ViewSonic VX2770SMH-LED 27" IPS 1080p Frameless LED Monitor HDMI, DVI, VGA

I had wanted to upgrade my monitor for awhile. I had shopped around and reduced my list to a handful of prospects. When this one, which was on my list, came out as a Gold Box special I jumped.The monitor comes with all of the cables you need for HDMI or VGA connections so it is a perfect one-item impulse purchase.I am using it with HDMI connection to a Windows 7 notebook. Installation was pretty easy and straightforward, although it did take me a day to figure out how to get the full 1920x1080 display.The video is awesome. I did adjust the brightness down.I am a bit of a speaker aficionado; I envisioned myself getting a monitor without speakers. (I tend to prefer external speakers from my assortment that runs from 1w to 35w per channel.) I did not expect to be impressed by the audio from the monitor's speaker system, but I am; it is absolutely superb. The reproduction quality is excellent and the volume available is certainly adequate. My taste in music is eclectic and I am not easy to please when it comes to audio.The control/adjustment buttons are a little hard to find and confusing, and I am still trying to figure them out completely.There is no printed manual but a digital manual and QuickStart guide are on the installation CD. The digital manual and QuickStart guide are also available online - review them while your shipment is en route. During installation, it is then easy just to go by the QuickStart guide.I don't have a single regret about this purchase.JimUpdate December 25, 2013My comment that, "The control/adjustment buttons are a little hard to find and confusing..." has become a non-issue since I have had no need to readjust anything since I made my initial adjustments.I also see a number of people pooh-poohing some of the features after bragging about doing a plug-and-play. If you don't use the installer you don't get all of the features although it will work satisfactorily, just not excellently.JimUpdate March 16, 2014I installed the drivers and such on my new Windows 8 32-bit tablet and the operation on HDMI is very nice. The SRS Premium Sound for Monitors seemed to install OK but it will not run - I get a message saying I don't have a supported sound card. The sound through the speakers is pretty good even without the SRS.JimUpdate August 22, 2014My monitor is still working great The sound is excellent with the SRS; the wattage is well-balanced for a computer monitor; when I want more wattage I usually send the audio to a 20w Samsung speaker.I missed a deal on the VX2770 today - I would have jumped on it after my experience with the VX2370 but it was already sold out. I came back to review my comments. It is hard to believe that I have had this monitor for as long as I have.JimUpdate June 5, 2015I went over the two-year point last month and I have had no problems whatsoever with this monitor. I run it about 12 hours a day. It is surprising how much I use the internal speakers. I am glad that I took the time to set it up initially because I have not touched the adjustments since except to install it on other computers. I installed it on other computers so that I can just switch inputs when I want.If you don't need touchscreen or VESA, this is an ideal monitor.Jim

This review is for the 27" unit.I do a lot of picture and video editing, and color accuracy is critical for me. Of course, getting an ultra wide gamut monitor is both too expensive, and overkill. Someone who has been working with color for a long time can tell you that accuracy is more important than a wider gamut.Before I go any further, I'd like to make it clear that I'm not saying that a wide gamut monitor isn't great or beneficial. I'm just saying wide gamut is worthless if it's inaccurate. On to the rest of my review.I absolutely love this monitor. It's extremely aesthetically pleasing, it includes speakers, the plugs in the back are very easy to access, the color accuracy is dead on, and all of this for an amazing price.I worked as a commercial photographer & retoucher for just over a year, using a top of the line LaCie monitor. To put this into context, I'm sure the current-day model is way better, the one we were using at the time was made in around 2006. Working a full time job where you're trying to get pictures dead on with color accuracy, you tend to learn all of the nuances of your equipment. In particular, the LaCie had a slight magenta hugh that was most prominent around the edges of the screen. That was my particular unit, but most of them had the same issue. A couple of my co-workers had a slight green cast in a similar pattern, but I digress. There were also other deficiencies in the color, such as lack of tonal detail after a certain darkness, but point being I learned them and was able to produce great results in spite of the problems because they were mostly accurate.Every since, I've dreamed of having a similarly capable monitor for myself, but haven't been able to justify spending thousands on just a monitor (heck, my PC costs like $300 total). Finally, I was pushed to take a much harder look at color calibrated monitors when I realized my photography and video color grading was truly suffering from a lack of a good monitor.After a tiny bit of research and a LOT of guesswork, I'm glad I ended up here. The color accuracy of this monitor is undoubtedly better than the LaCie's we used at my job. I see no clear color casts, possibly just a touch of a yellow/cream one (and lack of shading distinction at the very very dark end), but overall VERY good. Also, the sRGB mode is not configurable, so it's pretty idiot proof as they say.When you first change the color mode to sRGB, you'll notice the screen gets a lot darker. At first I was very disappointed, but I soon got used to it and it was fine. While I do prefer the brighter view, I know from experience the best color accuracy for any monitor is usually attained at a very specific brightness and contrast point on the monitor. It was actually relieving that this work had been done for me, and I didn't have to do it myself.Also, when calibrating, I can do it entirely by software instead of fooling with the menus which is a HUGE plus considering the menus totally blow on this monitor. I doubt if I used RGB sliders for color correction I'd get any better results anyway. The LaCie monitors even would get some nasty colors going on if we had to push one of the RGB channels too high (specifically the blue one), so I prefer not use RGB sliders - *Note: this is against the advice of many "professionals". They insist a great monitor must have RGB sliders. I disagree, I think the perfect color accuracy for each monitor is attained at a very specific setting, then to fine tune the colors, you have to use a color calibration profile.I'm just using a Spyder2 Pro for calibration, which works fine for me. Calibrating a monitor is worthless if the monitor can't reproduce good tones in the first place. For this monitor, that's not the case!Alright, I'll stop talking about the color. The 27" size is pretty amazing. I've never had a PC screen so big I could be looking at one end of the screen and not notice a change on the other side of the screen because it was so far to my peripheral lol. I think it's pretty clear that the only thing I cared about is color accuracy though -- and I got it! Maybe I just got an exceptionally good sample, but I'm thrilled. I couldn't be happier, and I think the price I paid was WELL worth it!!!If you're a beginning photographer and you are beginning to develop a taste for perfect colors, I highly recommend this monitor. Also remember that monitor colors change based on how many hours they've been on total, what temperature they are, what the ambient colors of the room are, etc. For this reason, I highly recommend you get a color calibration puck of some kind so you can keep the calibration spot on. How to pick one out is a huge discussion in and of itself, but I'd like to mention I prefer my old model to a current model, since the new models of the spyders have very very restrictive software and the high end ones are using the exact same hardware, it's just the software that's different. I think that's a complete rip off but that's just my opinion.Edit: I almost forgot, when trying HDMI the display was complete trash. I fully planned on using DVI from the start, but I did plug in HDMI to satisfy my curiosity and I didn't like it at all. I think with A) a proper video card (I tried using the onboard video which is trash) and B) some adjusting etc that it could look fine. I highly recommend DVI though. DVI was designed for LCD monitors for a reason. It eliminates a lot of variables. Add a DVI cable with your order, you'll be glad in the end. This will also affect color accuracy for the record.There was a popular review of this monitor that criticizes the color accuracy of this monitor. I would like to point out that this reviewer was not using the sRGB mode, and therefore any comments about the color should be totally disregarded. I don't think the reviewer did this on purpose of course, I think it was a lack of experience/understanding.