ViewSonic VA2448-LED review

There’s not much to tweak in the menu, but you do get a choice of colour temperatures including sRGB and a user mode where you can set the individual red, green and blue levels. The dynamic contrast is best left disabled; as with virtually every other monitor we’ve tested, it can’t overcome the fact that the LCD panel’s native contrast is only 1,000:1. Also, the obvious brightness changes when watching a video or playing a game are distracting.

Despite this, image quality is surprisingly good. We couldn’t improve on the default settings, except to reduce brightness slightly. Colours are natural enough for editing photos and video; they’re not oversaturated, and not too dull. Our test photos highlighted no problems at all. Contrast is perfectly acceptable for a monitor at this price – plenty of detail was retained in cloudy skies, for example, where other monitors simply show white areas. We saw no blurring or any other problems with motion when playing games or watching videos, either.

If you have two computers connected, you’ll appreciate that you can quickly switch between the VGA and DVI inputs by pressing the ‘2’ button. Pressing the up or down buttons provides direct access to brightness and contrast. Oddly, there’s no shortcut to the two Eco modes, ‘Optimize’ and ‘Conserve’. These reduce power consumption from 19W to 15W and 12W respectively but, as with other displays, this merely reduces brightness.

If you don’t need a monitor with an HDMI input or a height-adjustable stand that rotates to portrait mode, ViewSonic’s VA2448-LED is a great-value no-frills monitor.