ViewSonic VG800 - Low Cost High Performance?

Features

For ViewSonic’s high end solution, the VG800 seems to be very light on features.  The VG800 has only one D-sub 15 pin VGA input, no TV capabilities and no outstanding qualities that make this monitor much different than other middle of the road LCD’s on the market right now.

We have seen a few monitors with internal speakers on the market lately.  We have not been very impressed with other implementations of internal speakers on the market, and the VG800 is not much of an exception.  These 3W speakers have no competition with any sort of enthusiast solution on the market right now, and they really cannot perform well enough to justify their use in gaming.  Our speakers remained unplugged for the majority of the time we had them.  On the other hand, if you do not need high fidelity audio on your computer, these speakers will work just fine.  Mute, Volume Up and Volume Down are all accessible on the front of the monitor, and other features such as treble and bass adjust can be found in the menu. 

Arguably one of the more innovative features on the monitor was the rear bezel.  The VG800 came equipped with a small plastic component that locks on top of the rear cabling.  Thus there is less of a tangled mess as wires come out from the rear of the unit on the bottom.  Once again though, we are plagued by a monitor that seems to have forgotten a DVI connection.  ViewSonic targeted the VG800 as a low cost, high end solution.  Unfortunately, as we have pointed out several times before, LCD solutions without DVI are unacceptable for high end use.  We are expecting a fair amount of ghosting/streaking in the benchmark and most likely a dimmer image than could be obtained with a DVI connection.

No DVI connections here

The VG800 came with an expected 30 degree tilt.  This has become the standard on most LCD’s, but the VG800 is a little different in the fact that the cabling runs down the rear of the monitor, as not to become tangled while tilting.  Unfortunately, there is no height adjustment, which would have really complimented the cable coverings on the rear bezel.