Buying a graphics monitor for your computer used to be pretty easy. You either went with a Sony Trinitron, or you didn’t. I exaggerate, to be sure, but not by much. As we have made the move to flat panels the options have included LCDs, plasma screens and other equally foreign options. This might not be so bad were it not for the fact that most of them were not up to snuff for professional graphics use.

Most of us have chosen to allow a small number of trusted vendors lead their way into these new technologies. Apple computer has certainly been the early adopter success story with both monitors and flat panel iMacs. Eizo has been the hands-down leader with the super high-end and deep pocket crowd.

Other monitor makers have been slower to the graphics table, but Viewsonic arrived a while ago with their Pro Line flat panels.

Here we look at their 20 inch VP2030b LCD model, the middle of the pack of 19”-21” offerings. It should be noted that Viewsonic offers four lines of monitors, another of which is dubbed the “Graphic Series”. This other line is intended for corporate graphics work and gaming, whereas the “Pro Series” we review here is their top quality offering.

The Hardware
The Viewsonic VP 2030b sports a clean and sleek professional look. Nothing James bond about it, but nothing tacky or stodgy either, it will look good sitting on your desk. It is finished in a light black or medium charcoal plastic casing. It stands on a four-pronged lily pad style base that offers excellent support for its almost 20 pound weight, and looks good doing it. An untested option, the unit can be removed from its base and wall mounted as well.

Viewsonic makes big claims of an almost non-existent bezel frame they call ThinEdge™. Our rulers measured this frame at 3/4th of an inch—adequate for making multiple monitor use pleasant, but no better than other monitors. One item about the frame we found particularly appealing was that its width was kept consistent all the way around the screen. This not only enhanced its attractiveness, but also allowed it to be visually less obtrusive.

Its center support houses the screen’s generous vertical rack adjustment. Its pivoting capabilities are equally generous and all positioning feels stable with no slippage seen in the 4 months of use we have put into it.

This unit has all the standard extras with a full set of front panel controls that include four settings controls and a power button. Four USB 2.0 receptacles are provided at the bottom of the back for connecting your keyboards, mice, headphones and Wacoms. It does NOT have built in speakers, but we don’t think a pro monitor should bother with that anyway.

It accepts either an analog VGA connection, or a DVI-I connection, and is compatible with both Mac and Windows boxes (we would assume Linux folks are safe as well).

The Screen
This unit has a native screen resolution of 1600 x 1200 pixels. Oddly, this is the same as its bigger 21 inch sibling. If you know your screen resolutions you will now be saying something like “my that is awfully square”, and you would be right. Viewsonic’s Pro Series line is based on the older 4:3 aspect ratio (1.33 for those that prefer their fractions pre-digested).

These are not the cool widescreens to play your Netflix on. Instead they are designed for serious graphics work and high-end CAD/CAM—as well as engineering and financial trader use. What this means is that if you go with this monitor you might want to hang onto that second palette monitor a bit longer. We have.

Quality wise, the screen is a very impressive performer. It is on par with the upper end of most screens available today. Its real-world viewing angle actually matches the 170 degrees stated on its spec sheet. Probably even betters it. And we never saw any color shifting as we viewed off-angle.

The other common issues with flat panels are dead pixels, backlighting and overall sharpness. There were no dead pixels. Backlighting creeping in around the edges was seen, however it was very mild and hardly even an issue under the most extreme situations (while displaying a black screen in a darkened room). Image sharpness was uniform from corner to corner.

The most important issue regarding screen quality is of course its color accuracy. By default the VP2030b’s color rendition was head and shoulders over the average flat panel. Beyond being a bright screen (we actually had to dial it down), the colors had a desirable openness and cleanness to their presentation. Primaries did not look muddied with other colors.

Then we turned a more critical eye to color and began to attempt some rudimentary calibration. When put up against a gray scale step-wedge we could see some issues of color shifting between the midtones and shadow steps. Nothing that is not correctable. There was also the issue of some technology by-products in the shadow steps that created a slight shimmery or fogging effect—similar to when you print onto metallic substrates. This is harder to correct for, but was not excessive.

Software
Additional color calibration software and other features like vertical monitor pivoting are capabilities provided via the included software called Perfect Suite. This software, we learned the hard way, is not developed or supported by Viewsonic.

PerfectSuite software seems very interesting and had a very capable software based color calibration toolset. We had to cut our testing of this suite short for the reasons seen in the next section.

Support
We had no reason to call Viewsonic support until we installed PerfectSuite. Prior to that the monitor connected and worked perfectly on our Windows x64 test box for over a week. Then we reached back into the shipping box to install PerfectSuite and begin playing with all its goodies.

The installation process proceeded normally until the end when things went awry. We were informed the installation was a success but the installer application still threw up an error message. We decided to reboot and when we did the computer would not start up properly. No monitors were detected and the screens remained black.

After some fiddling we were able to boot into the OS by using the “safe mode” option. Further investigation offered no success so we got on the phone with Viewsonic. We were told two things, first that Viewsonic does not make or support the software it bundles as its primary toolset, and second that it does not support a 64-bit operating system.

We wondered how they could ship a “Pro Series” product in 2007 without 64-Bit support? We were passed up the tech support ladder to someone else who informed us that PerfectSuite DOES support 64-bit, but we would need to download a new version as they only include a version from 2005. We downloaded and installed the newer version of PerfectSuite that did indeed claim 64-bit compatibility. But another few reboots later we were no better off.

They then suggested we either re-install our entire system software or do a roll-back operation. For obvious reasons neither solution was very attractive to us having just spent a week putting this new box on its feet.

The clock was ticking: We had been on a long distance call with Viewsonic for almost an hour to get to this point. We were being given contradictory information and we had a computer that was still not usable. We resorted to tactics we normally abhor, exposing our identity as product reviewers. But this did little noticeable good.

As we passed the 1 hour and 30 minute mark the tech asked me “could you tell me what version of Windows you are running again?” I was infumed that he could have forgotten such important information given him an hour before. I demanded the next level tech and a few minutes later a man got on the phone who I found out was the department manager.

He informed me that the tech I had been speaking with was actually their highest level available. I informed him I had been on the phone for nearing 2 hours with little progress. He was audibly shocked and even turned to confirm this with the tech.

Here the saga needed to end as they could not offer any real help. We were told that they had indeed heard similar—and even worse—stories of computer hell from people who had installed PerfectSuite on their computers. However he wanted to underscore that those situations were the very rare exception.

BOTTOM LINE
We have been running this monitor for many months now and have found it to be an excellent option for professional work. More importantly, it acts as a very acceptable replacement for my previous CRT, which was a beautiful Sony Trinitron. Not easy shoes to fill, especially for an LCD.

There is little question that going with an Eizo would have been nicer, however it would also have been literally twice the price. This Viewsonic Pro Series unit seemed to walk the fine line between establishing a quality product for high-end needs, without going so far up the price scale where diminishing returns on ones investment is the norm.

Obviously, we finally did sort out out the problems with PerfectSuite and removed it from the computer. All went back to normal. We THINK the problem may have simply been installing the older and non-compatible version first, and that a fresh install of the latest version would be fine. As I say, we THINK that, but have not had the courage to try it out and have since lived without its offerings.

This monitor is great looking at a very competitive price point.

Suggested retail price: $495.00
Product page: http://www.viewsonic.com/products/lcddisplays/proseries/vp2030b/