I purchased this television as a computer monitor. I wanted it because of the LCD backlight, built in speakers, and large screen, for a computer monitor. When I purchased it my computer had not yet been built so I hooked it up to my cable box and WOW what a great picture! Granted I was coming from an old CRT television but hey this thing was very impressive! It is very customizable and can be set on preset settings as well. It worked great to replace a 1981 circa Magnavox in my bedroom. I used it for a couple of weeks as a television and when my computer came in I switched it to a computer monitor. I had purchased an HDMI cable from AMAZON before my computer arrived. Plugged in the HDMI cable and the power and keyboard and wal-la the picture came on with the sound! No need to configure the system to set up, it just works! Right out of the box. Being an informed consumer I had read that you need to calibrate the screen. Well when the monitor first came on I understood why. Things seemed a little blurry. I set the Veiwsonic to Computer and it helped but this was not yet the solution. I then found in Windows 7 the clear type set up under the control panel and displays. Once you configure to clear type this thing looks great! It is like reading on a piece of paper! Screens and videos look great! I am running Windows 7 64-bit professional. The high resolution high definition screen is very impressive! For me the price was right because I have a computer monitor that can be a television if I want as well. It has three HDMI connections so I can connect another computer, maybe a Mac Mini in the future, and later maybe an X-box 360! You can easily switch with the touch sensitive controls or use the remote. The colors and contrast are really incredible. This television/monitor is a great deal for the money! I caught mine at a good time to purchase because I got it for about twenty-five dollars under three-hundred dollars! If you read these reviews often you will know why I wrote it like that. It runs cool, comes on after a 5 second Viewsonic warm up screen, switches between sources easily, looks great and works like it is supposed to! In short I like this monitor a lot!

To me it rivals the Apple LED Cinema Display. Notice I said rivals not as good as or surpasses! This television is great! It works as a monitor wonderfully! Part of the reason I purchased it is due to the fact that I wanted built in speakers and an HDMI connection. I did not want to have a video cable, power cord, speakers, speaker wire, and another power cord for the speakers forming a web on my desk. This set up is clean and simple. HDMI cable to the back of the computer to the monitor, then everything works. One power cord for the monitor and one for the computer. Simple! I compared it to the Apple Cinema Display because I was thinking of using one of these to connect to my PC. Unfortunately you would need to by the Apple Mini Display video connector to HDMI conversion plug and pray that it would work. I could never get assurances that you could get PC drivers for the camera and I did not find anyone that said that it worked when they connected to a PC. Oh and also to buy the Apple you would need to cough up three times the money! I know the Apple display is IPS has a glass screen (the Viewsonic has the plasticky laptop screen) and a built in video camera. Still this does not make it worth nearly a thousand dollars! I do wish that Viewsonic would place a glass screen on this television; it would move it up in class, and admittedly in cost. I wish they would install a camera on the top of the screen, a good one, like the new ones from Logitech! Then they would have a true Apple competitor! When I looked around for a large screen, LED backlight, High definition monitor, with multiple HDMI connections, and built in speakers the Viewsonic television is the only one I could find this affordably. This is the only monitor, or television, that came close to the Apple Display, and after purchasing it and using it as both a television and a monitor, I feel that it has lived up to its printed specifications and my expectations! Buy one I think you will agree!

One more thing; I purchased this through Amazon along with another item through J&R Audio. I had to return the other item after purchasing it. I could not have had a better experience from the folks at J&R Music. They were kind, helpful, and did everything they said that they would do and even faster than they said they would do it. It is rare these days to find a company that under promises and over delivers and I feel these folks did. I am always leery of ordering from a reseller and these folks gave me confidence!

I got this tv for my apartment bedroom at college, and it is great. Easily hooked up to my computer to watch movies, gets great hd local channels with an antenna.

I would give it 5 stars, but the speakers don’t sound that good. They are on the back, and therefore project sound backwards, but the tv has a headphone out, and was very easy to plug in some computer speakers that sound better.

The remote has really handy buttons, including a cc on/off shortcut, and a channel list button, which shows available hd antenna channels in a handy on screen menu.

The tv also looks amazing, very sleek.

I love it

I bought this TV to use as a secondary monitor and TV in my bedroom rather than have 2 screens cluttering it up. I chose this one because it’s an LED and the reviews were fairly promising. So far I’m happy with the purchase but not blown away. It does what I want it to do, for the most part.

The first one I received worked brilliantly for the first day, then I turned it on the 2nd morning and it just cycled through the channel list without actually stopping or showing anything. I was pretty disappointed but Amazon made it easy to return. I printed up my label, the UPS guy showed up with a second box, I gave him my return box, and I was up and running again in about a week. Not too bad I suppose.

One observation. I’m very supportive of Amazon wanting to be a green company but I really think that part of the reason my first TV had an issue is because they shipped the TV in the box it came in without any additional packaging. So it got to me relatively banged up. The second TV, still working after 2 weeks, came in a box with a hole punched in it. Not promising. The issue is that the box, as packaged is not sealed, it just has one of those foldy flap things in the center and if someone wanted to they could have easily gotten into the box and taken anything they wanted and there would have been zero evidence of tampering. Spend a couple bucks guys, put these things in TV’s with some bubble packing and spare yourself the returns.

Picture. The picture on this TV is actually pretty impressive. Not as good as the 23″ Samsung LEDTV that I was originally looking at but definitely a very good picture with vibrant, but not surreal colors. Straight out of the box the backlight is set at 50 percent and this is adequate for most rooms. I use it in a room with a substantial amount of light in the day so I have mine set at 60 percent and it is very viewable. Off axis viewing is acceptable from side to side and when viewed from above, when viewed from any kind of angle from below it’s next to worthless. I had it on a stand on my desk originally and an angle of as little as 30 degrees and you get that picture fade that makes it look like you’re looking through a polarizing filter. As long as you keep this in mind I think this TV is good for 90 percent of applications.

Sound: Sound quality is tinny and insufficient. I knew this going into this unit. I had a 2.0 set of computer speakers that I set up on either side of the TV, used the headphone output, and just cranked the volume on the computer speakers to max. I can use my remote to control the volume, no problem, and it sounds great.

Menus. Menus are typical not great. OSD is lacking and the type is much to small if you’re any distance from the TV. I like to watch TV in bed when going to bed and you can’t read the type letting you know what’s on and there’s no option to increase the size of the type. One thing that is really handy, since I don’t have cable, is that when you hit the info button, it tells you the relative signal strength. One thing that is terrible, unlike most HDTV’s, this TV has no program guide. The channel list provides just that, the channel list with station IDs. When you hit on info you can find out what you’re watching, but there’s no way to look ahead to see what’s going to be on any of the channels that are programmed in. Even the old Sylvania ATSC tuner I bought 5 years ago has this ability. Poor choices Viewsonic. Channel changing takes a second or 2. Leads me to suspect that they put in a less powerful CPU to control this TV, but it gets the job done and aside from losing the signal it hasn’t frozen up or played audio that was out of synch yet.

Remote is acceptable and does not need to be pointed directly at the TV. All the frequently used buttons are immediately available and it only took a day or so to know where all the functions I wanted were by feel. No complaints. Touch controls on the TV itself are relatively sensitive and I have had no issues thus far.

All in all I’d say that bang for your buck this is a very competent TV/monitor. There are very few choices in this size that have all of the features that this one does. Picture in picture would have been nice. I would have like putting TV in the upper corner of the screen while using the rest of the screen as a desktop extension, but that’s a little much to expect for 250 bucks. the form factor is very nice and thin. Not a fan of the silver base but that’s just my personal preference.

I would recommend this monitor based on the quality of the picture but realize that it has limitations. Neither of the 2 that I received from Amazon had dead pixels so that speaks to the quality of the screen manufacturing at least. A good choice for someone wanting the picture quality of an LED but not wanting to break the bank.