Acer AL2423W 24" Review, Pics.

im a 40 year old hard core gamer and i bought the acer al2416w a couple weeks ago. all i can say is WOW. bf2 looks great.
 
Heres my acers they're excellent, more than enough room for every thing I do, I went from an 30" Olevia LCD/TV. Age of Empires III looks beautiful at 1920 x 1200 res.


studio2.jpg


studio1.jpg


studio3.jpg
 
First of all- awesome review, Cornflake. You put a lot of effort into that and it is appreciated. Like you, I had been shopping for a 24" monitor and it isn't easy. There are so many trade-offs with the different options. And like you, I did my research and decided on the Acer 2423W. I am very very happy. The screen is exceptional. My two main purposes for the monitor are general PC use with DVD/HD movie watching (with a tv tuner card as a future experiment to get OTA HD) and for the Xbox 360. With the VGA cable, the 360 is WICKED on this monitor. I thought I would post some (admittedly poor- any weirdness in the pictures is my photo skills and not the monitor) pictures of the display running 360 output. Maybe this will help someone else in their research. The bottom line: awesome monitor and I am very happy with it.

Some pics:







Back to Burnout...
 
Does the monitor have any sort of "mode" switching through the menu - to choose between movies, computer, "bright" - that sort of thing?

Sometimes these modes let you defeat the overdrive technology that lowers the response time.
 
Hey thanks for the 360 pics on the acer handstopple it does look great, im beggining to think that you get a better picture using the vga cable on the 360 than you do with the component cables. someone on the newegg.com review mentioned the same thing.
 
Regula Oblique said:
Hey thanks for the 360 pics on the acer handstopple it does look great, im beggining to think that you get a better picture using the vga cable on the 360 than you do with the component cables. someone on the newegg.com review mentioned the same thing.
Click to expand...

Yeah, there's some debate about that. I haven't seen what it looks like on component, but I can say that I couldn't be happier with the VGA hookup. Sometimes I just stare at it. I'm sure the novelty will wear off, but it's quite pretty. And my poor photography skills don't even do it justice. Glad you found the pics helpful.
 
Damnit... I shoulda got this instead of the Dell 24". :(

Does it suffer from a green/red/yellow trail when you move dark objects over a pure white background?
 
Mine is en route...will be here tomorrow. Going from a seven year old 19 inch CRT to this. Besides having a lot more desktop space, how much more viewing realestate should I be expecting? I keep reading how people expected it to be big, but were "amazed" at how big it really was. Isn't it the same height as a 19, but 5-6 inches wider?
 
Sanctuary said:
Mine is en route...will be here tomorrow. Going from a seven year old 19 inch CRT to this. Besides having a lot more desktop space, how much more viewing realestate should I be expecting? I keep reading how people expected it to be big, but were "amazed" at how big it really was. Isn't it the same height as a 19, but 5-6 inches wider?
Click to expand...

CRTs are measured differently. I have had a 22" CRT and the 24" FW900 CRT. A 24" LCD is huge!!!
 
i've had the acer 2423 for a couple of weeks now and couldn't be more pleased. after comparing almost all the 24" panels on the market right now, this is clearly the best value and probably the best hands down.

my girlfriend's company bought her the new sony 23" -- and we both agree the acer looks and feels better.

HDCP is the only knock against it...and most of us don't see that as big deal anyhow.
 
cukes38 said:
i've had the acer 2423 for a couple of weeks now and couldn't be more pleased. after comparing almost all the 24" panels on the market right now, this is clearly the best value and probably the best hands down.

my girlfriend's company bought her the new sony 23" -- and we both agree the acer looks and feels better.

HDCP is the only knock against it...and most of us don't see that as big deal anyhow.
Click to expand...

This sony?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16824006084
 
Ok, I have a little update. My monitor just broke. Apparently, out of the blue. I went to make dinner, came back and the screen was blank (screensaver). After moving the mouse, the ouput come back, and then disappears completely. I cannot even get into the OSD.

So I figure: lose cable -> nope
try VGA input -> nope
"reboot" monitor (i.e. switch power off and on with the button that is illuminated green when the monitor is on) and tada! my image is back. For ~5 seconds then it's gone again.

At this point I am WTF?

Luckily I still have my trusty dell 2001FP and am typing on my dell now.

I have tried this:

different power outlet
different VGA/ DVI cable
different graphics card
different resolutions
different OSs (WinXP and Vista)
different POWER CORDs

Considering that my Dell works flawlessly, I would guess I am going to call newegg tomorrow to either get a replacement of my money back, at which point I'd get a Dell.

While I understand that I am completely unreasonable, I just spent $700 on a new monitor and it's broken. While this may happen, I am PISSED. Especially since this one did not have a broken pixel at all and who knows what my replacement would be like.

*grr*

oh, if you do have a suggestion on how to fix it, I am ALL ears. Apparently my OSD is now in Japanese (for the two seconds that I saw a "no signal source" message in cryptic characters).
 
this morning it seems to be behaving, which is 'great' since I can see it failing at some point when my warranty runs out or I have to go through acer...
 
update on my situation: I came back from lunch and it suddenly exhibited the same problems. I am getting it replaced, though the problem is intermittent.
 
I've been running one of these for about 2 weeks now. I like it :). HDCP thing sucks though as I didn't really want to go get another monitor :(. Backlight bleed issues that I had with my 2405 aren't present at all. Nice panel overall. No dead pixels either.
 
hmmm. i bought mine, and almost all of my products from a retail store local. they will get me a new one and loan me replacement parts for anything under warranty. i'm never out more than a day b/c of their generousity.
 
Is there a way to keep the desktop icons, and viewing in general from looking "stretched" by default? I know that certain games do not support widescreen and some can be forced, but I'm just talking about general viewing. Is it supposed to look like this? It's kind of like watching a movie or playing a game on a widescreen television instead of 4:3...it's stretched and looks pretty bad.

Currently using a 6800gt if that helps.

*other than that* as far as the monitor itself is concerned...wow, it's very vibrant and everything looks crisp. I've only had it out of the box for about an hour now, so I haven't really had a chance to game with it yet, but I'm honestly not to worried about it anyway until I do a complete system upgrade and get a much more powerful card.
 
Sanctuary said:
Is there a way to keep the desktop icons, and viewing in general from looking "stretched" by default? I know that certain games do not support widescreen and some can be forced, but I'm just talking about general viewing. Is it supposed to look like this? It's kind of like watching a movie or playing a game on a widescreen television instead of 4:3...it's stretched and looks pretty bad.

Currently using a 6800gt if that helps.

*other than that* as far as the monitor itself is concerned...wow, it's very vibrant and everything looks crisp. I've only had it out of the box for about an hour now, so I haven't really had a chance to game with it yet, but I'm honestly not to worried about it anyway until I do a complete system upgrade and get a much more powerful card.
Click to expand...
set your desktop resolution to 1920x1200 -> done.
 
Sanctuary said:
Is there a way to keep the desktop icons, and viewing in general from looking "stretched" by default? I know that certain games do not support widescreen and some can be forced, but I'm just talking about general viewing. Is it supposed to look like this? It's kind of like watching a movie or playing a game on a widescreen television instead of 4:3...it's stretched and looks pretty bad.

Currently using a 6800gt if that helps.

*other than that* as far as the monitor itself is concerned...wow, it's very vibrant and everything looks crisp. I've only had it out of the box for about an hour now, so I haven't really had a chance to game with it yet, but I'm honestly not to worried about it anyway until I do a complete system upgrade and get a much more powerful card.
Click to expand...

What's your resolution set at? My icons are fine as long as I have it set to the native 1920x1200 resolution. Edit: Oops...looks like someone beat me to it :).
 
drizzt81 said:
set your desktop resolution to 1920x1200 -> done.
Click to expand...
Yeah I could, but I play World of Warcraft as well, and not sure the card will be capable of running that in a raid setting, even with everything set to best performance in the card options, and all of the in game options on medium. When I said I wasn't worried about gaming right now, I meant games that are actually stressful on a video card, especially at the higher resolutions. ;)

Another thing, why does all my text have a rainbow-like association to it? Within all of the white text you can see shades of RGB and with black text you can see similar. I know I'm not supposed to be expecting CRT clarity, but come on, it shouldn't look blurry or have these wierd shadow overlays. It's almost like someone having perfect vision putting on another persons perscription glasses...
 
Sanctuary said:
Yeah I could, but I play World of Warcraft as well, and not sure the card will be capable of running that in a raid setting, even with everything set to best performance in the card options, and all of the in game options on medium. When I said I wasn't worried about gaming right now, I meant games that are actually stressful on a video card, especially at the higher resolutions. ;)

Another thing, why is my text somewhat blurry? Enabling cleartype didn't seem to help. It's like part of the text isn't even drawn in fully and looks almost partially transparent, or some of the pixles are grey while others black.
Click to expand...

Your resolution at desktop needs to be 1920x1200 or else text and everything else will be blurry. You can set game resolutions independently of the desktop based on your video card power.
 
It's not really doing it for me, or maybe what I am experiencing is an entirely different issue. It's not that the text is hard to read, because it's not at all. It's that there is this wierd "oil on top of water" look that all of the text has. Black looks like black with a shdow of red, green and blue and white text looks like a prism. Another thing is that if I take my cursor and slowly move it across the text, I can actually see it changing to solid colors (blue, orange, red etc). Is this normal?

I mean, don't get me wrong...everything else looks fabulous, it's just that solid black text or pure white text looks terrible to me.
 
Sanctuary said:
It's not really doing it for me, or maybe what I am experiencing is an entirely different issue. It's not that the text is hard to read, because it's not at all. It's that there is this wierd "oil on top of water" look that all of the text has. Black looks like black with a shdow of red, green and blue and white text looks like a prism. Another thing is that if I take my cursor and slowly move it across the text, I can actually see it changing to solid colors (blue, orange, red etc). Is this normal?

I mean, don't get me wrong...everything else looks fabulous, it's just that solid black text or pure white text looks terrible to me.
Click to expand...

What is the refresh rate set to?
 
Highest reported refresh rate for the Acer 2423 is actuall 75hz, just have no clue what res that is, its definetly not the native.
 
drizzt81 said:
there are different refresh rates for an LCD?
Click to expand...

I notice that there are some display problems if I don't have it set to certain frequencies. Larger LCD's usually have a default of 60hz though. Some 19" ones though can be kind of random. I'll get distortion if I don't have it at something strange like 72hz depending on the monitor.
 
Just Got my Acer AL2423WDR. Spent awhile hooking it up and removing my old reliable Sony/IBM 21". It worked for about 5 minutes then just started shutting down to black screen. I called Acer. No Help. Called Newegg and they said they would send me a replacement. The point being, I took time off work to recieve it. Spent more time rearranging my desktop to accomodate it. Fired it up. Absolutely awesome then the black screen. Spent hours on the phone. Had to put my Sony back into service. Then had to get drunk, take two xanax, some red thai kratom and a bit of "La Bleu Clandestine" Absinthe. Just to handle the frustration and the fact that I lost about $500 bucks just taking the time off work. Point being now it will be about 2 weeks before I get a replacement, more time from work since I work 7 days a week. So the damn thing will end up costing me about $1800 dollars. Newegg did agree to give me $25 dollars off my next purchase. WOW. Sometimes it's just better to stick with what you have, and be thankfull you have anything at all. Call me a whiner but all I wanted to do was hook up my new monitor and play a bit of Battlefield2, HalfLife2 and go to bed. Jesus. Maybe go with the Dell. Hell, I felt like I was owed a blowjob after all that. Good Luck with the Acer.
 
Question for all you AL2423 owners - does this monitor display 16:9 content from a XBOX / XBOX 360 or HD Cable box (over VGA) with black bars on the top and bottom?

Are there are aspect ratio controls for non-native resolutions?

Thanks!
 
chaoszen said:
Just Got my Acer AL2423WDR. Spent awhile hooking it up and removing my old reliable Sony/IBM 21". It worked for about 5 minutes then just started shutting down to black screen.
Click to expand...
THAT is my exact issue. 100% the same! I hope that the replacement that just arrived is better. Let's see.

ps.: what is your job? I want to make $500/ day.
 
sethk said:
Question for all you AL2423 owners - does this monitor display 16:9 content from a XBOX / XBOX 360 or HD Cable box (over VGA) with black bars on the top and bottom?

Are there are aspect ratio controls for non-native resolutions?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

I can only speak to Xbox 360 over VGA- there are no, repeat, no black bars on the screen. Set the 360 to 1280x768 and you're set. I put some pictures of my Acer displaying full-screen HD 360 content on page 3 of this thread. Hope that helps.
 
Chaoszen:

Can't you have the monitor shipped to your work? Or do you have a friend/family in the area you could have it shipped to? Even if they would only be home on weekends, you can opt for Fedex shipping, which delivers on Saturday. Just suggestions to not be loosing a butt load of money.
 
I would like to get this monitor.

I am pretty noobish with computers though. I plan on starting with a single ATI 1950 512 MB and maybe upgrading to dual Nvidia SLI cards after DX10 comes out.

Is lack of 1:1 Pixel mapping going to be a problem on this monitor if I don't go Nvidia from the start?

Also, do you think a single 512 MB 1950 from ATI is enough to power the ACer or do I need crossfire or SLI?
 
I'm running a single x1900xtx and it runs everything fine at native res [1920x1200]. but liek others have said, even if you put it on 1600x1200 it looks amazing. a 1950 should hold you over until you can get a crossfire rig later on, just add another card. personally, i'm waiting for the dx10 cards and doing them in x-fire and using my 1900xtx as a physics processor.
 
I decided to pick up a single Nvidia 1GB 7950 GX2 instead of the ATI 1950. That way I get scaling if I need it for my older games. And I can wait a little longer for DX10 to really mature before I upgrade. The extra cost of the Nvidia over the ATI being about equivalent to staying out of the bars and clubs for one weekend lol
 
Those of you worrying about HDCP needn't worry so much yet. Only films that have the Image Constraint Token enabled will have downgraded resolution without HDCP. Movie Studios will not be implementing the ICT flag in the near future, so depending how soon you plan on upgrading the lack of HDCP on this monitor could be a non-issue.
 
When I first got my Acer it kept shutting down to blackscreen every couple of minutes. I mean if I shut it off for awhile it would last for maybe 5 minutes before going black and then if I immediately turned it back on it would last for maybe 20 seconds. Next time I had a chance I reconnected the DVI cable and set everything back to factory default in the OSD. It has now been running for 3 days without a hitch. Im not sure wheather it was the cable or my initial ignorance while screwing with the menu or neither. I have decided not to send it back to Newegg just yet as it has no dead pixels, no input lag and no ghosting. At least none that I can discern. And it is the most impressively bright and sharp widescreen I have ever seen. It also has a full 3 year warranty from Acer and I can carry it in locally for repair. Keeping my fingers crossed as I winch at the idea of it doing it again. It will take awhile before I trust it completely... :confused:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top