Acer P223W review

Monitors with glossy panels may be reflective, but they're great for movies thanks to their boosted colours and deep black levels. To really appeal, though, they need to tick all the entertainment boxes. The lack of any kind of digital input on Acer's P223W is therefore a bad start, and unfortunately it doesn't offer enough elsewhere to make up that lost ground.

The black chassis and grey stand initially look stylish, but closer inspection reveals a cheap plasticky finish. Alongside the single D-SUB connection you'll find nothing in the way of speakers or extras, and the all-important image quality isn't high enough to save things either.

Acer's ecolor Management settings offer a range of presets, but we still needed to make some tweaks out of the box. Contrast needed to be reduced and colours tweaked in order to get the best out of it. Even then the image retained a bluish tinge and was overly reflective. Our black screen showed light bleeding through at the bottom too, while the white screen was far from neutral.

Colour and greyscale gradient ramps showed significant banding, indicating poor colour blending, and while this wasn't really noticeable in real-world use, general performance in our gaming and movie tests was less than impressive, with disappointingly poor colour accuracy.

We could be fair and point out the £153 price tag, which is lower than all but the BenQ this month. But when that monitor manages to offer decent image quality as well as DVI and HDMI ports for £25 less, it only serves to highlight the Acer's weaknesses.

Author: David Bayon