Impressions

As any user of widescreen will tell you, making the switch from 4:3 is an amazing experience. Though a 19 inch widescreen monitor is shorter than a standard 19 inch screen, the game becomes immeasureably more immersive because of our natural field of view. Human vision is wider than it is tall, so it makes infinite sense for first person games (where attempting to emulate a real life experience is the goal) to embrace the eyes naturally horizontal tendencies. This is why movie theaters use widescreen exclusively. All games benefit from the wider resolution, which results in a physically larger field of view - which is only a good thing.

Performance

The first question that is always asked of new LCD monitors by gamers is whether or not they ghost. Up until about a year and a half ago, most LCD monitors had difficulty keeping up with fast paced games due to the poor response time when moving a pixel from white to black, or turning a pixel "on" or "off".

For most current monitors though, ghosting, or streaking, are not going to be a problem. We did not calculate whether the 8ms response time claimed by Acer was just a measurement of the 'rise' or not, but after many long sessions of gaming with this monitor we could not percieve any problems with image streaking.

Screen uniformity is another major concern for discerning monitor purchasers, especially those looking to do graphic design work on their displays. Unfortunately, the monitor doesn't fare so well in this regard. The right and left side of the monitor are somewhat brighter than than the rest of the screen, and it's clear that the backlight is leaking through in an area roughly under an inch on either side of the screen. While this is not noticeable in brighter games and movies, it does become apparent in dimly lit scenes and games which are predominantly dark, such as F.E.A.R. and Doom 3. If these games are all you play, switching from a CRT or higher quality LCD panel to this will be thoroughly uncomfortable.

This monitor is extremely bright, and even at very low brightness levels, the backlight still manages to peek through. This brightness is fantastic in most instances, but it only helps to compound another issue with the screen. Colors on the AL1916W come across as slightly anemic, rather than the full, vibrant colors we're all used to seeing from CRT's. Because of the brighter-around-the-edges backlight, colors along the left and right sides of the monitor are slightly weaker still in comparison to the rest of the image.

Also having an effect on screen uniformity is the only-okay viewing angle. While it does not cause problems in gaming or other motion sequences, as colors stay relatively true, there is some noticeable falloff and color shifting when viewing a plain desktop screen from different angles.

While these issues will be slightly bothersome to some and utter deal breakers to a few, they really aren't that bad. While the backlighting issue is annoying when you're looking for it, I had absolutely no problem forgetting about it while I was actually playing games (excluding Doom 3 and F.E.A.R.). Things like dead pixels (of which there were none on our sample) where your image is actually being cut up tend to be far more distracting during gameplay than slightly varying colors. Of course, to each their own, and some people will find the backlighting more annoying than others. Playing Splinter Cell on this monitor will be annoying to almost everybody, just because of the unfortunate backlight, but for predominantly bright games, most people shouldn't have a problem.