NVIDIA 3D Vision 2 and The Asus VG278H LCD Review

User Experience - Asus VG278H:
Almost everything about the Asus VG278H’s performance was great. Out of the box, we found the brightness to actually be too high and colors appeared somewhat muted, but these issues were easily resolved after spending a few minutes in the OSD tweaking the display to our liking. Using the Langom LCD monitor test images proved that the Asus VG278H offered excellent color uniformity and black levels. Contrast was also excellent and the monitor suffered from minimal pixel walk. Since the VG278H uses a TN panel, viewing angles and color uniformity will never be quite as good as a higher-end IPs panel, but they were both about as good as we have seen from a TN panel to date. This is an excellent monitor.

Watching videos and gaming on the VG278H were both great. The combination of large screen, bright, uniform backlighting, zero ghosting and fast refresh rate all contribute to an overall excellent experience. We did find ourselves lowering the brightness in a couple of videos, but once dialed in to your tastes, the VG278H will not disappoint.

User Experience – NVIDIA 3D Vision 2:
We wish there was an easy way to show you all the effect of NVIDIA’s 3D Vision technology in-game or in-movie, but there’s just no way to do it. 3D Vision is just something that has to be experienced firsthand to be appreciated. With that said, we’d like to convey our thoughts on 3D Vision 2’s effect on gaming.

To put it simply, 3D Vision 2 is a clean step up from the original kit. The glasses are more comfortable and having a larger viewing area (due to both the larger lenses in the glasses and big screen) helps keep you more immersed in the on-screen action. LightBoost is also a definite plus. On-screen imagery still appears somewhat darker than it would in 2D mode, but it is much brighter than the original 3D Vision on a CCFL backlit screen. In fact, we’d argue that 3D Vision 2 offers the best 3D gaming and video playback available to consumers currently.

In the short time we’ve had with 3D Vision 2 and the Asus VG278H on hand, we were able to play a number of games and watch some snippets of 3D Blu-Rays to get a feel for its performance. We mostly played Left 4 Dead 2 and Dirt 3, and also tried some older titles like FarCry 2, in 3D stereo mode and can say that the 3D effect produced by the 3D Vision 3 glasses is excellent. In our opinion, the effect is most impressive when there are some static elements on screen mixed with 3D, like when looking through a sniper scope for example. In addition to gaming, 3D Photos, video clips, live streaming from the web, 3D Blu-Ray discs, and games all worked perfectly as well.