Last year I reviewed the LG 29EA93 monitor before its scheduled US release date.  As someone that thinks there is a good market for ultrawide displays, the 21:9 aspect ratio was very interesting to me, and something I wanted to take a look at personally.  While the aspect ratio was nice and enveloping for gaming, there were aspects of the monitor that were disappointing, and in the end it was something I didn't really recommend.

I really dislike writing negative reviews. Writing one means that I’ve spent a good deal of time with a product while not enjoying the experience. It means that a team of engineers and designers has spent a lot of time working on something that didn’t make the cut, or they made a series of compromises for some reason that led to an end user experience that was unsatisfying. I’d much rather write effusive praise of a wonderful product that people should run out and buy than write something bad.

Typically when I write a negative review, I either hear a little feedback from a company, or nothing at all. Maybe they knew the product wasn’t great but released it anyway, or they didn’t care. Sometimes I hear that a company will fix something, and then I try to hold onto hardware and test that to see if they do, but I’ve never had feedback like I did from LG after I initially reviewed their 29EA93 ultra-widescreen monitor.

I had multiple emails full of detailed questions about how I test, what I was after, and what should be done to improve upon the current version. After all of these conversations, they flew out an engineer with an updated version of the 29EA93 that they said would address almost all of my issues with the first version. Did LG manage to go back and correct the problems that I found, so that the monitor now performs much better? I had to go ahead and test it to find out.

Windows 8 has brought about its shift in how we use our computers and its focus on having a more unified experience for phones, tablets, laptops, and desktop PCs. As those first two systems are primarily touch-oriented, desktop computers are suddenly seeing a large number of touch displays appearing. In an environment that is used to a keyboard and mouse for input, how well is touch going to fit into that setting?

The availability of touchscreens has rapidly increased with the launch of Windows 8 last year. Where touchscreens were rare or expensive before, now they are much easier to find with the availability of a mainstream, touch-oriented operating system. The Acer T232HL is one of the first touchscreen displays to hit our review section, so join us as we put it through its paces.

When migrating away from 4:3 screens for home video, the 16:9 aspect ratio was chosen as a compromise between all the common formats at the time. For many film fans, this meant finally being able to watch movies in their original aspect ratio without putting up with black bars. However many films are shot using aspect ratios even wider than 1.78:1, such as 2.20 for 70mm film or 2.39 for modern cinemascope films. While the letterboxing of these titles was improved over 4:3 sets on new 16:9 sets, the black bars remained. Now we are starting to see panels that also address this audience, including the LG 29EA93 21:9 LCD monitor.

While cinephiles may rejoice, traditional computer users might be wondering if this makes any sense for a desktop display. There is still a lot of resentment over the transition from 16:10 to 16:9 displays, as the loss of vertical space means less room for word processing documents, spreadsheets, and other data, even if it might be slightly more ideal for HDTV. If the layout of many operating systems and programs hasn’t adapted yet to properly utilize 16:9, what will using 21:9 be like? Is the LG 29EA93 a one trick pony for those that want to watch scope films, or does it serve a larger purpose as well?

Every 27” panel that I have reviewed this year has had two things in common: the panel was IPS based, and it was made by LG. The vast majority of IPS panels are made by LG, and so most high-end monitors use the same panels but have major differences in their electronics and design. In the past two years Samsung has entered the market with an alternative to IPS called PLS, or Plane-Line Switching.

While similar to IPS, PLS is designed to have advantages over traditional IPS. First, it has a higher level of transmittance, so more light gets through each individual cell. This allows you to use either a lower powered backlight, or to have a brighter display, both of which lower the power output required for a certain screen brightness. Second, as each cell allows more light though, you can pack them tighter allowing for displays with a higher pixel-per-inch count while keeping light output higher. PLS also claims to have better viewing angles for color and contrast in comparison to IPS. Let's see how the ASUS PB278Q fares in our testing.

When you look at the 27” panels on the market today, they virtually all use a panel from LG. Samsung has their own PLS panels, but otherwise almost everyone with a 2560x1440 panel is using one from LG, with either LED or CCFL backlighting. When the main component of any screen is the same as every competitor, it can be harder to differentiate yourself from the pack. We see NEC offer flexibility, uniformity and control beyond the other vendors, though at a price. Nixeus offers us a panel with the features and build taken down to a level that lets it beat everyone on price.

Dell seems to almost always focus on trying to find the sweet spot for value and features in their display line. They don’t make panels to compete with NEC, but they generally aren’t trying to compete with comapnies like Nixeus. The Dell U2713HM is their newest 27” panel, though it doesn’t replace the U2711. That model still has a larger AdobeRGB color gamut as well as more inputs and features in comparison to the U2713HM, and it maintains a higher retail price. So what does the Dell U2713HM offer, and where does it fit into the world of 27” displays?

The price model for 27” IPS displays has been turned on its head recently by imported models from Korea that you can buy on eBay. Selling for as little as $350, these are stripped down models that lack inputs beyond DVI, have no OSD, have very minimal stands, and often have very little in the way of support. They also use A- grade panels where tolerances for stuck pixels and uniformity errors might not be as high as they are with A or A+ panels that are used in most displays.

However, these panels offer a large amount of value for people that want a high-resolution display and can’t afford the $650 and up that the cheapest US model, the HP ZR2740w, typically costs online. Nixeus has come out to change that with their $500, 27” NX-VUE27 monitor. Using a Grade-A panel with an OSD and a wider variety of inputs that the Korean imports, the Nixeus is priced to compete with the Korean imports and the US models. Does it offer performance that competes with the higher priced US models by shaving costs in other areas, or does performance also suffer because of these cuts?

HP managed to make the right choices with their 27” ZR2740w monitor, hitting a reasonable price point without sacrificing quality. Now HP has introduced their 2311xi monitor, a 23” IPS display with LED backlighting that is designed with value in mind. Even with their value target, they haven't cut back on features, with multiple inputs and a good amount of adjustments available inside of the display.

With a street price of $200, HP is aiming directly at value priced TN displays that have ruled the low-end of the LCD market for years. We finally might be starting to move to better panels, as the price of IPS continues to come down. Has HP managed to get enough quality into a $200 display that it can convince people to move from TN panels when looking for a value display, or have there been too many sacrifices made in order to hit this aggressive price point?

Our monitor reviews frequently go into a lot of depth about the results before and after calibration, but for many users this won’t matter, as they aren’t going to purchase the calibration hardware and software necessary to achieve these results. Getting accurate performance out of the box without needing to spend extra money on hardware is important to many people but it's often very hard to deliver. With their Pro Art monitors, ASUS aims to deliver just that: sRGB and AdobeRGB modes that are reasonably accurate (a dE < 5.0 out of the box), with a full set of controls for users to calibrate it on their own.

ASUS doesn’t stop there as they also offer a 10-bit panel, integrated card reader and USB ports, and a user calibration mode with more controls than I have seen on a consumer monitor to this point. Does the ASUS deliver good color out of the box, and does it have the performance for those that wish to calibrate themselves? Read on for our full review.

While notebook hardware has steadily improved over the years, outside of the recent MacBook Pro with Retina Display there haven't really been any moves forward in improving desktop real estate in some time. In fact, for productivity-oriented users this continues to be a major reason for sticking with a desktop setup (if not a desktop system): more monitors, more space to work in. This fact of life has resulted in a bit of a niche market in the form of small, USB-powered screens.

We've tested both of GeChic's OnLap monitors and found that while they were flawed in their own ways, they were still able to expand useful work space without incurring too much of an inconvenience in terms of size or power requirements. Yet GeChic's screens need an HDMI or D-SUB port in addition to a USB 2.0 port for power, and if for one reason or another your notebook doesn't offer one of these, you're out of luck. Enter solutions based off of DisplayLink's USB technology, which are able to add another screen driven entirely over USB. Solutions like the screen we have on hand today, Toshiba's catchily-named 14" USB Mobile LCD Monitor.

For the most part, the market for 27”, 2560x1440 monitors has been dominated by the higher end brands. The one main exception has been DoubleSight, which has made a pair of 27” monitors including the DS-277W we're reviewing today. Besides the PLS panels used by Samsung, every other 27” monitor on the market is using one of the 27” IPS panels from LG at this point, so much of the difference in designs comes from the electronics and case that are engineered around the monitor.

DoubleSight's approach with the DS-277W is to make a monitor that can work with all of your devices, not just your computer. It has multiple AV inputs (HDMI, Component) for your Blu-ray player or video game systems, and there are integrated speakers for audio from these devices as well. Does this approach set the DS-277W apart from the crowd, or does it lead to issues in trying to integrate everything together? Read on for the full analysis and testing results.

As long as I’ve been following, using, or writing about computers, NEC has been a leader in displays. From the early MultiSync monitors to their current line of LCDs, they have been focused more on pushing performance than on dropping price, which has kept many of us from owning one of their displays. Of course, there is a large swath of users that always want to have the best, and are willing to pay for it.

Back with a CRT, this was pretty easy to do. We didn’t have to worry about lag, we could run multiple resolutions on a display without worrying about a native resolution, and higher resolutions, faster refresh rates, and better sharpness, were likely going to work for most power users. Now the field is a little different, as you have to worry about the native resolution of your panel, the response time, viewing angles, color quality, and more. All of this has led to a marketplace with different solutions for different needs than before.

NEC is still there trying to lead this market, but are they still a good universal choice for anyone that wants the best? Or has their goal of being the best led them to specialize in certain areas of performance that make their panels a better choice for a certain type of user instead of a universal winner?