ViewSonic VG2401mh review

Gaming monitors might be aimed at a more discerning audience than more basic panels, but they justify their price premium with 1ms response times and 144Hz refresh rates, which have a tangible effect when playing fast-paced games such as first-person shooters. Assuming you have a graphics card capable of delivering such a high frame rate, you’ll immediately notice the smoothness on ViewSonic’s VG2401mh.

Even mundane desktop-based work looks silky smooth, but open a fast-paced game and frame tearing, caused by mismatched graphics card and monitor refresh rates, is almost completely eliminated. The more demanding the game, the less likely you are to reach the maximum 144Hz refresh rate, but even breaching the 60fps limit imposed by more basic monitors results in smoother gameplay.

Dedicated shortcut buttons on the bezel display an onscreen crosshair for first person shooters, and activate Game Mode. This adjusts the gamma and contrast settings to highlight objects in poorly-lit areas. While the effect certainly takes away from the atmosphere of more cinematic games, we’re sure more competitive gamers will find this very useful and we were able to see a much greater amount of detail in dark corners with this setting switched on.

Colour performance is very good out of the box, with the TN panel managing 94.8 per cent sRGB colour gamut coverage on its default settings out of the box. It’s very bright, too: peak brightness was a huge 396cd/m2, which is far too bright to view comfortably. We adjusted it down to 35 per cent brightness so we could view it comfortably for long periods. The 844:1 contrast ratio is relatively high for a TN screen and yields a fair amount of detail in images with subtle shading. Black levels are slightly higher than we’d have liked at 0.46cd/m2, which left blacks a shade or two lighter than they should have been.

The VG2401mh has the same slightly awkward touch sensitive buttons as our current favourite 144Hz monitor, the Iiyama ProLite GB2488HSU-B1, but also has a two-port USB3 hub. This is an improvement over the Iiyama, which only has USB2 ports. Even with a PC tucked under a desk, the presence of USB3 ports will be very handy if you regularly use USB flash drives to transfer large files.

Where Iiyama used its generic stand for its gaming monitor, ViewSonic has added two red go-faster stripes on the front and back of the stand. These come at the expense of any cable management holes and gutters, making the monitor look untidy unless you decide to use cable ties when you attach the power and video cables.

There are two HDMI ports, a dual-link DVI connector and a full-size DisplayPort connector, as well as 3.5mm audio input and output jacks. You also get dual 3W speakers, but they are no substitute for a good pair of headphones or desktop speakers.

The VG2401mh is a great monitor, but it does very little to differentiate itself from the Iiyama ProLite GB2488HSU-B1. The USB3 hub is handy, but it’s questionable whether it is worth the £50 premium. If you don’t mind slower transfer speeds, we’d plump for the Iiyama.