I took advantage of the Best Buy offer for the Westy 22" and drove away with it, and went in search of a DVI cable for less than the $50 Best Buy wanted (none included)
Arrived at Costco. noticed they had the AL2216 in stock, and surprise surprise it was also priced at $399 but it included a DVI cable. So I bought one as well!
Got them home and did a side by side review. Bottom line; the Westy is going back. It all came down to the controls and trying to set the colors up correctly. With the Acer all my photos look good with colors pretty much at default, but with the Westy everyone in the photos looks red faced drunk all the time. And we were only red faced drunk some of the time....
Placed each monitor side by side and heres how they look:
Both have swivel adjustment but neither has pivot. The Westy sits higher than the Acer and that cant be adjusted.
Both change in brightness as you move your head up and down - but not by much.I found that acceptable.
Both are 1680x1050 and apart from color the picture is pretty much identical. Coming from a 19" CRT running 1600x1200 I noticed the drop in vertical res but the quality of image is far better overall.
Both monitors appear to resize any supplied res from the vid card to fill the screen. I dont get black bars if I lower the res.
Now I set each monitor side by side with my Iiyama CRT to do some response tests
Input lag; ran the stopwatch test but the numbers are all a blur (my digicam shutter must be slow) so I ran the 'sync' test using Digitial Video Essentials DVD, which has a 'clock' sweeping out 1 sec each revolution,. in different colors. Easy to photo, and no significant difference seen. so if there is input lag, the camera couldnt catch it in this test. Ran the mouse and windows around the desktop in clone mode, but couldnt see any lag. Played Counterstrike and all seemed normal. Both the Westy and the Acer seemed to perform the same in terms of responsiveness. Here is the Acer under test - but the Westy results are no different so I'll spare the 56k users another photo.
Looked at various images, including the Gamespot webpage, and I couldnt see any banding. Couldnt see it on the DVD test screens either.
However, I did notice that the Acer has 3 pixels that might be 'dead'. They appear light grey and are nearly impossible to see, even though they are in the middle of the screen. The Westy has no dead pixels.
So I then spent ages playing with each monitor by itself, tweaking the color temp and values, bightness, contract, and the sharpness. At the end of all that the Acer did an acceptable job of showing my photos and the Westy came close, but came second.
As the Acer has better color, a DVI cable, and the Costco warranty. So the Westy goes back tomorrow. Having said that it was a really tough call, and unless I'd dome the side by side, I'd be happy with either.
Oh yes - important point - 1680x1050 is marginally less pixels than 1600x1200, but 1920x1200 is a whole lot more. I decided on the 22" because 20s were too small, and a 24 would mean I need to upgrade the rest of the system. If you have an Nvidia card, setting 1680x1050 is pretty easy.
On the Acer I also noticed that the VGA looks 98% as good as the DVI. I had it running side by side with the Westy, VGA vs DVI, and there was nothing in it.
So after months of research on the forum my search is over - right size, right price, right resolution. Thanks for all your posts and I hope this helps you find the right one for you.
Arrived at Costco. noticed they had the AL2216 in stock, and surprise surprise it was also priced at $399 but it included a DVI cable. So I bought one as well!
Got them home and did a side by side review. Bottom line; the Westy is going back. It all came down to the controls and trying to set the colors up correctly. With the Acer all my photos look good with colors pretty much at default, but with the Westy everyone in the photos looks red faced drunk all the time. And we were only red faced drunk some of the time....
Placed each monitor side by side and heres how they look:
Both have swivel adjustment but neither has pivot. The Westy sits higher than the Acer and that cant be adjusted.
Both change in brightness as you move your head up and down - but not by much.I found that acceptable.
Both are 1680x1050 and apart from color the picture is pretty much identical. Coming from a 19" CRT running 1600x1200 I noticed the drop in vertical res but the quality of image is far better overall.
Both monitors appear to resize any supplied res from the vid card to fill the screen. I dont get black bars if I lower the res.
Now I set each monitor side by side with my Iiyama CRT to do some response tests
Input lag; ran the stopwatch test but the numbers are all a blur (my digicam shutter must be slow) so I ran the 'sync' test using Digitial Video Essentials DVD, which has a 'clock' sweeping out 1 sec each revolution,. in different colors. Easy to photo, and no significant difference seen. so if there is input lag, the camera couldnt catch it in this test. Ran the mouse and windows around the desktop in clone mode, but couldnt see any lag. Played Counterstrike and all seemed normal. Both the Westy and the Acer seemed to perform the same in terms of responsiveness. Here is the Acer under test - but the Westy results are no different so I'll spare the 56k users another photo.
Looked at various images, including the Gamespot webpage, and I couldnt see any banding. Couldnt see it on the DVD test screens either.
However, I did notice that the Acer has 3 pixels that might be 'dead'. They appear light grey and are nearly impossible to see, even though they are in the middle of the screen. The Westy has no dead pixels.
So I then spent ages playing with each monitor by itself, tweaking the color temp and values, bightness, contract, and the sharpness. At the end of all that the Acer did an acceptable job of showing my photos and the Westy came close, but came second.
As the Acer has better color, a DVI cable, and the Costco warranty. So the Westy goes back tomorrow. Having said that it was a really tough call, and unless I'd dome the side by side, I'd be happy with either.
Oh yes - important point - 1680x1050 is marginally less pixels than 1600x1200, but 1920x1200 is a whole lot more. I decided on the 22" because 20s were too small, and a 24 would mean I need to upgrade the rest of the system. If you have an Nvidia card, setting 1680x1050 is pretty easy.
On the Acer I also noticed that the VGA looks 98% as good as the DVI. I had it running side by side with the Westy, VGA vs DVI, and there was nothing in it.
So after months of research on the forum my search is over - right size, right price, right resolution. Thanks for all your posts and I hope this helps you find the right one for you.