Monday, September 22, 2008

Acer G24 - 24" widescreen gaming monitor

Manufacturer:Acer
UK Price (as reviewed):£352.49 (inc. VAT)

There are lies. There are damned lies. And then there are monitor specifications. More than most PC components, buyers should be extremely wary of the specs monitor makers attach to their produce.

Partly, the problem is down to the fact that it typically requires expensive specialist kit to confirm or deny screen performance stats. If you buy a CPU advertised with a 2.5GHz operating frequency, it's straight forward to get a reliable confirmation that the chip is behaving as promised.

But how is the average punter supposed to check that their new gaming panel is the real 2ms deal? Or that their lovely 24-incher really kicks outs 400cd/m² and has viewing angles of 178 degrees in both planes? The answer is that they can't, monitor makers know this and they play pretty loose and free with specifications as a result.

Making matters worse, even if it was easy for consumers to objectively measure screen properties, that wouldn't make for a final solution. For several image quality attributes there is no rigidly defined metric and hence no standard to be held to.

Viewing angles are a good example. Broadly speaking, viewing angles are a measurement of how stable rendered colours remain when viewed off centre. But frankly, manufacturers essentially have a free hand to create their own definition of what constitutes the loss of colour stability and then draw a largely arbitrary line at that point.



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