Acer 20inch Panel AL 2032WM
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Firstly how much desk space will it need, the outside dimensions are 50.5x38cm with the stand being within the normal tilt at 20cm.
The screen dimensions are 33x27cm giving the 20inch figure. The surround is shiny black but it does not seem to show fingermarks. Under the screen in a 6cm wide grill running the width of the unit are a pair of quite reasonable speakers.
All adjustments are via five buttons mounted on the right side of the panel, a dark blue LED lets you know when power is on the panel but this is not intrusive and even though it is within 2cm of the screen you do not really notice it.
I was rather surprised that it did not ship with an .inf file or a colour profile. It seems to be able to be used in one of seven settings between 800x600 and 1600x1200. The web site insists that 1680x1050 is possible but this was not an option for me. I conducted the majority of my tests in 1280x960 simply because my eyes seemed to prefer that resolution. However I did try the others for test periods.
The automatic setting seems to work well with an adjustment being made each time you change resolutions. This panel has both Analog and DVI connections on the rear of the unit as well as input from your sound card and the power adapter brick. However the DVI connector together with some other connections is on a carbuncle attachment that piggybacks onto the rear of the unit.
These extra inputs are a SCART connector together with S-Video and video and audio left and right sockets. The SCART and DVI connectors are behind a 6.5x4.5cm rubber bung that is not the easiest to reinsert once removed, but this is not something you are likely to do that often.
I found the colour clear, crisp and above all not varying over the whole screen, while black was always crisp and sharp, with some panels the colour seems to be greater at the top but during the whole of my test period I used this daily for the whole working day, not just on one PC but via a KVM switch to a second PC that keeps databases and records running in 1024x768 and as I use this less often it never connects to the Internet or to any other devices so the resolution stayed with what I would use with my own monitor. However as luck would have it I needed to copy (type) quite a lot of data from one PC to the other so the amount of changing PC's after typing a few words that took place was probably more than most people would do in a year. Remember this would involve resensing as there are not only different resolutions but also different refresh rates. So I can only praise this unit for it's consistency despite all the abuse it suffered with continual changes. However no doubt this equates to the sort of treatment it gets with automated tests, the difference here was this was with real use not simulation.
Expect to pay not much less than £500, not cheap, but it is a large clear panel with built in speakers taking not that much desk space compared to a CRT monitor.
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