Acer S243HL Review: Leaves a Lot to Be Desired

The Acer S243HL is a monitor with a 16 to 9 aspect ratio. It looks pretty conventional, although the foot stand is rather unusual, which is shaped like an "L," 12.2 in. at the widest portion and 6.3 at the narrowest, and it's 7.4 in. at the deepest. Extending all the way to the onscreen display buttons, the sections width is a matte gray color. The back of the monitor is black matte. The worst thing about the engineering is that the slightest disturbance makes the Acer S243HL monitor wobble from side to side.

As many companies are now doing, Acer made the Acer S243HL with a 16 to 9 aspect ratio, as mentioned above, which supports Full HD at 1920x1080 pixels. The preference for 16 to 9 over 16 to 10 is rooted in the fact that HD content can be displayed without distortion and stretching when it's in full screen mode.

So we took the true HD Acer S243HL monitor and tested it on Movie Mode with some 1080p movies. To start, we popped in "Kill Bill Vol. 1" from the WMV HD Showcase by Microsoft. Then, we tried the same movie on the Samsung XL2370 for comparison. With this and a number of other 1080p movies, the colors were brighter in the Samsung than in the Acer S243HL. One scene had some people skiing, and they, along with the snow around them, looked a little too green on the Acer S243HL when compared to the Samsung. Although it isn't really that big of a deal, you might as well know where the Acer S243HL doesn't quite meet the competition as not.

Other bad signs with any monitor are streaking, ghosting and lag when the action gets hot. Well, we didn't notice any of that while watching World of Warcraft or Unreal Tournament 3. However, when we brought out the games and once again compared the Acer S243HL to the Samsung XL2370, the graphics looked kind of lifeless. The monitor was preset to Graphics Mode, and the result was oversaturated text. Ironically, the user defaults considerably improved any undesirable effects. Sound distortion never seemed to show up, though.

We have to say the Acer S243HL just isn't what it could be, and for that reason you should go with Samsung's SyncMaster XL2370. They're both 24 inches, are about $300 and LED backlit, and both their panels are ultrathin. However, the Acer S243HL doesn't match up to the Samsung. The contrast ratio by itself was enough to turn us off, along with the fact that the high levels of black ruined the color accuracy. Another inconvenience is that it has no DVI connection, only HDMIs, so many would need to purchase a conversion cable in order to use the Acer S243HL with their computers. It looks nice, but performance has a long way to go.