AcerView 79g
Staff Writers
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Feb 1, 2001 5:27 PM
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Acer |
RRP: $995 (time of review)
A wealth of features and adequate performance makes for a reasonable buy. Users may be wish to pay a little less for the privilege.
Overall Rating: 
User Rating: No user ratings.
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AcerView 79g
Acer has been popular in the past with its previous model of 17in monitor, the AcerView 77c, particularly with smaller PC assemblers and the AcerView 79g represents the company+s latest offering to this marketplace. One of the key features of Acer+s monitor is that it comes with a very simplified interface and is quite easy to set up and understand. The monitor features four buttons, virtually identical to the ones used on the 77c, which enable users to navigate their way through five sub menus that handle various elements of the image output. Geometry, brightness and contrast controls are integrated into one menu while other menus feature controls for selecting D-SUB or component input as well as another menu for horizontal convergence.
The monitor supports up to 1,600 x 1,200 resolution at fairly solid 75Hz rate although anybody with any kind of vision problems might have difficulty at trying to look at a 17in screen at that high a resolution. Another major problem with having such a high resolution is that the dot pitch of the 79g is around 0.25 which, while quite acceptable, isn+t quite up to the strains of 1,600 x 1,200.
In terms of image quality, the AcerView 79g performed quite well in our basic setup tests and came second only to the Hitachi CM643ET in our geometry and distortion tests. Even with regards to sharpness and resolution tests, the 79g did reasonably well coming equal third with the Mitsubishi Diamond View 1795DT. Unfortunately in the colour and greyscale tests, the Acer monitor was one of the poorer performers. Also in our subjective tests, the 79g was on the bottom rung along with the Mag and Fujitsu monitors. However, considering the highly stratified scores in our subjective tests, this is not as significant as it immediately seems.
In most day-to-day tasks, we felt that there was very little that the monitor wouldn+t be able to handle especially with regards to tasks such as word-processing or spreadsheet displaying. Its remarkably high resolution capabilities for a 17in display means that it can easily handle even the largest spreadsheets. But considering its fairly high price, and considering that this month+s Quality Award goes to the less expensive Sony CPD-E200, there are definitely better buys available in this month+s Labs.
Overall, the 79g is a worthy display but if you'd like to spend less you can find something more cost-effective.