My review of this inexpensive high performance 17 inch monitor, the Acer V173B. The difference between this one and V173BM are the built-in stereo speakers. The one that I purchased has no built-in speakers. The model that has the built in speakers, as as well as the one with out speakers uses the same case. It's because of this, Acer was able to keep the price down for this model. This tend to make this unit a little bulkier than it should be at 2 5/8 inch thick for the monitor case. Also this unit only has VGA input instead of VGA and DVI. Having only VGA input is no handicap at this point for a 17 inch monitor since technology has advanced so much to a point where DVI is only necessary for a much larger higher definition model. The native resolution for this model is 1280 x 1024 pixels at 4:3 aspect Ratio. The six control buttons are located in a very conventional area of the monitor at the bottom front face right hand corner. The first button on the right is power on and off, the two buttons next to that is the scroll buttons and the fourth button from the right to menu button. A fifth button is the Auto-Configure as well as the Enter button. The sixth button or the first one on the left is used for selecting preset mode such as User which is customizable, and for other four modes that is not adjustable by the user. These modes as follow, Texts, Standard, Graphics and Movie. Included in the box as follow, the monitor, the base line cord, VGA cable and the CD-ROMs that contains the user's menu with the installation instructions. Also included in the CD is the software "Acer eDisplay Management" that you can install to adjust the monitor under Windows instead of pushing the buttons at the front of the monitor. It also comes with a owner's menu booklet and warranty pamphlet with instructions on how to register your new product at Acer. The controls on this monitor is relatively easy to learn how to operate and even easier under Windows using the included software. Being an inexpensive monitor, the stand has no provision for height adjustments or rotation. Only thing it can do is tilt up or down a little. The warranty on this unit is three years parts and labor including the backlights. The warranty is not as good as my previous unit, the warranty does not cover postage to and from the repair site. On their website it lists carry-in to their repair facility. Like other companies, the warranty replacement entails a refurbished unit in many cases or refurbished parts.
I am extremely happy with the performance of this 17 inch monitor. The backlighting on this unit is extremely consistent as far as uniformity throughout the screen with equal brightness in fact slightly better than my previous unit. I am lucky with this unit having zero dead pixels. The problem with LCD monitors is that some of us has to live with a few dead pixels in some cases. They have improved quite a bit in the last few years in manufacturing LCD products with no defects right out of the factory. The manufacturers cannot afford to discard each and every one of those panels with a few dead pixels. So to keep costs down, they end up selling them to a few unlucky buyers. My last three purchase of monitors has zero dead pixels on them. The first time when I turned this unit on with my computer, I ran a dead pixel test using DPT program and the result was perfect. And like my previous unit, this unit runs extremely cool with very little heat output from the back. When set to the Graphics mode, the screen is extremely bright in fact too bright for me for browsing the Internet or for reading text. When set using the native resolution, the text is extremely clear and extremely uniform color wise with no color bleeding. The color uniformity is also extremely good throughout the screen with extremely wide viewing angle at about 160° both horizontal and vertical. This is in fact slightly better than my previous monitor even though that one claims to have similar specifications. For a brand-new monitor that sells for less than $100, this is quite outstanding in my opinion. So for those of you who don't mind a standard aspect ratio instead of a wide screen, this one would make an excellent choice.
| Standing screen display size | 17 Inches |
|---|---|
| Max Screen Resolution | 1280 x 1024 |
