ASUS MK241H Black 24" 2ms HDMI Widescreen LCD Monitor with 1.3M Pixel Webcam 450 cd/m2 1000:1 (ASCR 3000:1) Built in Speakers

Tone it down a little and this thing rocks!

Reviewed By: DamienChaos on 6/20/2008

Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 day to 1 week

Pros: Beautiful black casing with aluminum accent, perfect resolution for the screen size, vivid color presentation, brightness is even across the LCD surface, no dead/stuck pixels, no light bleeding around the edges, zero ghosting, and blacks even look good! The webcam and mic array aren't bad either (on 32bit XP/Vista).

Cons: When you take this thing out of the box, tone the settings down a little. Both brightness and contrast need to be reduced to about two thirds of their stock settings in order to reduce the "rainbow" of colors you get around black ClearType enhanced text against a white background. Another negative is no x64 drivers for the webcam and mic array. Speakers are mediocre, but well placed line out and headphone jacks fix that.

Other Thoughts: I upgraded from my trusty old Dell Ultrasharp 1800FP, and it is like getting cataract surgery. When gaming I see MANY more separate and distinct colors on this monitor than I did previously. As an example, on the 1800FP, I had issues reading WoW's green guild chat in the text box when it was against certain green backgrounds (i.e. grass). Now, I have zero issues differentiating between the text and the background, no matter how close the two shades may be!

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Gaming Nirvana

Reviewed By: on 6/14/2008

Tech Level: average - Ownership: 1 week to 1 month

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: Bright and vivid colors, blacks, and whites. Details are sharp and crisp. NO motion blur or image ghosts even in high speed FPS games (Quake, Doom, Battlefield, etc). Not a single bum pixel or other defect. Several standard color adjustment modes accessible with a single button. Nice, clean, modern case appearance with very small footprint. Easy set-up and go right out of the box, used included DVI cable and did not need to do any additional configuring or driver updating with my once-great, now ancient BFG 6800 Ultra OC video card.

Cons: Text fonts look funny at any resolution lower than the native 1920x1200. I like the native resolution but my wife prefers larger text so this annoys her. Probably a way to fix it but I am too obsessed with playing my favorite games on this baby to waste a minute figuring it out. The menu system for making adjustments outside the standard presets is a bit awkward with a lot of button fumbling involved, but not too bad once you catch on.

Other Thoughts: Took me a long time to go flat-panel because I could not stand the image blurring and ghosting I could see in fast games on 5ms and even 3ms monitors. But my beloved Sony 24" widescreen CRT finally bit the dust so I gave this Asus a try. The crisp images, vivid colors, and fast 2ms response will satisfy even the most demanding FPS game players. I did not really shop around much so I cannot speak about the price, but I am 100% satisfied with the quality of this monitor. To hell with my wife, all she does is email and Webkinz on it anyway.

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Wow!

Reviewed By: Chris on 5/24/2008

Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 month to 1 year

Pros: Awesome! That's it. It's just awesome! High contrast ratio and brightness. Low response time. Very large viewing area. Everything about this monitor is great.

Cons: Bells and whistles. Personally, I have no need for a built in webcam or speakers, but I couldn't find a comparable monitor without them.

Other Thoughts: Well worth the cost. I would love to see the same model for $100 less without speakers and webcam but that isn't a huge deal.

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bad apple

Reviewed By: Wetchaser on 7/25/2009

Tech Level: somewhat high - Ownership: 1 month to 1 year

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: Big

Cons: I bought it 3 months ago, and dvi in it just stopped working tonight. Hooked up a vga cable, and it worked till i changed res from 640x800 to my normal res of 1600x1200. then i was stuck looking at black screen on running pc. Big ol NOW WHAT? Situation.

Other Thoughts: Had to be inferior workmanship or parts that cause this failure. Was fine before i went to dinner, came back to bright blue screen. Good thing i bought a monitor from newegg a few yrs ago. Dusted it off, hooked it up, and back in buisness, just allot smaller.

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Reviewed By: Ellsass on 7/22/2009

Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 month to 1 year

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: It's huge, cheap, and video looks great. The real estate is fantastic.

I've got a webcam now, just in case I happen to find a use for it after 10 years of not needing one.

The bevel/stand/casing look nice. I had no problems peeling off the promotional sticker.

Cons: I still can't get the colors to look quite right near the top of the screen. There is a harshness to the black-on-gray menus in apps when using the Windows Classic theme, and some of the favicons in Firefox (especially ones with a lot of red or blue) look harsh and different than on other monitors.

It also took a long time (weeks) to get the brightness and contrast under control such that it is comfortable to read web pages for long periods.

It takes too long (5-6 seconds) for the image to appear on the screen when turning it on or waking up the PC (after Windows shuts off the monitors due to being idle). This is the case even when the monitor was just turned off a moment before, so it's not an issue with warming up.

Other Thoughts: Reading text is fine since text normally doesn't begin until 1/4 of the way down the screen. If it were right up in the top 2" the harshness described above might make reading strenuous.

Though my review sounds like I should give it 2 or 3 stars, I'm giving it 4 because now that I've worked out the settings it is very nice to look at.

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solid monitor

Reviewed By: on 7/21/2009

Tech Level: somewhat high - Ownership: 1 month to 1 year

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: Decent quality for the price. Performs as expected. No dead/stuck pixels. Easy enough to calibrate. Plays well with computer/xbox360/ps3/tv.

Cons: I don't like the buttons on the bottom right. They feel as if they will break if pushed too hard.

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