ASUS MX239H Silver / Black 23" 5ms (GTG) HDMI Widescreen LED Backlight LCD Monitor, IPS Panel 250 cd/m2 80,000,000:1 Built-in Speakers

Pros: Looks awesome and haven't had a single problem yet. I own two and it looks great with multimonitor gaming. The fact that you can sit virtually anywhere in respect to the monitor with prefect clarity is great.

Cons: None, easy setup and would recommend to everyone :)

Pros: Really nice display.
Great for multi-monitor setups.

Cons: Doesn't look like you can mount it easily.
I dont see a way to change how long it takes to go into standby.
When it goes into standby it takes a bit to come out.
The on screen frame thing can really be a pain if you hit it by accident.

Other Thoughts: I bought two of these. The first one I got new which was great. The second one I bought an open boxed one, It came with an internal problem rather than missing accessories as advertised. Tried to RMA but they wanted to charge me a $50 fee for shipping and restocking.

Nevertheless, I still recommend the monitor, as long as you don't mind the small details

Pros: Amazing color accuracy; this monitor has a very wide gamut of color reproduction and is able to replicate colors that other monitors can't.
AH-IPS Panel (Advanced High Performance IPS, the most recent variation of IPS technology refined by LG)
Excellent contrast ratio
Very bright screen
Panel has uniform brightness/backlight/color throughout
Quick response time with no noticeable blurring/ghosting
Not a hint of light bleeding
Wide viewing angles
Very nice aesthetic design
Thin bezel, not truly without a bezel, the screen surface extends past the viewable panel to a thin layer of plastic bezel. Its a very unique look, but still a 1/4" of non-screen surfaces surrounding the panel.
Touch "buttons"
Built in speakers could suffice, but a stand-alone set is highly recommended

Cons: Speakers are unnecessary
Monitor cannot swivel or adjust vertically

Other Thoughts: My primary use for this monitor is programming, gaming, and watching movies.
I purchased this monitor as my primary screen along with another Asus 21.5" IPS. This monitor puts the other IPS to shame, it’s just that good! I'm thinking I should have bought two of these.

I don't do any graphic design/artistic work but I have always been very sensitive to color accuracy. I am now a convert. The newer IPS monitors are really worlds apart from TA/VA panels. Some may or may not notice the difference, but for those that want/need a very color accurate monitor, this is it.

Side note: to get the most out of this monitor, head over to lagom.nl/lcd-test/ and calibrate the screen. I set mine on sRGB and it passes all the tests with flying colors. Be sure to use DVI or HDMI. Also be sure to set "trace free" to 0 to avoid artifacts for moving scenes.

BIG SIDE NOTE: The first one I bought had an eyelash sized hair on the left side of the screen with a cluster of dark pixels on the right side. I RMA'd it and received the current unit (much better!) I didn't take off any eggs, figured it was just a QA anomaly.

Pros: This is the coolest looking monitor I've ever seen! It is gorgeous!
I love everything about it

Cons: The speakers are not a good option if you are looking for surround sound but who would expect that from a monitor...

Pros: Good IPS technology. Matte finish. Colors are very nice. Scored very well on a monitor test where I looked at different shades of color and contrast/black levels. I was able to distinguish between each shade easily. Price is reasonable.

Response time is adequate. I was worried since I have only used low response time panels in the past for gaming. I have a 2ms panel, a 1ms panel and now two of these 5ms IPS monitors. I was going to primarily use them for working and watching movies. However, I did test them out on some games and found no problem gaming on them. I've played Crysis 2, BF3, SC2, XCOM, and a few others so far. They all played perfectly, and I did not detect ghosting. In fact, the colors were better and I prefer to use them for games now.

Cons: Backlight bleed along the corners at off-center viewing angles. Only really noticeable on an all black screen. It spreads the worse the viewing angle (from the corners). It's a bit different than standard bleed from an TN panel (explained below). I assume that's because of the new IPS tech.

For example, to remove the bleed from the lower right corner you'd have to position your eyes directly in front of that corner (wouldn't do anything to a TN panel's light bleed, but works here), which worsens the bleed from the rest of the monitor. Overall, It has wide viewing angles for which an image can be identified with some light bleed on the corners. Not much of a downside considering the price. Doesn't impact my use at all.

The bottom silver strip that adds style to the design prevents using eyefinity for gaming. It is taller than the rest of the bezel making it impossible to do multiple monitors in portrait configuration. The fact that the silver part is also a little wider than the bezel leaves a small (1mm) gap when doing landscape configurations. I didn't have any intention of using it for this purpose.

The "alignment grid" "feature" is freakin annoying. I mean, seriously ANNOYING. The buttons are along the bottom of the monitor and very touch sensitive. I accidentally hit them all the time when moving something on my desk or adjusting the volume for my speakers. I seem to hit the "alignment grid" the most. It is a 15+ second ordeal to get rid of it. It's meant to be used for making 3x5 note cards and the like. Nifty idea. It overlays onto the screen, with some transparency. It also has several "pages" that all have to be flipped through to get it to turn off. But, ALL the pages have to be flipped through and it takes a few seconds for it to flip between pages. Meaning, after you accidentally hit the button you're sitting there spamming the button through each of these pages to get the overlay to go away. And there's no way to skip it and just turn it off. It would be fatal during any kind of gaming. Worst Software Design Decision. Evar. I mean, when is it ever a good idea to not have an 'esc' button? 1 Egg down!

Other Thoughts: I have two of these monitors and this is my second review. I verified everything I said above with both. Originally I couldn't because of the color difference I noticed between them. However, the color problem was fixed when I switched to "active" adapters on my Radeon 6970. I recommend investing in these adapters if you plan on using multiple monitors. The difference was night and day. There is still a very minor color difference, but easily correct with adjustments.

The "trace free" feature cases artifacts! At first I thought my video card was dying. Pixels would go bright solid, r,g or b. This turned out to be the "trace free" feature that Asus included to lower response time for games. It is set at 60% by default and causes no artifacts at that setting. At 100% artifacts occur due to rapid on-screen movement.

I would recommend this over the 27" version as the light bleed phenomena would probably be worse.

Pros: - The monitor itself is sexy. The bezel is pretty thin.
- Over HDMI (I'm using a mini-displayport to HDMI adapter), the colors are vibrant and the display is still pretty bright despite the anti-glare.
- The packaging was nice.

Cons: - The speakers are mediocre. My 13" laptop speakers are better. In particular, from the audio in, there is hardly treble (which is the opposite of what you'd expect), and there's no way to adjust it. The HDMI seems to have more balanced audio though.
- There's no way to select the audio input channel. So even if you want to use HDMI with the audio in.. you're out of luck. For the most part this shouldn't be a problem.
- Beyond that, the audio out has very low volume. If I plug my headphones into it, I have to turn the volume way up to have the volume level be equivalent to the speaker volume.
- This may be the fault of the adapter (though none of the 300+ reviews of it mentioned), but over VGA (from mini-displayport), colors look more washed out and everything seems less bright (grayer) than over HDMI. So I have to turn the contrast up while using VGA to make it appear similar.
- The viewing angles aren't amazing. In particular, the bottom left corner appears brighter/bluer than the rest of the screen from where I sit at my desk. This is only noticeable with dark backgrounds and if you're within a couple feet of the monitor though. I program with a dark background at my desk, so it's a slight nuisance.

Other Thoughts: - The touch menu buttons are odd, but you get used to them.
- Though there are a lot of them, the negatives mostly pertain to audio issues, which are of course not that important to a display. it's cheap, thin, and looks good over HDMI. So as a display, it meets my expectations. My main qualm is with the lack of settings for the audio, especially given the advertising / branding of it. If you have a separate audio system, then this doesn't even matter. The other problem is with the VGA in, though that may just be the fault of the adapter. And the reason I use VGA in in the first place is because the mini-displayport out from my laptop doesn't support audio. If you're just using HDMI, it looks great.

Pros: Huge display compared to my old 19in hp monitor.
The screen looks really good (even when turned off).
No ghosting to be seen.

Cons: The monitor's buttons feel a little too sensitive for my taste but for most it shouldn't be a problem.

Other Thoughts: For to the $230 range of monitors this has to be one of the best I've seen.

Pros: - High quality build
- Nice colors. Pleasing to look at after adjusted.
- Minimal ghosting
- It's rather thin and light, I like that.

Cons: - I personally find the 'touch buttons' that allow you to adjust the settings far too sensitive -- it's annoying to change the settings and bothers my wrist holding it in the position under the monitor after a while as well.
- The monitor is very bright and when dimming it with the brightness setting, the colors become a bit washed out. So it's hard to balance between good colors and not being overly bright. Maybe it's just me, but I don't like my monitors being intensely bright.
- There is some minor ghosting that I mostly see while scrolling fast through a web site for example, but I found that leaving the "trace free" option on 20 instead of the default 60 makes it less noticeable. I don't notice ghosting in games, however, so that's good.

Other Thoughts: I used to have a Hanns.G 281DJB, and the colors on this monitor as much more accurate and diverse. I feel like I was missing something when I compare to my old one.

With an ATI card I had to override a registry editing to stop it from overscanning and displaying the 1920x1080 / HD resolution with black borders around it on the screen. But this does not appear to be a fault of the monitor; it seems ATI drivers detect it as a TV instead of a monitor or something. But now it works great.

Pros: A very beautiful screen. It is light and easy to setup. I love it

Cons: The black is not as dark as my acer monitor. I was able to play with the color settings....if you tweek it right the colors really pop off the screen. But it took a lot of fine adjustments to get it right.

Other Thoughts: A great monitor!! I will most likely buy two more to complete my 3 monitor set up.

Pros: IPS, matte finish, stylish design. I didn't notice the higher response time when playing Crysis (I have a 2ms panel to compare to). Resonable price.

Cons: It's not a perfect display, but it also doesn't have the price tag of one. Definitely a good buy if you get a decent one. One of the monitors I bought seems defective (see below).

Other Thoughts: I ordered 2, and the colors looked pretty different (I did factory resets and made sure they were both configured identically). I ran some image tests. One of the monitors was significantly brighter with 'white' having a yellowish tint. It was painful to the eye to use at full brightness - wouldn't have been a problem if turning the brightness down hadn't made 'whites' even more yellowish.

The other monitor wasn't quite as bright, but whites were purer and weren't painful. It did better overall on the tests I did, especially contrast. Definitely a fantastic monitor.

I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't bought 2. I knew that 2 identical monitors would be a little different, but the difference is obvious, especially when looking at my desktop.