ViewSonic unveils new 120Hz monitor. Is it really that good?
Recently at the NVISION2008 conference, ViewSonic unveiled a 22 inch 120Hz monitor targeted at gaming and digital entertainment. The prototype monitor promises blur-free performance and a 3D viewing experience for games, motion video, and computer animation. It boasts a 1680×1050 resolution (whaaa? No 1080p?, 3ms gray-to-gray response time, 300 nits of high brightness and a 1000:1 contrast ratio. According to the press release, “When coupled with NVIDIA’s GeForce Stereoscopic 3D technology, the ViewSonic 120Hz display provides game enthusiasts with realistic depth, intense motion, rich graphics and detailed images that literally leap off the screen. ” So BGR readers, weigh in. Is this revolutionary or is it just hype? We doubt you could beat our 55″ Sony XBR8 in terms of gaming… Oh wait, we weren’t supposed to say we had one.
im hating on the xbr8
The XBR8 is going to be MUCH larger than these PC monitors. Unless you are waiting on the XBR8. Typo’s can be a bitch.
Wasn’t the XBR8 supposed to be out by now? I’ve been waiting forever. 55″ is too small for my living room but it would be perfect for my bedroom!
I give it two thumbs up! A friend of mine is a big wig at ViewSonic and let me try it out. It’s the best monitor I’ve ever used hands down.
Typo’s are a b@&*. fixed,thanks. btw, the 55″ was projected for sept.
“detailed images that literally leap off the screen” means that images will actually physically come out of the screen. As in things will fall out of your monitor that you can touch with your hands. Did the person writing their press release just come out of high school?
Yes the images do literally come put of the screen.. Obviously you can touch them physically. If you try and touch them your hand just goes through the image like it was a ghost. The 3D affects are amazing.
If its not 1080p I don’t care… If you buy any screen, monitor, or HDTV that is not 1080p, your making a big mistake because that’s where the future is.
Not really… 1680×1050 is not that far from 1900×1080, so you are barely missing any details.. especially in such a small 22 inch monitor.. I actually think since the size is so small, at 1080p on a 22″, you would be losing far more detail. 1680×1050 is A LOT more than 720p, and very very close to 1080p, so it is all fine.
Bart, I hardly think that you response is even reasonable, much less appropriate. Perhaps you have no taste for the literary, but the description used is obviously NOT to be taken literally.
Also, if you’d ever experienced aa great example of what is commonly referred to as ‘3D Imagery’, you see that things can certainly ‘appear’ to leap off of or leap out of the screen, though of course we all know that they do not.
This is all about enjoying the experience…I’ll never comprehend why some seem to only find pleasure in finding fault with others by any means possible.
Thank you for your time, and please have a great day!
Its for the new Nvidia 3D glasses they require a 120 hz refresh rate.
If you saw the killer Nvidia 3D glasses in action at CES this year, you will really look forward to this monitor. I’m looking for the cheapest way to get 120Hz so that I can start playing the 150+ 3D games available…
No doubt about the 120hz. The 120hz by itself isn’t that great. But, with the NVIDIA stereo shutter glasses, it’s perfect. 1680×1050 is a nice resolution for a small monitor. It’s right at the point where it’s hard to tell the difference between 4xAA and 8xAA. Either way, the point of this monitor is to be a cheaper alternative to the way overpriced 120hz big brands. ViewSonic has always made value products (not value like cheap crap, value like good $/feature ratio.) If you’ve played a really good stereo game (like Tomb Raider: Underworld) you could understand the appeal of this monitor. It is very much worth it.
Wash your mouth!
It will help your spirit, if it’s not dead already.
Basically what this nvidia set is, is a new set of “shutter glasses” that some gamers have been using for years. The problem though that we have been having for years was headaches thanks to flicker causes by terrible refresh rates. And when they say it virtually hops off the screen, it pretty much does. Basically how it works is, (faster than your eye can notice) the glasses aren’t clear, they are LCD, but the lcd only works like those old school digital wristwatches from like back in the 80’s. They turn the clear lense black 1 eye at a time at 60 hz per eye going back and forth. Mean while on your 120hz monitor it’s actually showing 2 images really fast back to back in coordination with the shutter glasses feeding 2 images at once into your brain giving you a 3d effect like that of a 3d viewmaster from the 80’s. It’s reletively old technology with higher refresh rate to save on the headaches.
This monitor is great. Not having 1080p is not a problem for its audience; they want the doubled visible framerate and 1680×1050 is a good resolution. Besides, this monitor gives you the full resolution, whereas the XBR8 would only give you a certain resolution and stretch it over a massive area.
As a PC gamer, this beats the XBR8 hands-down, since the XBR8 is only really for those console gamers sitting far away from their screens that need a bigger monitor when their friends are over to play, so they can actually see what they’re doing, or for families watching trashy television in the living room.
Also:
“Whaaa? No 1080p?”
This is a 16:10 monitor, not a 16:9. 1200p is what you’re thinking of.
Besides, I’m sure they’ll make some 120hz 24″ (1920×1200, 16:10) monitors, shortly, but I’d stay away from them, unless you like your monitor being to big for your own good.
They won’t be making true 1080p @ 120hz anytime soon as it’s a higher bandwidth than dual link DVI can handle. They’ll need to come up with a new connector and get the video card vendors to support it.
This article doesn’t understand the market this monitor is aimed at. PC gamers often look specifically for 1860×1050 monitors as they want to play in native resolution and have it be low enough to get high FPS. They also look for extremely low input lag and ghosting. Your XBR8 would be an absolutely terrible choice for this market.
Console gamers tend to be completely oblivious to latency and ghosting and interpolation/stretching and stuff. This is not a monitor aimed at console gamers.