CTX Value VL 950ST

...my previous monitor, a 15" CTX model which served me very well for 5 years.

I surfed my usual selection of PC component sites, and found two monitors which tickled my fancy - a Hansol 19" at a very reasonable £130 ish, and a nice CTX 17" at just under this price. I took a few days to browse these sites, to make sure I had the best price, and the best monitor when I suddenly saw on eBuyer.com a CTX monitor for £136. I ...
...of how satisfied I'd been with my previous model, and this was just too good to turn down.

So, what can I say about a monitor? Well, don't expect much in the way of frills with this monitor. It's a basic, entry-level monitor so you'll not get front mounted USB ports, for example. That's not to say it's a bad monitor. Indeed, picture quality at all resolutions is great, very impressive at higher resolutions and you get huge amounts ... more

I hate pooters. Actually, that's not strictly true, I think they're great because you can do so much with them. However, if you're a gadget freak like myself, you're forever reading up on the latest pieces of kit to add to your system (unless you've chosen the easy way out and bought an Apple!).

Anyway, I've been adding, upgrading and replacing bits of my PC since I bought my original system back in 1997. Recently (actually, it was 6 months ago, but I've been in foreign climes) my monitor started looking a bit dark, despite the brightness and contrast levels being turned up high, and during some games it was practically impossible to see what the hell was going on. Even worse, it was getting harder to edit digital photographs, and my skills (or lack of) behind the camera were being ruined by my lack of skills in front of the monitor.

Enough of my self-back slappery, on with the opinion!

A few weeks before I returned home, I wanted to make sure I was ready to use my PC to it's fullest as soon as I returned. What I was ideally looking for was one that was bigger than my previous monitor, a 15" CTX model which served me very well for 5 years.

I surfed my usual selection of PC component sites, and found two monitors which tickled my fancy - a Hansol 19" at a very reasonable £130 ish, and a nice CTX 17" at just under this price. I took a few days to browse these sites, to make sure I had the best price, and the best monitor when I suddenly saw on eBuyer.com a CTX monitor for £136. I had been edging towards the 17" CTX monitor anyway because of how satisfied I'd been with my previous model, and this was just too good to turn down.

So, what can I say about a monitor? Well, don't expect much in the way of frills with this monitor. It's a basic, entry-level monitor so you'll not get front mounted USB ports, for example. That's not to say it's a bad monitor. Indeed, picture quality at all resolutions is great, very impressive at higher resolutions and you get huge amounts of desktop space. It has a 0.26mm dot pitch, which is not bad for a low-priced monitor, although you can get better. (The dot pitch of a monitor tells you how sharp the image will be.) I've been running it at 1024 * 768 and 1280 * 768 with no problems apart from the fact it's now weird to have al this "wasted" space around the screen! The monitor is capable of taking resolutions of up to 1600 * 1200, although I suspect most people (at least at the moment will be using resolutions similar to those mentioned above). For those of you who are unaware, unlike televisions and LCD screens, CRT monitors are measured diagonally according to case rather than screen, so despite being marketed as a19" monitor, screen size is actually 18".

I've also noticed a reduction in the amount of eyestrain I now have after using this for a few hours at time. I'm no longer squinting at the screen.

Brightness levels are now back to normal - hurrah! Everything can be easily seen on screen, and the brightness levels are suck that I'm not trying to figure out what's going on when I'm playing games.

There are 7 buttons on the front of the monitor, a menu button, 2 buttons each for brightness and contrast which also double as buttons for use in the onscreen menu, an exit/degaussing button and the ubiquitous power button.

The onscreen menu is simple to use. Accessing it, by pressing the Menu button once, shows the status of the monitor (i.e. screen resolution and horizontal and vertical refresh rates). Pressing the menu button again will cycle through other settings such as screen size, position, geometry, moiré, colours and language settings. These are simple and intuitive to use, and you should have your monitor set up to your satisfaction in no time.

That is if you can lift the bloody thing onto your desk! It's a beast of a machine, weighing in at 22kg. It's an approximate 50cm cube i.e. 50cm x 50cm x 50cm which isn't overly large, especially when you consider the screen size of the monitor, but the weight can be off putting, and you should take this into consideration especially if you are planning on putting the monitor somewhere where weight is an issue.

Unlike my old 15" monitor which drew power from my PC, this new monitor draws power from it's own power lead, so you might have to free up a wall socket somewhere or invest in an extension lead.

As I've already said, the image quality is excellent for normal things like web browsing, word processing etc. Games image quality is good too with the action being depicted in huge big-o-vision (and I can finally see! Hurrah!). What I was most impressed with was that with a bigger monitor the DVD playback now rocks big time, nearly as good as watching it on a proper telly, at least in terms of size!

Overall, I'm very pleased with this purchase. I don't know how I could go back to a smaller screen, and at this price (£136 ex. VAT from eBuyer.com) I think I've gotten a bargain. If you're suffering from eyestrain, and looking to get a bigger monitor, you should try looking at the 19" ones out there. They're coming down in price quite rapidly, and you might just get more than you think! 

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