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Acer AL2416W 24" monitor review

Saturday, January 5, 2008

I bought this 24" monitor for £205, which makes it quite a bargain. It has only VGA input which is fine with me as I have no DVI output on my laptop. It also has high native resolution of 1920x1200.

I was dismayed when after connecting it and setting to native resolution the image was unstable. I saw waves as if the screen was reflected on a stirred water pool. The image was stable on lower resolutions.

I was not happy at the prospect of returning the item to ebuyer.com as I had problems buying it in the first place, how hard would it be to return an item. I had problems because ebuyer insists on dispatching the first bought item to address associated with the credit card it was paid with (the fact not stated during checkout, found in their FAQ).

Fortunately, poking around settings of the monitor I was able to get rid of the waves effect. What I did was to set Focus to 50, 0 and 100 are causing waves.

As I've already said, I have the monitor connected to 15.1" laptop. I extend laptop's desktop with an external monitor for a few years now. Started with 17" then had 19", 20", and now 24". When replacing my current laptop I will opt for one with at most 14" for grater portability and will rely on an external monitor for the desktop size.

Labels: review

3 comments

Comments

 Tomasz Nazar
January 21, 2008 3:11 PM

24' - wow :-) I got only 20 wide, but I'd wish more.
About laptop - 12' is maximum for portability.
DVI helps with sharpness - at least I see that.. At 24 difference should be clearly visible.

 Kamil Dworakowski
January 21, 2008 11:12 PM

I appreciate DVI. If I had DVI output I wouldn't buy a vga only monitor.

As to the portability, I would have to balance it. It would be my main machine and 12" comes with a performance and price penalty. 14" could be a step in the right direction.

 Scott
September 9, 2008 9:44 PM

I purchased this ACER AL2416W. I see one user/reviewer above states his has only a VGA connector. Mine, with the same exact part number has a DVI connector also.

I needed to buy a new video card for my old Win2000 PC that had drivers to get to the desired native resolution of 1920x1200 with a DVI connector. It looks great. Brightness is excellant.

I also have it hooked to my Dell laptop via the laptop's VGA connector. The Dell latitude D810 laptop also pumps out 1920x1200 as analog VGA, but also looks great. (I cannot recomend Dell laptops.. heavy, dim displays, low battery time, no mechanical switch for volume or wifi on/off)

My only wish for this monitor, is that it needs a one-button command to switch from the desktop DVI cable to the laptop VGA cable. It takes stepping through menus to make the switch.

Like ALL flat panel displays, if you select a resolution less than the native resolution, the image will have a bit of blur in it, as it has to be frame buffer converted. So... dont do that. I'm a video electronic design engineer... so I can tell you, don't any flat panel or CRT users run in 24 bit or 32 bit color. You are only making your video controller chip run a lot hotter. The human eye cannot not see more than 128 gradiants of brighness in any color. Most people cant see more than 64. And most raw panels run in 6,6,6 color in the monitor.

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