Acer T232HL - Touch Comes to the Desktop
by Chris Heinonen on February 6, 2013 9:00 AM ESTBrightness and Contrast
The Acer T232HL uses an IPS panel with LED lighting, so my main curiosity on it was if the touch layer would have a negative impact on brightness and contrast ratios. We’ve seen phones and tablets that maintain very good contrast ratios, but they utilize much smaller screens. With a 23” display I expect to have a good amount of light output, and here the Acer only managed to produce 219 nits with the backlight at maximum. This comes in a bit behind other 23” monitors that I’ve reviewed recently and well behind all the 27” displays that I’ve seen. With the backlight at minimum I managed to get 32 nits out, so you can reduce the light output as much as you would likely want to be able to.
Black level is 0.212 nits with the backlight at maximum and down to 0.032 nits with the backlight at its minimum value. These wind up being really good for a smaller IPS panel, as they typically are a good amount higher. Going back to the touch layer, I’ve no way to test it but if that layer is absorbing 0.1 nits of light, that would lead to almost no change at the white level, but a huge change in the black level.
This small change would make a large change in the contrast levels, and that might account for the contrast levels that I saw in the Acer. Maximum backlight had a contrast of 1033 and minimum had a level of 1004. These are really nice levels and lead to an image with a lot of dynamic punch. The glass front helps to accentuate this a bit as well in comparison to a matte finish, making the Acer really stand out.
I wish the peak brightness on the Acer was better, as 250-300 nits should be the minimum that a monitor can deliver in my opinion. The reflective nature of the glass makes this even more important to me since if you are getting reflections from your lighting, you’ll want to crank the panel backlight up to compensate. If you don’t have glare issues, then the Acer produces contrast numbers that are really nice to see.
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zero2dash - Wednesday, February 6, 2013 - link
Horrible decision.That thing will be filthy in hours.
Flunk - Wednesday, February 6, 2013 - link
You can't have a touchscreen with a matte finish, the two features have to go together. If you don't like it you can always get a matte non-touchscreen there are lots of those on the market.JanieMartin - Thursday, February 7, 2013 - link
Love my job, since I've been bringing in $5600… I sit at home, music playing while I work in front of my new iMac that I got now that I'm making it online.(Click Home information)http://goo.gl/q9r5k
Beaver M. - Thursday, February 7, 2013 - link
Funny, I have one of those right here. Works fine. Given it is also transflexive, but it is matte.Beaver M. - Thursday, February 7, 2013 - link
Transflective of course.shtldr - Thursday, February 7, 2013 - link
I've seen a matte touch desktop display about 7 years ago. It was probably the resistive type as one had to use some force.Not sure if they're still being produced with all this tablet/smartphone glass capacitive fad of late, but they can be had.
Tams80 - Friday, February 8, 2013 - link
Absolute rubbish! I'm using a Tablet PC with a matte touchscreen right now.roberto.tomas - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
Is that true for proj. capacitive as well as optical? 2-point multitouch systems should probably need glossy, because they are optical. But 10-point is usually more expensive projective capacitive (and I didn't know if they needed matted too).My take on the monitor: horrible, disturbingly bad color gamut for a monitor that is glossy. The sRGB % for this thing is as low as a $60 commodity 11.6" laptop matte from AUO. But; full 10-point multitouch in the sub-$1 grand range, good range of pivot, and not entirely small 23". I'm lukewarm to the thing, if it went onf half off sale I might pick one up ... maybe.
Homeles - Wednesday, February 6, 2013 - link
Read the article, genius:"I worried a lot about fingerprints and smudges with the glossy finish, but I didn’t find myself having to clean it that often, and typically they were hidden away well."
zero2dash - Wednesday, February 6, 2013 - link
When you grow up, have sex, and have kids, you'll realize that glossy screens get fingerprints all over them.Maybe this monitor works for 1 person who cleans their hands every five minutes.
In a normal household with more than 1 person and normal use, the thing would be filthy in no more than 24 hours. I have fingerprints on all my monitors, flat screens, and every other glossy screen device in our house...and half of those devices aren't even touch screens.