On the outside, there is little to distinguish the ViewSonic VS-VE150 from many of the other TFT screens on test this month, but it is in its image quality that it ultimately stands out. The front fascia of the screen is kept fairly free of clutter, and the OSD control buttons are located on the side of the screen. The OSD features most of the necessary controls, although most end up being redundant due to the excellent auto-adjust feature, which will accurately set your screen size and clock and phase settings. The base of the screen is not too deep, which keeps desk space down to a minimum. The screen is somewhat difficult to adjust however, and can only be tilted up and down, and not left to right. Unfortunately the transformer is not built into the screen so an external AC adaptor is provided, which inevitably adds to the clutter underneath your desk.


Image quality is above average overall, with the VE150 making a good showing of itself in the challenging DisplayMate tests. It was difficult to accurately adjust the black level without losing definition at low black levels although at the other end of the spectrum, white-level saturation was handled very well. One major problem highlighted by the DisplayMate tests was with streaking and ghosting, with the VE150 failing two key tests in this area. Otherwise the VE150 handled just about everything that DisplayMate could throw at it and proved to be strong in the areas of sharpness and colour gradation.


Screen uniformity is also good with there only being a slight amount of brightness variation around the edges of the screen. This result is echoed by the colour analyser results, where the VE150 only experienced a moderate luminosity deviation score, while it showed very little deviation in terms of colour accuracy and colour temperature. The only other thing that let the VE150 down was a relatively slow pixel response time.


While the VE150 doesnt include added features like internal speakers or USB ports, it does offer good image quality and a relatively low price. The ViewSonic driver CD also comes with a colourful ViewSonic screensaver. If you are on the lookout for a display that is only a hair behind the Sanyo and Sony in terms of quality, and yet costs $600 less than those screens, then the ViewSonic VE150 is a top value choice.