3D Monitor Shoot-Out: Acer HN274H & ViewSonic V3D245

The Lagom LCD monitor test pages were designed to shed light on a monitor's performance. Let's be honest, though: if you're purchasing a monitor, you'll be more interested in real-world use and performance than test patterns. Recognizing this, we put the Acer HN274H and ViewSonic V3D245 through a subjective analysis. To see how these monitors perform, we watched a number of movies and fired up a few games. We also checked out each monitor's 3D capabilities too.

The Green Hornet @ 1080p

One thing we noticed about the Acer HN274H was that it took longer than most monitors to wake from sleep. Although this is not a deal-breaker by any means, we felt it was worth mentioning. The ViewSonic V3D245 didn't experience an abnormal lag when waking from sleep.

Standard and high-definition 2D content on both monitors was excellent. While viewing both still images and videos, we felt that colors were vibrant and blurring was minimal during fast-action scenes. Since both of these monitors feature a 120Hz refresh rate, you'll get all of the benefits of a faster panel when not taking advantage of their 3D capabilities. Even with simple tasks such as minimizing and maximizing a window or dragging a window around your desktop, you'll notice that a 120Hz display is smoother, crisper, and feels more responsive than a 60Hz display. With a 120Hz panel, you'll also get a smoother gaming experience with V-Sync enabled versus more common 60Hz panels, provided you've got a GPU fast enough to feed frames to the screen.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon @ 1080p

We viewed 3D content while the monitors were connected via Dual-Link DVI cables. 3D pictures and videos were excellent on both the ViewSonic V3D245 and the Acer HN274H. When switching between 2D and 3D content, you'll notice a short flicker of the monitor. If you haven't watched 3D content before, you'll be amazed at the difference when you put on the 3D glasses and watch a 3D video.