Here is our mini review of the AOC i2369Vm 23″ Monitor.
At Tony Man towers reinvesting in the business is everything especially when it comes to the tools of the trade. A quick Mac, up-to-date software (Adobe CC especially) and a great display really makes the difference when creating top notch design work.
For a while, we have been looking for a bigger display to compliment our quick Mac and we have literally scoured the web to try and find a good value monitor. Now we could have gone the whole hog and plumped for a 27″ display as most people believe that bigger is better but when it comes to size you have to factor into the equation resolution as well. Eventually, we decided to go 23″ as we felt that the size to resolution ratio would have been ideal for traditional and digital design.
Now if you are in the market for a monitor you will find that there are a plethora of monitors out there, especially in the 23″ size category. Simply choosing one out of the many can be a bit of a minefield. So it is important to read the reviews that customers post on various sites like amazon.co.uk or ebuyer plus you can always just look on the likes of Hotukdeals and see what people are posting on there if you a searching for a monitor and the obvious Google search is also ideal.
After a lot of research, we simply popped down to Currys in Sunderland, armed with our MacbookPro and a mini DV to HDMI lead and asked the sales assistant if we can simply try out a few monitors for size. They gladly let us and after a bit of deliberation, we walked away with the AOC i2369Vm. Now I can hear you all saying that there are cheaper monitors on the internet to order. Which is true but we have also been reading about people getting dead pixels on some of their monitors so you can’t beat having the option of simply popping back into Currys and exchanging the damaged monitor there and then for a new one instead of returning via courier and waiting for a new one to arrive, we felt that it was worth paying the extra £10-£20 for this option.
The AOC i2369Vm is a very nice monitor. Looks good and the bezels on the edge very thin to say the least. When hooking it up to the MacbookPro as a second monitor it works well, even though the resolution isn’t as great as the display on the Macbook Pro for developing WordPress sites it will be ideal. Where it comes into its own is when you put the Macbook Pro into clamshell mode.
Clamshell mode on a MacbookPro happens when you connect a USB keyboard and mouse to it and you simply close the laptop’s lid. You may think that you are putting the laptop into sleep mode but because you have the keyboard, mouse and it detects that you have a second display connected it basically transfers all of its high-resolution goodness to the attached display and we have to say that it makes a massive difference and for that one reason alone we love this setup as this monitor supports a resolution of up to 1920 x 1080p full HD.
As the monitor is an IPS panel the colours are good though we still feel that we have to do a little more fiddling to get the screen displaying everything correctly but that is easily achieved via the buttons located below the screen and an easy to follow OSD (on screen display).
Our monitor didn’t have any light bleed and no dead pixels. We also liked the fact that it had speakers, though not great in terms of sound reproduction they work ok if you have a second device attached like a Chromecast dongle. Talking of what you can be attached to the monitor it has two HDMI ports, one VGA port and a Display port.
The response time is measured at around 6ms which is OK for what we need the monitor for but we have to admit we haven’t connected it to a console to it for gaming so you may have to look elsewhere if that’s what you need a new display for.
To sum up we really like this monitor. It works ok as a second monitor, which is ok for WordPress work but we feel that when you enable Clamshell mode on the Mac then it really comes into its own and we can’t wait to do design work on it.
We have also created a little video so you can see the monitor in all of its glory, sorry about the shaky video though. We think the next thing to get will be a tripod!