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| Introduction, Specifications and Bundle | ||||||
We've evaluated a myriad of Asus-built products over the years here at HotHardware.com, including countless motherboards, graphics cards, notebooks, and optical drives. But to date, we have only taken a look at one of the company's LCD monitors, the PM17TU. There is a good reason for this, however, as Asus has only been selling their own LCD monitors for a relatively short time. We found the 17" PM17TU to be a well-built display and praised its 3ms response time, but ultimately we wished for a widescreen variant with a 16:10 aspect ratio. Asus recognized the need for such a display and released the slightly larger widescreen we'll be looking at here, the PW191. As its name implies, the PW191 is a 19" widescreen LCD. In addition to the increased screen real estate offered by the larger LCD panel, Asus has designed the PW191 with a number of sought after features, like an anti-reflection glare type panel, built-in speakers, and touch sensitive controls. This isn't the largest LCD you'll ever lay your eyes on, but its feature-set and aesthetic are sure to garner some attention.
The Asus PW191 ships in a basic brown box, with nothing more than a logo, the model number, and a simple graphic running along the sides. Along with the monitor itself, Asus included a DB-15 cable, a DVI cable, a 3.5mm audio cable, a power-brick, and a standard 3-prong power cable in the box. In addition to these items, a quick installation guide was included with the PW191, as well as a CD with drivers, a User's Manual in digital form, and Asus' pivot software. This is a perfect assortment of accessories that gives users the ability to take advantage of all of the PW191's features without having to make any additional purchases. |
| First Impressions and Construction |
Upon removing the PW191 from its packaging, we were immediately impressed with the monitor's sleek design. The PW191 features a gloss-black front bezel that's got an almost mirror finish and a machined aluminum base that compliments the panel very well. Take a look for yourself; we think many of you will agree.
The panel at the heart of the Asus PW191 is a 19" widescreen (16:10 aspect ratio), with a native resolution of 1440x900. The panel itself is also outfitted with a "glare-type" coating - dubbed "Color Shine" - just like many of the newer notebooks currently available. If you have any experience with "glare-type" displays, however, you know they are somewhat of a double-edged sword. The glossy covering makes the panel prone to reflections, especially when darker colors are being displayed on screen. But the glossy covering also make colors appear more vivid due to an increase in effective contrast. Throughout our testing of the PW191, we'd definitely say the glare-coating enhanced our overall experience, but we did find ourselves re-positioning the screen occasionally to eliminate reflections from the overhead lights in the lab.
If you divert your eyes to either side of the PW191, you'll see the perforations in the front bezel for the monitor's built-in speakers. The PW191 is equipped with a pair of 2 watt full-range speakers that are much better than their diminutive size suggests. Of course, gamers and movie lovers will not be happy with these built in speakers, but for general desktop use they are more than adequate.
The PW191's aluminum base not only enhances this monitor's visual appeal, but it is quite functional as well. The base acts like a "lazy Susan" and offers 120o of rotation as well as 5o - 25o of tilt, height adjustment, and 90o of pivot. The build quality of the base and the panel is very good, and overall, the PW191 definitely feels solid to the touch. We've used a handful of Dell panels over the years, and while we've liked their image quality and value, we've always found the plastics used for the bezels and bases to feel somewhat flimsy. We did not get that feeling when manipulating the PW191.
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| Connectivity Options and Controls | ||||||||
Unlike most mid-range LCD displays that are typically equipped with a single analog DB15 input, the Asus PW191 features multiple video inputs (both analog and digital), and because this monitor is equipped with built-in speakers, it has a couple of audio-related jacks as well.
Directly in the middle of the unit, starting from the left, are 3.5mm headphone and stereo audio input jacks, a DB15 analog video input, a DVI input, and a power connector. Because the PW191's power supply is separate from the display itself, there is no need to run a hefty power cable directly to the monitor. Instead, the power cable runs to the included power brick, and then a thin cable connects to the monitor itself. The headphone jack works as you would expect. When headphones are plugged in, the built-in speakers are disabled. The PW191's dual video inputs are useful in a couple of ways. First, having both inputs means this monitor will be compatible with virtually any video card. And second, having two video inputs means two sources can be connected to the monitor at one time, and users can switch between the sources using the on-screen control panel.
To power-up the PW191 and access its on-screen control panel, Asus has outfitted the monitor with unique touch-sensitive controls that are all situated at one corner of the front bezel. The virtual buttons are back-lit with amber and blue lights to illustrate exactly where to touch. From left to right, there are a total of five buttons - Menu, down/-, up/+, exit, and power. We were definitely pleased with how these touch-sensitive controls looked, but in practice we found them to be somewhat of a hindrance. Unless the front of the panel is perfectly clean, and we made contract with just the right amount of area surrounding the "button," they didn't always work. Thankfully, once the brightness, contrast, and colors were set to our liking, we didn't have to fiddle with the controls very much. |
| The OSD Interface | ||||
Upon activating the PW191's on-screen control panel, users are greeted by a simple menu that's clearly labeled throughout the various sub-sections.
The first three menus are where users can tweak all of the settings that relate to image quality. On the first screen, a number of pre-set modes are available that affect the overall color temperature, brightness and contrast of the images being displayed on screen. The names of each of these pre-sets explains what they are best suited for - Scenery Mode, Standard Mode, Theater Mode, Game Mode, and Night Vision Mode. Personally, we found standard mode to offer acceptable performance for almost any scenario, but users who like to fine-tune their display will be pleased by the number of options offered by the PW191. Also note, that if none of the pre-set modes produce images to your liking, a custom user defined mode is also available, and each of the pre-sets can be altered manually as well.
The aptly named "Input Select" screen gives users the ability to do just that: select which input (DVI or VGA) is active. And on the System Setup menu, users can alter things like speaker volume, OSD (on-screen display) position, and language. Lastly, there is an option to reset the PW191 back to the manufacturer's defaults. |
| Side-by-Side Comparisons | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
In our opinion, you can't assess the quality of any monitor without having a known point of reference to judge the product against. In this case, we used the Asus PW191 alongside a Dell 2405FPW for a number of days to get a feel for how the two displays compared in a number of different usage scenarios.
The first and most obvious difference between the two screens was real estate. The 24" Dell monitor, with its native 1920x1200 resolution, versus the PW191's 1440x900 resolution, simply offered more area to work with. Now, we can't very well penalize Asus because the PW191 is smaller since the PW191 is also much less expensive, but we wanted to emphasize the point that a larger panel typically means more pixels can fit on the screen, which in turn means more open windows without any overlap. With that said, we found the PW191's native resolution of 1440x900 to be a perfect match for a panel of this size. Text was clear and easy to read from a good distance, and we never found ourselves straining to read small text (8 points or less).
One area where the Asus PW191 seemed to perform a bit better than the Dell monitor in our side by side comparison was in regard to contrast. This is surprising, considering the Dell 2405FPW is technically superior in a number of key categories.
It was very difficult to take a picture that demonstrated the difference, but if you look at the blues and greys in the margins in the shot above, you'll see that on the PW191 the colors clearly have more contrast, and even look more saturated. As you can see in the chart above though, the 2405FPW's specifications are superior in terms of brightness and contrast. What's happening is that the PW191's glare coating somewhat offsets the 2450's technical advantages. But also notice the white on the Dell panel is more "white," whereas the white on the PW191 has a grey-ish hue. This too is a side effect of the Asus panel's glare-type coating. Please bear in mind, however, that images can be tweaked and altered on any monitor to brighten or darken the screen and change the color temperature. If any of you are in the market for a new LCD, do yourself a favor and check out the screen in-person if possible. The specifications can sometimes be misleading, and a panel with technically inferior specs may in fact look better to your eyes. |
| LCD Performance |
In addition to working with the PW191 alongside Dell's 2405FPW, we ran a number of diagnostic tests on the Asus panel to assess its image quality. The pictures you see below are but a sampling of the tests built-into NVIDIA's Rel. 90 Forceware drivers and Lavalys' Everest Ultimate Edition 2006. Everest Ultimate Edition in particular displays over 40 patterns to test a monitor's capabilities.
To our eyes, the Asus PW191 made it through all of tests without any major issues. In all of the calibration screens and grid tests, the PW191 produced distinct gradients and sharp, perfectly straight grids in every section of the screen. In all of the text reproduction tests, the PW191 also did well, producing clear, sharp text regardless of the color combinations used. If there was one area where the PW191 faltered a bit, it was in the solid color tests. Gradient fills and HSL color palettes were all reproduced very well, but in the solid color tests, the lower corners of the screen were just slightly darker than the rest. This is a common problem with today's LCD monitors, however, due to uneven distribution of their back-lighting. We should also note that this issue is barely perceptible during "real-world" use. |
| Subjective Analysis | ||||
To assess the Asus PW191's performance, we also performed a couple of subjective tests during DVD playback, gaming, and general everyday use. We set the panel to Theater mode for movie playback, Game mode while gaming, and Standard mode during general use.
General Usage: During a few weeks of general use, browsing, editing text, etc., the Asus PW191 performed very well. Once adjusted to our desired brightness and contrast levels, we found the PW191 to be easy on the eyes and thought its resolution provided ample work area for most tasks. We wished we had a bit more real-estate while editing high resolution images in Photoshop, but that's what more expensive, larger LCDs are for. We also experimented with lower, non-native resolutions and found that the PW191 still produced relatively sharp images (it's always best to run an LCD at its native resolution). We also disabled our screen-saver and left some open windows on-screen for extended periods of time and found no image persistence to speak of. |
| Our Summary & Conclusion | ||||
Performance Summary: We were generally pleased by the Asus PW191. Image quality seemed good overall, and there were no dead or stuck pixels on the screen. Even if there were though, Asus' ZBD (Zero Bright Dot) warranty implies that the company will replace any PW191 that suffers from pixel defects. Colors were well-saturated, and the panel had good brightness. There were some tones and hues that seemed slightly off, however, as they tend to be with LCDs equipped with a glare-type coating. Watching movies was more than enjoyable, once we adjusted the panel to compensate for some slightly pink flesh tones and fast-paced game tests revealed very little or no ghosting.
The Asus PW191 is a top-notch LCD monitor in many respects. Image quality is generally very good, the pixel response time is fast enough that ghosting is not an issue, and aesthetically the PW191 has to be one of the slickest LCD monitors we've ever come across. The PW191's glare-type coating is neither a benefit nor a detriment depending on your particular preference (we like it), but a couple of niggling issues prevent the PW191 from being truly great. While they look good, the occasional unresponsiveness of the controls can be annoying. And at approximately $330, the PW191 is a bit more expensive than similar monitors in its class. Would we recommend the PW191? Yes, absolutely. We enjoyed working with this monitor over the course of our evaluation and think most users would like working with it too. We're giving the Asus PW191 an 8 on the Heat Meter.
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