ASUS MS238H Review - Slim and Affordable
by Brian Klug on December 24, 2010 1:47 AM ESTBrightness and Contrast
For brightness we display white and black levels at maximum and minimum brightness as allowed by the OSD, and divide the two to get contrast. We use the same colorimeter described earlier. In this case, an Xrite i1D2 with ColorEyes Display Pro.
Again the MS238H packs WLED backlighting so settle time after brightness changes and power-on isn't very long, on the order of just a few minutes instead of the usual half hour to 45 minutes for CCFL backlighting.
This is probably the only considerable weak point in the MS238H performance. Brightness isn't stellar at all, peaking at 261 nits, with a minimum of 89 nits. Again, it's clear that power savings, cost, and profile were the chief concerns here, and all that means fewer backlight LEDs. Blacks are middling - I'm a bit disappointed the black level at 89 nits isn't better, and contrast as a result suffers all around at around 560. I used the MS238H for a long time and didn't really ever find myself want for more contrast, but it just isn't a star performer on paper here.
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CharonPDX - Friday, December 24, 2010 - link
Is this what you are looking for?http://www.amazon.com/Male-3-5mm-Stereo-Female-Y-C...
Brian Klug - Saturday, December 25, 2010 - link
Wow, this is actually exactly what I've always wanted. I've got a million RCA->female 3.5mm stereo jacks with female-female connectors on them for when I use my consoles with my FP241W displays. This is awesome! Our commenters rock! Thanks!-Brian
jmunjr - Friday, December 24, 2010 - link
16:9 is absolutely absurd for a computer monitor... I don't know where this trend came from but my guess is the LCD makers realized they could make more profits this way and did some nifty marketing to dupe the morons in the world into thinking it was actually a better format for computing...In protest I have modified a dozen or so of my popular websites by reducing their widths to require even more vertical space.
bhopfner - Friday, December 24, 2010 - link
It's totally true! A widescreen monitor is 20% smaller than the same monitor at 4:3. So of course the LCD industry went with that format. They must save millions. Sure a movie looks great and some games take advantage of the format but for general computing it doesn't help. I want my 20% extra screen real estate!sprockkets - Friday, December 24, 2010 - link
This is dumb. My web browser fits just fine here, and compared to my old 1280x1024 monitor resolution on a 17" monitor, it isn't losing any pixels.This is just another stupid made up issue.
How about I can't use my cable box with a 1920x1200 box without some distortion happening without correction? Ever thought about why they went to 1920x1080? Really missed those 80 pixels on a 1280x800 vs. 1280x720 either?
dertechie - Friday, December 24, 2010 - link
If a 23" monitor barely gains vertically on a 17" monitor, that's not a good thing.You can't use your cable box with a 1920x1200. That's an indictment of the cable box or a monitor designer that neglected to include a 1:1 or preserve aspect ratio mode, not an indictment of the aspect ratio.
We have thought about why they went to 16:9. They can get 11% more panels from a sheet of mother glass (and that's not even counting being able to find more efficient ways to cut it, it may be more). HDTV popularized it, they sell better, and economy of scale compounds that. I actually like seeing 1080p on screens below 24", it's a step forward there.
For media, 1080p is great. Where I don't like 1080p is when I see it in the areas I used to see 1920x1200. 24"-28" monitors used to be mainly 1920x1200. Now, they're mainly 1080p and you have to actually look to find a 16:10 one. It feels like we've regressed instead of going forward. For those of us doing vertically oriented work (like programming), those 120 pixels actually do matter. Nice monitors let you turn the screen, but cheap monitors (and especially cheap TN monitors) don't allow that.
Fritzr - Monday, December 27, 2010 - link
Your cable box should work just fine with a 1920x1200 display. You should see a black band above and below the TV picture though. What you cannot do on a 1920x1080 display is use 1920x1200 wallpaper (a standard size) without distorting it with the 'stretch to fit' display setting.Those blsck bands are NOT a failure of your cable box. It is called letterboxing. The black bands represent the unused portion of the display. If you watch SD broadcasts without reformatting, you will see the same banding on the sides as the picture is not wide enough to fill the screen.
Many HD TVs have an automatic adjustment that stretches the picture to fit the screen. This results in distorted video when viewing 16:9 content on a 4:3 screen and vice versa.
Personally I will accept the penalty imposed by a 16:10 aspect ratio where I am forced to see more of the web page than an HDTV can display.
I would like to get one of the higher resolution screens also. You should avoid those like the plague though...A 3840x2400 cinema class monitor would display your TV screen as a tiny box in the center of the display ... at least until you enable 'stretch to fit display' anywho.
Really scary though is the next generation UltraHiDef TV standard that has been demonstrated in Japan 7680x4320 (16:9) and tbe WHUXGA monitor standard at 7680x4800 (16:10) Those would be nice for big screen displays :)
MobiusStrip - Saturday, January 1, 2011 - link
You won't see this in the U.S. Our asinine "advanced" TV "standard" still allows interlacing and a non-integer frame rate, caps the bitrate at 19 megabits per second, and did not require sets to have updatable firmware. Nor does it define what "HD" means. How many ways can you fail?Then again, we're talking about the successor to the governing body that came up with 29.97 FPS in the first place.
mike8675309 - Thursday, December 30, 2010 - link
People just don't get it, and it is a flaw due to the shift in technology from analog monitors to digital monitors. Their expectations are just so much lower because the common use case simply doesn't demand the vertical resolution.Back in the day where dot pitch and image masks everyone understood what was better, and what was worse. These days they see 24" vs 17" and assume it's better, when in fact it can often be worse and at best, only minimally better.
Sure, movies work at these low vertical resolutions. So do web pages, for the most part. But for software developers and many other technology professionals these low vertical resolutions completely bite and are a tremendous step backward from the reasonably priced performance levels achievable with CRT's in the early 90's.
Sepidoel - Friday, December 24, 2010 - link
Very unfortunate, in my country it's sold way pricier than Amazon (about 340 USD). In regards of 23" LCD, perhaps you may compare it with AOC iF23 - an IPS LED LCD with very affordable price (about 270 USD in my place). I bought one for my sister and I say this is great monitor for the price. I'd like to write an article for Anandtech, but I just simply don't know how to bring up the benchmark numbers.Amazon URL for the 22" one: http://www.amazon.com/22IN-LCD-1920X1080-30000-Pia...