Little reasons that cause me to return my VG248qe back to newegg

Little reasons that cause me to return my VG248qe back to newegg

I preface this by saying that this is an awesome monitor for anyone who is into competitive first-person shooters like counterstrike. 120 Hz, 144 Hz, and most importantly the light boost hack is absolutely astounding. But I'm not enough of a competitive online shooter player to justify using this monitor in the long run.

Number one. The power cord was too thick. Most monitors nowadays have been power cords, attached to power bricks. These power cords are much thinner and flexible. I tend to move my monitor around a lot and the thick heavy power cord, the same type of power cord that you plug your computer AC, felt too clunky for me. But let me say that before you start flaming me, this is a very minor minor minor reason. I still wanted to list this reason however because maybe future monitor designers will take note of my suggestion to implement the dinner lighter power cords.

Of course the power cord itself needs to be long enough to accommodate various relocations of the monitor, for example from the desk to a secondary stand a few feet away. It's a hassle to have to unplug the power and re-plugged to a closer outlet because the cord length is not long enough. In the case of the center power cords with power bricks, you also face the issue of perhaps not getting a long enough cord and having to go online and find a custom compatible cord and perhaps power brick condo. This might be expensive and you may not actually get the link you want. I think there actually may be more options in terms of length that you can buy online for the traditional thicker power cords (the type that you plug your computer's AC).

Now do you see how detailed oriented I am? Yes I have obsessive-compulsive disorder and I pay attention to all the details. I have to restate that the power cord issue is very minor to me but I want to list it anyway. Okay let's move onto the next issue.

Number two. Another very minor issue. The speakers on the monitor were absolutely terrible. Certainly no audiophile could even stand to listen to the speakers. If Asus was going to put speakers that are so bad in quality, they might as well just skip the speaker option and save us some money and weight. I mean they were really really bad. I know I can just hook up extraneous speakers (which is why this is a very minor issue) but sometimes I still like the clutter of not having to use extra speakers and play directly through HDMI on my monitor. This is also why I like to use 32 inch televisions as my monitor because they have much better quality sound. Of course you can use any size television, it's just that 32 inches is a nice size for me. That's what she said, right?

There is also a certain amount of PWM flicker on this monitor. And nights I like to turn off my room lights and then the monitor. The reading text can be stressful on the eyes for those who are sensitive to PWM flicker. Again I think this is a minor issue due to the fact that most monitors have PWM, and the PWM free monitors are quite expensive. But I still want to list this year in case any future monitor designers are reading.

Granted I have also noticed that when you turn down the brightness and contrast on the monitor to very low and also turned down the brightness and contrast in your video card settings for your desktop color, (and/or also in the display color for AMD catalyst users) the PWM is much less noticeable. That is to say, the PWM flicker is much more noticeable on a monitor that has its brightness turned to very low through its own OSD menu while the computer video cards control panel has brightness and contrast on high, compared to the much lower noticeable PWM flicker when the brightness and contrast are set to low through the video cards control panel. That is to say further, it is preferable to lower the brightness and contrast the rear video cards software control panel because this does not affect PWM flicker. Only adjusting brightness duty OSD affects it. I'm not sure if adjusting contrast to the LSD affects PWM flicker as well, but it does seem to affect eyestrain a lot.

Number three. You can only adjust sharpness by increments of 10. I would prefer much finer increments because I actually like adjusting sharpness to my perfect desire for reading text in pictures as well as playing games. It certainly affects the readability of text in regardless of whether you use Windows clear type. The sharpness setting is a very powerful tool on monitors that I don't think enough people employ. Also for certain video games if you set the sharpness on your monitor to high, you be able to notice the textures on the characters and in the environments are much more detailed. This has the same effect as the loom a sharpening filter on the direct X custom filter that you can use for certain games. By the way, this custom filter is called Sweet FX and you can do a search on it and get a free download to make all your direct X games look much better.

Number four. It's a TN panel so the viewing angles were atrocious, but even more emphasized because it's a 24 inches panel. I like to use my monitor both standing up and sitting down. I haven't sent on a pretty high stand so when I sit down, the monitor becomes arguable because the view angle is so bad. This is why I love IPS MVA panels. But of course if you want to achieve such a low response time only one millisecond you have to go with TN for now. The colors were also very bad although for a TN panel, it's probably as good as you can get if you know how to adjust the colors. Of course it cannot match in IPS or VA panel., Even with adjustments. If you search on hard forum there are many people offering free calibration profiles. You can also find some on overclock.net. Out-of-the-box however, the colors were truly atrocious.

Even though you can make the argument that colors don't matter for a competitive player, it still makes gameplay more fun when your game looks vibrant and beautiful. I like to play my games while listening to my favorite music to set the mood. I play games to feel good after all. But when the colors are bad, I don't feel as immersed or as visually stimulated. This is again, why like to play games on my 32 inch TV hooked up to my computer. There are other benefits as well with having such a large screen, wink wink.