Viewsonic's 23-inch VP2290b LCD puts even those new Apple displays to shame
By Peter Rojas 
posted July 6th 2004 3:27PM
posted July 6th 2004 3:27PM
TrustedReviews checks out ViewSonic's new ultrahigh-resolution VP2290b widescreen 23-inch LCD, which with a
staggering 3,840 x 2,400 pixels, has more than twice as many pixels as Apple's new 30-inch Cinema Display, and nearly
four times as many pixels as Apple's 23-inch counterpart. That's enough pixels that you can look at eight or nine
megapixel digital photos in their entirety without having to shrink them down at all. Besides nearly bankrupting you,
we suspect you might need to upgrade your video card to get this one to work.
[Via Designtechnica]
software is no longer the only thing pushing hardware developments.
I admire the resolution, but the icons seem microscopic... theres a lot of text that must be illegible, let alone controllers; as an example, Propellerhead's excellent Reason music app sports really tiny on-screen controllers and text, even on 72-96 dpi displays, Viewsonic's screen res will dwarf the pixel-precise knobs, widgets and buttons appearing in many applications... Nice resolution, but many modern apps will have to be redesigned to accomodate so many pixels, let alone Operating Systems. ViewSonic is a bit ahead of time here, methinks.
Maybe there should be something like a breabox next to it or something for scale
Maybe there should be something like a breabox next to it or something for scale
A real steal at $6399! And don't forget you'll need at least a Radeon 8500 to drive that monitor (according to Viewsonic).
It's too bad it has a 50ms pixel response time, over 3 times the 23" Cinema Display's 16ms.
Hey look it's the Hummer of LCD monitors!
Interesting product but not that useful except for a very niche group of consumers. The VP2290b not only costs $6200 but it also requires a $2500 Matrox dual channel DVI display card! So you're really looking at $8700 for a 22" high res monitor in this space.
The new 30" Cinema from Apple is a 4 Megapixel monitor (2560x1600), which is nothing to sniff at. But even though it has a lower resolution, it has several advantages over the Viewsonic/Matrox solution:
- The Cinema costs only $2999 plus a $600 dual channel DVI card from NTI (that will drive TWO 30" Cinema displays).
- Besides the ultra high res of the monitor it has a 400:1 contrast ratio (same as the Viewsonic) but is significantly brighter (270 cd/m2 vs. 235 cd/m2 for the Viewsonic).
But what makes the Cinema truly useful, where the Viewsonic is not, is that it has a pixel response time of an amazing 16ms vs. the dirt slow 50ms response time of the Viewsonic. Such a slow PRT makes the Viewsonic useless for video playback or editing applications.
It should also be mentioned that there is a "sweet spot" for LCD monitor resolution that balances providing detail on photographic editing applications while sustaining the general readability of text. Apple maintains that this sweet spot is 100 pixels per inch (PPI). The Viewsonic is over twice that so, while it is great for imaging, it makes for a very poor productivity computing display. Thus Viewsonic recommends using a second, lower res monitor for display of text.
By the way, the Apple monitor is SWOP certified for direct to offset printing without the need for proofing. The Viewsonic is not.
I kept hearing the Microsoft guys saying that Longhorn is designed for the "new high-resolution monitors" that will be available in a few years. Native Longhorn apps use vector graphics (not pixels! pixels are dead!) so they scale nicely to any resolution. And now I suppose this is the kind of monitor they were talking about....
While considering purchase of a new LCD TV with DVI connectors I had narrowed down to Viewsonic 30" display and the newest in the market from Ben Q the specs for these are identical, except the price Viewsonic was way too high priced. So I went ahead and bought BenQ D3070 30" LCD TV. I have connected my computer to the DVI terminal. I have ATI 9600XT video card. While the clarity is O.K. I want to know if I should upgrade the video card. Your suggestions please.
Peter
Dan's detailed reponse has a minor error - that dual channel card won't drive two of the 30" displays. Both channels are required to drive the single display. This is because there's a bandwidth limit on a DVI channel, and the Cinema 30 exceeds that limit.
This Viewsonic display also exceeds the limits of a single DVI channel. Heck, it even exceeds the limits of two DVI channels. It requires FOUR DVI channels (or two LFH channels, each carrying the equivalent of two DVI channels). So you will need a VERY specialised card to drive this, like the Parhelia HR256.
Tony, you are incorrect. The Nvidia card that apple requires for use with the 30" cinema display most certainly *can* drive two at once. It has two DVI channels per DVI port, for a total of four DVI channels, and thus, two 30" cinema displays. Do a little fact checking before you spout off.
i'm confused about what kind of video card is necessary to drive this monitor. like you say, to get full resolution, you would need the bandwidth of 4 DVI channels. yet Viewsonic says we should be able to get full resolution using a lowly Radeon 8500 video card. how does that make sense?
Avalon will indeed support flexible scaling of the UI.
In this regard, Mac OS X's Quartz is also vector based, but right now display is "bitmapped" maybe a little too early. But Apple's developer site has always said that resolution independence it's in the future for Mac OS X, and Tiger will sport 256x256 icon views, with smooth interpolation between sizes...
But right now, Mac OS X dock or menubar on this Viewsonic monitor would be nearly invisible... at least you can set icon resolutions and text size for Finder windows, and system text size with Tinkertool