Times have passed on (Viewsonic E70)

Member Name: JGK555

Product:	Viewsonic E70
Date:	27/02/07 (371 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very cheap alternative to TFT

Disadvantages: Big and Bulky

I've had a 17" Viewsonic E70 CRT monitor for about seven years now as well as many others brands before and during that time, I've spent quite a few hours in front of many different monitors, One monitor I used had a blurry screen... it was fine watching movies and playing games but trying to read standard sized text was painful after a few sentences, most others had fine screens but after an hour sometimes less I would get intense headache's, I read some time ago this is due to the on screen flickering that you don't see with the naked eye, but if you point a camera at a CRT monitor and look at the camera display you will see it. I found that this viewsonic is the only one that didn't cause any noticeable side affects, it had a very clear and bright screen with many adjustable features, Its is the best CRT I've come across but unfortunately a few months ago it finally gave up on me... I cant complane it served me good for seven years.

Monitor design
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Its just like most CRTs, big, bulky, and box shaped nothing fancy but it does the job its supposed to do. On the front there are five rectangular buttons for accessing the functions of this monitor, they are centered aligned on the bottom except for the power which is on the far right and use OSD (on screen display) is easy to understand and maneuver once you spend a couple of minutes looking at the options. They are 1, 2, up, and down. These buttons allow you to set the brightness, contrast, position, size, color, and other settings that are not so useful like warping the screen. To use these settings press button 1 to open the settings menu then use the arrows to select the option you want to change and use button 2 to set, you use the up and down buttons to adjust these settings. I think it is not that an efficient design, the OCD could do with simple symbols displaying what buttons to press on each screen as I found myself using trial and error to it figure out... it only takes a couple of tries to get things the way you want them, and then you only need to adjust them if you have a major hardware change so its not a big deal but it would have been nice for faster navigation through the settings.

Display
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The maximum resolution of this monitor is 1280x1024, The horizontal dot pitch for this monitor is 0.23mm and the diagonal dot pitch is 0.27mm. This makes the image quality excellent and is never blurry or extra sharp... movies, games and text are always clear and easy to read. The colour and contrast is alway true to whatever you were viewing, The 17" screen made it very good for movies and games.

Dimension & Weight
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This monitor weighs about 33 pounds it is 16 inches wide, 16.7 inches high and 14 inches in dept. This is not the easiest monitor to move or position due to its weight and size well not compared to the newer TFT monitors but it does have a adjustable stand so once its on your desk it can easily be pointed in the direction you choose.

Overall view
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CRT computer monitors are becoming a thing of the past, since TFTs are now really cheap and a lot smaller however this monitor would make a perfect back up or very cheep replacement, I would recommend it for those purposes but if you have the funds, go for a TFT with a contrast ratio of 700-1 it will deliver the same results.

Summary: perfect for a back up monitor.

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