Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsSevere ghosting at 1ms RT compared to ViewSonic XG2530
Reviewed in the United States on July 25, 2019
I was deciding whether to keep the Alienware AW2518HF or the ViewSonic XG2530, and ultimately chose the ViewSonic. I also previously bought the Acer XF250Q, which I returned due to frameskipping when not using G-Sync (thus not running at 240Hz), bottom screen flicker, and the disabled 1ms overdrive when using G-Sync (runs at normal response time at 4-6ms). At the time of writing this review, the latest iteration of 240Hz 0.5ms panels is now available on Amazon, which includes the AOC AG251FZ2 and the MSI NXG252R, which you should consider over the 1ms lot.
I needed a 240Hz monitor for competitive FPS gaming, and using it at 1ms response time is absolutely required. At this setting, the Alienware showed severe ghosting/overshooting, while you can hardly notice the ghosting with the ViewSonic. Granted, ghosting isn't that noticeable while playing FPS since you're not moving a static image on a static background, but there is also no convenient way of toggling overdrive when not playing.
The Alienware has horrendous colors out of the box, especially compared to ViewSonic's colors at default, which are comparable to that of my Dell P2415Q IPS monitor with 100+% sRGB. There is also no gamma setting for the Alienware and only uses 1.8 gamma, which does not concern me as I use the same setting on the ViewSonic. I haven't tinkered with correcting the colors on the Alienware, and it would've helped if it also had ViewSonic's simple color saturation slidebar. When I used the Alienware, I've stopped watching movies, especially animation, since they were unwatchable with the bad colors. On the ViewSonic I don't have to switch to my IPS monitor just to watch.
Like I said, I wanted a 240Hz monitor for that competitive edge, so despite how I love the ViewSonic's image quality, I was more inclined towards Alienware's faster absolute input lag as measured by Tom's Hardware, where Alienware had 19ms and ViewSonic had 25ms. Since I had no high-speed camera to measure this objectively, I measured my in-game, real world performances, since while milliseconds count, if there is no significant difference in my performance, the better image quality of the ViewSonic wins.
Indeed, I found no conclusive difference between my performances on both monitors. I did measure my press reflex reaction times, and while I could get 0.16-0.17s more consistently on the Alienware, I've gotten my fastest 0.159s record on the ViewSonic.
The worst problem of the Alienware monitor, is a visible screendoor "flicker" especially compared to the ViewSonic which doesn't show any. I saved this for last as I do not know if this only pertains to the one I got. I put "flicker" on quotes because I do not know if it is an actual flicker, or the result of the shifting brightness and colors of the TN panel when moving your vision. But the ViewSonic has the same TN panel and it has zero signs of this problem, and even has a very subtle and very pleasant "blurring" filter of some sort.
Finally, another reason to keep the ViewSonic XG2530 is that it is the monitor used by the admin of BlurBusters (the monitor testing website) and he swears by it.
