ViewSonic XG2405 gaming monitor review: Low input lag, high refresh rate and a practical stand make this a complete package

• The ViewSonic XG2405 is a 24-inch gaming monitor with 144Hz refresh rate.
• It offers out-of-the-box support for AMD FreeSync and has a low input lag of 1ms
• It has an understated design along with an ergonomic stand that offers practicality

Venturing into competitive gaming for the first time can be a little tricky. You may have a decently specced gaming system, but you’d be spending most of your time interacting with the peripherals, and so choosing them wisely is paramount.


One such investment is a good gaming monitor and if you’re just starting out, you may get overwhelmed by the sheer cost and variety in the market. The ViewSonic XG2405 is a 24-inch gaming monitor that sets out to bridge this gap. It claims to offer several gamer-centric features such as support for AMD FreeSync, 144Hz refresh and low-input lag of 1ms, all at a price of ₹18,999. So should you consider buying it? Find out in our review.


Design & I/O



Gaming monitors usually have the reputation of having gaudy, ostentatious designs marked by bright-coloured accents, RGB lights or angular lines. The ViewSonic XG2405 is a welcome deviation from this, as it has a rather understated design that’s tuned more towards practicality.


Despite a slightly wide chin with the ViewSonic logo, it has really slim bezels, which is useful if you plan on going for a multi-monitor setup in the future. The entire monitor has a single colour although the finish of the plastic is different on the base and stand.


Behind the display, on the right side, you’ll find five buttons that will help you navigate through the on-screen display (OSD) menu. While these are useful, I personally prefer a tiny joystick that makes selection much easier.


Moving on to the stand, I found it to be extremely useful. It allowed me to painlessly go from landscape to portrait modes, without using any tools or upper body strength, and even height and tilt adjustments were super easy to make. You get about 12cm worth of wiggle room for height adjustment and you can tilt it between -5° and 20°. If you wish you hang it on a wall, you also get 100x100mm VESA mount compatibility. Oh, and the stand also doubles up as a headphones holder.


The rectangular base is extremely sturdy and there’s absolutely no chance of wobbling. But because it’s so big, it does end up eating a bit of your table’s real estate. That’s the price you have to pay for such a versatile stand, but it would get better if the company can find a way to shrink its size in the upcoming models.



In terms of I/O options, you have two HDMI ports, a DisplayPort and an audio input jack that allows you to connect your headphones.


Display

The XG2405 has a 24-inch IPS LCD panel with Full HD resolution and pixel density of 93 PPI. In terms of display size, this isn’t the biggest fish in the pond, but it doesn’t even have to be. It’s suited well to those who have a rather cosy setup or are planning to have multiple monitors as an extended setup.


The IPS panel offers good viewing angles to the tune of 178°, but the contrast ratio of 1,000:1 isn’t as good as the ones provided by similarly price VA panels. There’s also a bit of visible blooming or a white glow around the corners, but it’s to an acceptable level for a monitor this price. It’s not too distracting and you’ll observe it only when you’ll watching or playing something that’s dark. Further, the monitor has a peak brightness of 250 nits it also comes with an anti-reflective coating that does a good job of keeping glares and reflections at bay. I used the monitor mostly in a brightly lit room, and I rarely ever had any issues using it.



Moving on, it offers 8-bit colour depth and is capable of covering the basic sRGB colour gamut. Although theoretically, the colours should seem neutral and not oversaturated, I found that the default colour temperature to be slightly cooler. Nevertheless, you can change this to your liking and it shouldn’t be much of a dealbreaker if you’re planning to mostly game using this monitor. If you’re, however, planning to create content, it also comes with a pre-calibrated sRGB mode in which you can change brightness, unlike other monitors in the same range.



Performance

Moving on to the response times and gaming performance, the 144Hz refresh rate makes things smoother, a characteristic of high refresh rate monitors. It’s not only beneficial in gaming, but also in the overall fluidity of your experience.


Further, it has a claimed MPRT or moving picture response time of just 1 millisecond, but to take advantage of this, you’ll have to enable a special mode in the settings. Once you do it, you’ll see a noticeable drop in brightness, but you’ll also observe reduced ghosting that enables smoother motion clarity. This should only be done in games that can achieve a steady FPS on your system that’s equal to the refresh rate of your monitor (so 144FPS:144Hz), or else you’ll not enjoy the intended result. I tried this on CS: GO on an Asus ROG Strix G15, and it does make things much, much faster.


Another gamery feature of this monitor is the ability to support AMD FreeSync out-of-the-box. Although there’s no official support for Nvidia’s G-Sync, it does work with supported GeForce cards (GTX 10-series or newer) without giving you much grief, although if you want to enjoy this, you’ll have to connect only via the DisplayPort.



Just so you know, this tech allows the monitor to change its refresh rate dynamically, synchronized with the frame rate of your game. This helps eliminate a visual artefact called ‘screen tearing’, in which you literally see a tear between the content being displayed on your screen. It also helps in reducing stuttering without a noticeable input lag penalty.


There are also other notable features in this monitor such as Black Stabilization, which improves visibility in darker games, and some other pre-calibrated genre-specific picture presets such as FPS, RTS & MOBA. You may dig some of these, I just set it either on Text or Standard presets as it suited my style more.


Verdict

In my month of usage, the ViewSonic XG2405 managed to offer good features and decent performance. It doesn’t break the bank, offers an IPS display and a decent choice of ports too. And when you toss in that ergonomic stand in the mix, it becomes difficult to recommend this monitor for anybody starting to get serious about gaming. Sure, it does struggle with a bit of blooming and the added heft of its base, but that’s not something that should break the deal.