flat panel monitor I'll try a different brand.