Acer G24 - 24" widescreen gaming monitor

Objective Image Quality

The latest TN panels go a long way to closing the gap, subjectively speaking, to more expensive PVA and IPS panels. But in terms of subject tests of image rendering, there's no hiding the the G24's roots.

As ever with TN panels, plenty of compression is visible in the white, black and colour scales. That said, the G24 makes a pretty decent fist of rendering gradients, so at least colour banding is unlikely to be a major distraction. Colour inversion off centre is also apparent in some hues, including those all-important (for movie watching) black tones.

Better news comes in the form of good backlight uniformity and strength. We're also happy to note the lack of significant input lag or any image artefacts from pixel overdrive technology. Of course, those are usually the preserve of PVA panels, so their absence is not much of a surprise.

Subjective Image Quality

If the G24 doesn't exactly blitz objective test suites, its real world performance is much more acceptable, especially for its gaming remit. White tones are clean, bright and even and the glossy panel really does aid colour saturation as well as overall sharpness and clarity.

At its best, the G24 packs the sort of depth and solidity that many matte-surfaced monitors conspicuously lack. OK, a good PVA panel oozes even more colour, but there's vividness and punch aplenty from the G24. It also boasts extremely rapid pixel response just as you would expect from a 2ms TN screen. Combined with the punchy colours and the 24-inch diagonal you therefore have the makings of a very fine gaming panel.


It's a little less convincing for movie viewing. The viewing angles aren't bad, but there's just enough black tone inversion to cause noticeable colour shift vertically from top to bottom on the display and that's a bit of a nuisnace. What's more, overall black levels are not all that hot, despite the silly 50,000:1 contrast ratio.

Of course, enabling the dynamic contrast feature will achieve darker blacks in some video scenes. But it's a pretty blunt instrument that rarely works as you would like, is slow to respond and tends to make the picture appear a little dim and dingy.

As for the reflectivity of the glossy surface, that's a very personal issue and some find the constant reflections a serious distraction. Certainly we wouldn't recommend this monitor for use in brightly lit office environments. But for home users, we reckon it's usually possible to set the display up to minimise unwanted reflections to an acceptable level. However, the only way to really know how you feel about this aspect of the G24 is to try some kind of glossy display before you buy if at all possible.