Ergonomics
There's not much to say as far as the adjustments on the shell go. The ergonomics of the F20 derive from Acer's AL2032W. The panel has a tilt adjustment with a fairly limited range, and the OSD is clear. The remote control that comes with the monitor is effective. On the lower part of the panel you can find several touch-sensitive buttons that can be used in place of the remote control if you wish.
Connectivity And Equipment
The connectivity and equipment are more than complete. In addition to DVI and VGA, there are some very handy audio-video connectors. For example, there's a basic cinch connection, but also S-Video, and the monitor also has a standard analog tuner. We were a little disappointed in the sound quality, since the massive speakers and the inclusion of a little subwoofer led us to expect a bit better dynamics. Unfortunately the sound was fairly flat in spite of all this, which is a shame on a monitor with multimedia ambitions.
Good-Looking, But
In our calibrator test, the F20 showed performance similar to that of the AL2032W.
The color rendering wasn't ideal: less than 80% of the colors were perfect, while 98% were good. The performance resembled that of the AL2032W. We'll mention in passing that the control of color temperature was not very good overall. Warm was at 5800K, cold at 7500K. When we readjusted the controls and employed a user mode (red = 79, green = 83, blue = 100), we achieved significantly better performance.
| Black spot | White spot | Contrast |
|---|---|---|
| 0.4 | 273 | 682: 1 |
The monitor's brightness was a little too high, but the black level was astoundingly low, which resulted in an excellent contrast ratio of more than 680:1. Still, it would be better if the brightness weren't so high.
The contrast was "fairly" stable. Though the values didn't stray much beyond the 90-100% range, they did yo-yo a bit. We've seen better, but in general we have to admit that monitor makers have made significant improvements in this area compared to the previous generation of LCDs.
Tested with the Gretag Eye-One Display 2, the F20 wasn't all that impressive. The panel's color range covered the sRGB color space and no more; you'll have to settle for that.
