ViewSonic VX2025WM vs. LG

[Ladic]

I'm currently in the Market for an LCD Widescreen, And I think I've norrow it down to this 2 monitors:

ViewSonic VX2025WM

LG L203WT-BF

The Viewsonic is about $100 cheaper onces you take account the taxes I would have to pay for the LG monitor.

Which one is simply better?

Here is the thing, I don't really watch movies on my PC as I got an HDTV in my room, so I only use it for GAMING and Doing Homework.

This is the rest of my system:

AMD Athlon XP 2500+
1.5 gig PC2700 Ram (Dual Channel 1 gig of those)
Sapphire Radeon X800pro 256mb 8x agp

 

[blankwire]

I'd go with something like this.

The ViewSonic's response time seems to be below average for a gaming monitor (and Best Buy doesn't state if the response time for the LG is GtG or WBW, etc.).

There's also no height adjustment on the ViewSonic, so that may be something to think about also.

EDIT: Also, if you're gaming make sure you're system can handle the native resolutions in the games you plan to play.

 

[HoodooGuru]

Read the massive VX2025wm thread. You'll assure yourself it's the right purchase. I did, and I extremely happy with my VX2025wm. Great looking monitor and superb image quality for both gaming and text work.

Make sure you have videocard hardware to drive it. (ATI X800XT-series or nVidia 7800GS and higher...)

 

[Ladic]

I put my system spec above, but how do I know if I'll be able to handle games in the native reso?

 

[KompressorV12]

I put my system spec above, but how do I know if I'll be able to handle games in the native reso?

google *name of the game* 1600x1050 and see what pops up

 

[Ladic]

I dont mean that, I mean, will my system be powerful enough to handle it?

 

[KompressorV12]

you might think about upgrading otherwise if you want to play at 1600x1050 you might have to turn down all of the eyecandy and you should be fine

 

[Ladic]

k, thanks.

Unfortunately I wont have much if any money left after I buy the monitor, I probably wont be able to do a major upgrade until probably a year or year and a half from now.

But if I were to buy an athlon xp 3200, would I see much of an improvement? or not worth it.
This is the cheapest solution I can see, cause otherwise I have to buy a new mobo, cpu, ram, and pci-e vid card, and I cant afford that right now.

 

[Chairman Ma]

Unless you can find a Athlon XP, or better yet a mobile XP for a very very low price on the used market then I wouldn't bother upgrading the CPU.

 

[powerincarnate]

NO

Athlon XP's started getting a very IFFY product ratings right after Intel came out with Hyper Theading technology and sealed the deal against the XPs. Those 3200+ XPs are just slightly better than a 2500+ XP. Plus you can always overclock/unlock a 2500 into a 3200 (might be more difficult now as AMD started locking them after a while.)

For the biggest gains in gaming horsepower, I suggest either

A. Jump to an Athlon 64
B. Get a better Video card (16 pipelines and above, If you have GT, got to GTX, if you have X800 jump to X1600, if you have Non pro, Jump to the pro and so on.
C. Double your RAM. but doubling your RAM now a days don't have the same effect as it did 5 years ago. 5 years ago, I doubled my RAM and it made a WORLD of difference. I went from stuggling with Deus Ex. To being able to run it fine with no slowdown that I could detect.

chose whichever is cheapest and most convenient. If all else fails and your low on cash, close programs in your system tray or on in the "background", decrease texture filtering, NO AA/AF, decrease shadows and other effects and so on. If all else fails, there isn't much wrong with 1440/900 or lower res as long as it is widescreen.

 

[steveng]

i owned the LG for a little over a week but due to money issue, i had to return it. don't get me wrong. i liked the monitor a lot and would've kept it, although it uses TN panel. in fact, I think those who bashed about TN should really take a look at this new LG before commenting. we know "conventional" TN suffered from two drawbacks: low contrast ratio and narrow viewing angle. however this is only partially true on LG. yes the viewing angle still sucks like always but the black level is super black. credits to LG's f-engine feature. as for viewing angle, who cares. i mean who would look at their monitor at 45 degree from below or from any extreme angle. this monitor does cost a little more than other TN made 20" WS like benq fp202w but you really are paying for the quality. ya viewsonic vx2025 uses MVA and you can get it for $499 CND but the build quality is cheap. last night i went to local bestbuy to check what's the hype about this unit. oh boy was i disappointed. not to mention many owners of this unit reported screen door effect and backlight bleeds. trust me, bleeding is not the norm for LCD. it is a manufacture defect to say at least. anyway if you don't mind bad viewing angle, LG would be your best bet given vx2025. i have 3200+ and x800xl and they ran fine at native res. so you shouldn't have any problem. to sum up the pro and con here they are
pro:
quality
1400:1 contrast ratio
fast response time(typical TN)
no backlight bleed (i did a semi review on LG a while back with pic)

cons:
a little expensive for TN
twinkling effect in dvd playback
narrow viewing angle

hope this helps

 

[Nephandus]

I havent' checked out the LG yet, but I do have the viewsonic and so far I am well pleased with it.. I'm not sure where the above poster has seen that "many users" report screen door affect and backlight bleed.. I have seen 1 person complain about screendoor affect and less than a handful complaining about bleeding. The only thing that is slightly annoying about the viewsonic is text..I personally don't care for the way text looks on it, but i haven't seen anyone else complaining about it, so it must just be me maybe.

I'm sure both monitors will server you well, whichever you decide to go with.

 

[Ladic]

whats screen door effect?

 

[wonkman]

i owned the LG for a little over a week but due to money issue, i had to return it. don't get me wrong. i liked the monitor a lot and would've kept it, although it uses TN panel. in fact, I think those who bashed about TN should really take a look at this new LG before commenting. we know "conventional" TN suffered from two drawbacks: low contrast ratio and narrow viewing angle. however this is only partially true on LG. yes the viewing angle still sucks like always but the black level is super black. credits to LG's f-engine feature. as for viewing angle, who cares. i mean who would look at their monitor at 45 degree from below or from any extreme angle. this monitor does cost a little more than other TN made 20" WS like benq fp202w but you really are paying for the quality. ya viewsonic vx2025 uses MVA and you can get it for $499 CND but the build quality is cheap. last night i went to local bestbuy to check what's the hype about this unit. oh boy was i disappointed. not to mention many owners of this unit reported screen door effect and backlight bleeds. trust me, bleeding is not the norm for LCD. it is a manufacture defect to say at least. anyway if you don't mind bad viewing angle, LG would be your best bet given vx2025. i have 3200+ and x800xl and they ran fine at native res. so you shouldn't have any problem. to sum up the pro and con here they are
pro:
quality
1400:1 contrast ratio
fast response time(typical TN)
no backlight bleed (i did a semi review on LG a while back with pic)

cons:
a little expensive for TN
twinkling effect in dvd playback
narrow viewing angle

hope this helps

Respectfully, I couldn't disagree with you more.

I've seen both and decided on the ViewSonic. The LG is way overpriced for a TN. They are taking the cheapest panel to manufacture and selling it in the 20" market with better panels. The viewing angles are infact narrow and there are color shifts as soon as you move your head just a bit. There is also yellowing along the right and left sides when your head is centered. It's 6 bit color reproduction is also not as good. The stand is also not that adjustable and on a personal note, I think the whole thing is ugly. I dismissed it immediately.

The 2 big advantages of TN panels are that they are fast and inexpensive. When LG decided to sell this for $500, they eliminated the main advantage. Also other panel mfgs have been developing technical shortcuts to get the response times on non-TN panels lower so the "fast" advantage of TNs wasn't what it used to be. For $500 there are better choices.

I have the ViewSonic and it has its issues but build-quality isn't one of them. The stand has minimal adjustment, only DVI / VGA connections, some backlight bleeding on blackscreen, no HDCP (for what it's worth). But the picture quality/color/clarity is one of the best that I have seen (which means whatever CompUSA, CC, BB, Staples, OD, Costco and OM have on display). No screen door here. And the angles are vastly superior. Surprisingly I actually do move my head from time-to-time so the better angles are appreciated.

 

[blueadept33]

I just got the vx2025wm, It's freaking great. I see a lot of people say it has screen door effect without even knowing what it means, in many cases they are talking about backlight bleeding but say it's SDE because too many people try to sound intelligent and anyone can right a review on c.net and newegg. Anyway, using pixel buddy I did see the backlight bleeding but I have never noticed it in use except during the credits to F.E.A.R (which is all black with a little bit of white text). Also I haven't heard of any instances of dead pixels with this monitor which is really nice and the build quality doesn't seem cheap at all and in fact it matches my logitech z-5500's perfectly which is an added plus for me, since that matches my antec p-180 too . This is my frist LCD Iv'e owned, looking at LCD's in the past it has been hard for me to ever try and give up on the CRT but Iv'e finally done it and I'm extremely glad. The only problem with it for me would be lack of inputs and positioning adjustments could be better, but I actually don't care about those at all, the biggest one would be that the crappy encoded videos I ripped from DVDs REALLY STAND OUT on this! Haha, biggest and only gripe, I guess the backlight bleeding would concern me but only for piece of mind, it's really not a big deal, also my eyes feel a lot more comfortable using this going from a CRT since I spend a lot of time playing WoW and doing homework in excel and reading harry potter e-book (please don't comment). I think you will really appreciate this for the price range, I don't think anything else comes close. All you haters die, and no I'm not a !!!!!!, Iv'e seen the dells and dislike them, although the new (2007?) one looks promising but the buttons are fugly.

Oh matches my g7 and g15 too.... which does not match all my cardboard box furniture...

 

[steveng]

Respectfully, I couldn't disagree with you more.

I've seen both and decided on the ViewSonic. The LG is way overpriced for a TN. They are taking the cheapest panel to manufacture and selling it in the 20" market with better panels. The viewing angles are infact narrow and there are color shifts as soon as you move your head just a bit. There is also yellowing along the right and left sides when your head is centered. It's 6 bit color reproduction is also not as good. The stand is also not that adjustable and on a personal note, I think the whole thing is ugly. I dismissed it immediately.

different strokes for different folks but when you comment on a monitor which you never owned, be more objective. 6 bit color reproduction is not as good? how many people can actually distinguish between 6 bit and 8 bit? can you? stand not so adjustable? since when is vx2025 so adjustable? they both can just tilt. I do agree that the color shifts but only noticable on white background, not in games or movies. backlight bleed would be more an issue in games and movies. just my 2 cent

 

[wonkman]

I havent' checked out the LG yet, but I do have the viewsonic and so far I am well pleased with it.. I'm not sure where the above poster has seen that "many users" report screen door affect and backlight bleed.. I have seen 1 person complain about screendoor affect and less than a handful complaining about bleeding. The only thing that is slightly annoying about the viewsonic is text..I personally don't care for the way text looks on it, but i haven't seen anyone else complaining about it, so it must just be me maybe.

I'm sure both monitors will server you well, whichever you decide to go with.

No offense, but it may just be you. You do have ClearType on right?

 

[wonkman]

different strokes for different folks but when you comment on a monitor which you never owned, be more objective. 6 bit color reproduction is not as good? how many people can actually distinguish between 6 bit and 8 bit? can you? stand not so adjustable? since when is vx2025 so adjustable? they both can just tilt. I do agree that the color shifts but only noticable on white background, not in games or movies. backlight bleed would be more an issue in games and movies. just my 2 cent

Steveng, please read my post again. I am in fact comparing the 6 bit LG to the 8 bit VS and I do notice the difference as do may people. The 6 bit uses dithering as a kind of 'cheat' to produce more colors and many people notice or else there would be no need to produce 8 bit screens.

If you read again, you'll find that I said the VS also has a poorly adjustable stand.

Considering many Web pages are white, discoloring on a white backround would be a problem for many people.

Backlight bleed is not seen in games unless they are very dark and even then you need to look for it, and yes backlight bleed is an annoyance in the black bars that surround movies which is why I mentioned it as a weakness of the VS.

 

[killedaway]

I have the ViewSonic and it has its issues but build-quality isn't one of them. The stand has minimal adjustment, only DVI / VGA connections, some backlight bleeding on blackscreen, no HDCP (for what it's worth). But the picture quality/color/clarity is one of the best that I have seen...

QFT. i've not used many LCDs (i own a 15.4" laptop, and btwn my wife and i, we have 2 ViewSonic monitors, the VA902b and the VX2025wm, respectively), but i can recognize a quality monitor without a lot of trouble. the Viewsonic is an amazing display, and unless you are extremely concerned with "the details" or have OCD, you'd be hard-pressed to find many faults with it.

i found this same phenomenon when it came to TVs. i was sweating the details: hearing people cry about SDE, and black levels, etc... after wrestling with a few choices, i went with my gut and chose the TV i'd been eyeballing from the start, and guess what? it was FINE. too many cooks spoil the stew, and that's never been truer than when the "stew" is a new piece of kit.

check the reviews, read the opinions, see 'em in store (when possible), but ultimately understand that when it comes to these monitors, you almost can't go wrong, whether you're choosing the VS, the LG or a Dell. you're going to come away with a quality display that, especially if you've never used an LCD extensively, is going to improve your experience. save some bucks if that's your thing (it certainly is mine), or go for the big-ticket item with the slightly better specs and image.

 

[Vengance_01]

I have the Viewsonic VA1912wb 19" WS 1440x900 and it works very well. Its a 8MS tipical response time LCD, good color, decent blacks/grays and solid text display with cleartype turned on in XP. Its always below 300$ I would get the viewsonic, always have had good luck with them.

EDIT I am willing to bet its the same pannel used in latter revs of the Dell 20inch 2005 LCD