ViewSonic VG800 - Low Cost High Performance?

OSD and controls

The on screen display and controls on the VG800 performed very well. The menu was simple and clean to operate. We saw a very striking resemblance to the Samsung OSD’s we have seen lately, but there were several key differences as well. From left to right the menu controls are: Mute, Volume Up, Volume Down, Menu/Exit, Select Up, Select Down, Select, and Power. For the most part, the menu options were straightforward and there were no particular options that struck us as revolutionary.

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Perhaps the most noteworthy feature of the OSD was the Information menu. Calling this option enables a small menu that displays information such as Serial Number, Resolution, and Frequency. This makes for easy identification of the monitor, and a Serial Number that can’t be tampered with or scratched off. Anyone who needs to call product support is also going to appreciate this feature as all of the information needed during a service call pops up easily and without hassle. We would definitely like to see this feature on more monitors in the future.

While there were a lot of issues we had with the brightness and contrast ratio of the LCD, the real annoyance we had with the monitor was the “Auto” correction. Almost all LCD’s we have seen this year have some sort of Auto balance function. Basically, this function aligns the image to fit on the screen while correcting for brightness, contrast, etc. The large problem we had with the VG800 was that this function was incredibly slow. Auto alignment would usually take over a minute, but to our horror it was usually incorrect. When a black background was set on the VG800, the alignment would set the boundaries of the monitor to the nearest lit pixel. For example, if we had a black background with a menu open in the middle of the screen, the monitor would align the top of its screen even with the menu border. What was especially annoying about this bug was that any time the monitor went on standby it automatically performed the Auto alignment. Thus, we found ourselves correcting the image 3 to 4 times a day.