Viewsonic XG2402 Gaming Monitor Review

The Viewsonic XG2402 is a monitor aimed at gamers, thanks to its super high 144Hz refresh rate and Freesync technology.

Design & Features

The actual design of the Viewsonic XG2402 seems a little dated. It’s not boasting skinny bezels – which come in at just under 2cm – like we’ve seen on gaming monitors of late, and its stand is literally just a square, albeit flat which I actually like. It means I can store away my keyboard closer to the monitor, as I’m a little limited on real estate on my desk.

Secondly, the monitor is pretty much made from plastic, though does feel tough, and there’s very minimal wobble when I nudge the monitor. There is a distinct lack of cable management options on the rear arm itself which is a bit of a shame, so cables unfortunately will just drape down from their ports.

As this is a TN panel, viewing angles aren’t the best, so you’ll need to sit square onto the monitor. It’s good that there is tilt, swivel and height adjustment too, so you can get the monitor into the perfect position on your desk. There’s also the ability to vertically align the monitor too if that’s your thing.

On the back speaking of ports, you can find one DisplayPort 1.2 which needs to be enabled in the OSD menus, and two HDMI 1.4 inputs. There are also two USB ports as well which can act as a hub when connected to your PC using a USB Type-B Upstream cable. There’s a Vesa 100 mount on the back too if you wanted to wall mount your monitor.

Image Quality

Out of the box I was pretty impressed with the picture quality of the Viewsonic XG2402. There wasn’t much I felt that needed to change in the menu system. I did however make a few changes. First, I went into the image menu and selected Custom 1. This gave me the flexability to change settings to my liking. To be perfectly honest, the only things I really changed was the gamma, which I set to 2.2, as any higher seemed a little too bright, and the Response Time setting, in which I selected ‘Faster’. The response time of this monitor is handled extremely well, as there was no noticable overshoot.

As I said at the beginning, the Viewsonic XG2402 has Freesync enabled as standard in the OSD. I had to turn on G-Sync inside of my nVidia control panel to get the most out of this monitor. It has a high range of <20Hz to 144Hz, with both DisplayPort and HDMI on this monitor which is a bonus.

In terms of colour reprouction, this is where things started to look a little lackluster. As I said, the best image profile by far was ‘Custom 1’, so make sure you set your monitor to that before you do anything else. Now do take into consideration that this is a TN panel, and as uaual, they’re not the best for colour work. The contrast ratio comes in at a disappointing 1000:1, and in darker environments, blacks begin to look a little grey, as backlight bleed affects the image quality. There’s no local dimming either.

The OSD

Unfortunately, Viewsonic have gone for several buttons on the bottom right of the monitor. It’s a pain, and can cause some trouble flicking between various menus. I have no idea why these monitor manufacturers don’t upgrade their UI to something a little more modern and easier to use, especially as monitors now come with a plethora of options to choose from.

There’s a few thigns that stick out when changing the options, and these are really based inside of the picture qualtiy menu. As I said I chose ‘Custom 1’ but there are three different custom profiles to choose from, as well as presets for FPS, RTS, Racing Games, Reading and more. Stick to Custom 1 though and you’ll be fine, whatever you throw at the monitor. Inside of ‘Custom 1’ are a number of options which can improve your image quality futther.

The first being the response time. I found the sweet spot on ‘Fastest’. There’s a black stabilisation option which you can change, as well as the gamma output, brightness, and Hertz Cap, which I left at 144Hz though you can force a 100 or 60Hz cap if you want. There’s also colour adjust, which you can adjust the RGB amounts youself.

Conclusion

There’s no hiding from the fact that this monitor is aimed at gamers. It’s got some amazing response time options and has a nice high refresh rate. Don’t forget Freesync capability too. The disappointing factors is with its colour reproduction and viewing angles, but to be honest, I can’t expect much more from a TN panel. The black levels are also not the best in dark scenarios, so I wouldn’t recommend this monitor for multimedia use at night, or even those cheeky late night gaming sessions with your room lights off. For console gamers though, this monitor is also a decent option to go for thanks to its low latency. For more information, head over to the Viewsonic website.