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So today we're going to be having a look at the Acer s231

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hlb LED backlit LCD monitor this is part

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of their Olympic Edition monitor so um while the Olympics are over it is still

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an Olympian of sorts and that it is a unique well not completely unique these

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days but it is a very very unique

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product offering in that it has an LED

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backlight and there are maybe other monitors with LED backlights but I

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haven't seen one yet so it's Unique to me see how I covered that up either way

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let's have a look at what's included with this particular Monitor and talk a

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little bit about the benefits of an LED backlit LCD versus a conventional

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fluorescent back lit LCD so actually I want the cameraman to look up a

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miniaturized version of that is exactly what is behind most LCD panels so what

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happens is that you actually have you tend to get what's called hotpots so

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those lights are actual tubes behind your panel and so it has to be diffused

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properly to get a nice even backlight so you get some hot spots where it's more

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washed out and some dark spots where it's a little bit darker with an LED

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back lit LCD the whole thing is

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completely back lit with little Points of Light so you get a nice even

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backlight one of the other advantages is it's a pure white backlight so you don't

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have any of the uh disadvantages of an

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offc colored Cath light behind the panel

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so you actually get better more accurate colors you get more consistent

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backlighting and you also get better power consumption because LEDs are much

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more efficient than those fluorescent tube blades so I've got all of the

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accessories unpacked let's have a quick look at them here oh the cameraman's probably looking at this what is this

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okay oh yeah and they're thinner so because you have to have that tube light

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you have to have some way in front of it to diffuse it so that it is evenly

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distributed you end up with a thicker panel if you have a c CFL backlit LCD so

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e-c color they're probably talking about more color oh yeah better contrast ratio

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yet another Advantage this is a 12 million to1 active contrast management

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contrast ratio LED maybe it's not quite that high it's um specs for contrast

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ratios have gotten a little bit ludicrous over the last few years but I

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can assure you that it's going to be better than a cathode backlit LCD so we

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have a VGA cable just in case you're still using one of those with your fancy

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new monitor we have a DVI cable that is also including I highly recommend using

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this one cuz that's how you're going to get the best image quality out of it

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you've got a power cable I'll just take that out which plugs into a power brick

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see there that really speaks to the power efficiency of an LED backlit LCD

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that's the power brick you're using it's like there's like nothing to it then we

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have the little stand that we're going to use to attach the monitor to

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presumably some kind of a base so let's pull the monitor itself

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out okay there's a piece of foam that is not the monitor now I'm going to pull

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the monitor out no this is the limited warranty agreement as well as a quick

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start guide on a CD for the monitor next

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we're going to pull out the

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Monitor and not drop the

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monitor it's okay it dropped on the foam so it's all

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good the foam that won't come out there

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we go we finally got the monitor as well as the base so here is a oh yeah you get

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another cable included the way they've packed this is just ingenious I'm not

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even going to try and get that off there H it's an HDMI cable there you go so I'm

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guessing that this monitor supports VGA DVI and HDMI based on the accessories

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that we've seen here next we've got the base so here is the one that here we

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go there we are so a nice shiny plastic

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base and then there's a uh screw on the bottom here for attaching that little

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ARM piece so I'm going to get this I'm going to get the display assembl as

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quickly as I can here so that we can have a look at the overall aesthetic

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because that's something that you know

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while you might have specs on your side and there might be all of these sort of

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U marketing bullet points one of the most important things about a monitor is

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going to be how it looks to you on your desk because you have to stare at it an

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awful lot and if it doesn't look nice then you're not going to like it no

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matter how good the image quality is for a lot of people anyway I mean not

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everybody's like that but for for me certainly I wouldn't want a monitor that

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I found ugly sitting on my desk for I mean I don't know how long most of our

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viewers will keep a monitor but I usually keep a monitor for at least 3 to

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5 years um I typically don't replace them unless I absolutely have to so here

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we go we've got uh oh this was full of marketing stuff okay so it's ultra thin

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there you can look at that while I'm taking off this uh cover on the monitor

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unless that's boring oh yeah this is the same stuff that was on the front of the

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box so it's Mercury free you know so not manufactured using

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mercury that's good all right making my

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way around here with these tape which is

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quite difficult to remove cleanly sorry about this

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everyone wow they are really serious

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about protecting the front of this panel it's like you got your tape you got your

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plastic we got like more tape and more plastic

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there we go o That's nice okay so here

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for thinness you're looking at about the width of oh yeah sure cameraman wants me

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to use his iPhone for comparison so it's actually only

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about twice the thickness of an iPhone

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at the top of the monitor so that's very very cool and that's just the bezel so

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when you actually look at the screen itself it's even quite a bit thinner

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than that because you've got a fair bound of the bezel up here in front of

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the monitor so if we just kind of hold the iPhone there for thickness

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comparison you can sort of see how thick the the bezel here is and how thick an

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iPhone is so it's incredibly slim now it's a little bit thicker down at the

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bottom because that's where you have all of the electronics for your

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inputs as well as oh here here's how we attach the base so there's a little bit

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of uh spot right here where we can put this

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in so it just slides in presumably like

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this yeah just like that and then if I had a screwdriver I'd be able to put

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this in more quickly but I don't so I'm going to have to drive the screw with my

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hand there we go hey hey

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Innovation all that's in there pretty good all right and then let's go ahead

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and stand it on the base so this particular model doesn't include any

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real tilt options or any of that kind of stuff but if you're looking for

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something that's just really power efficient

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and offers good color all that good LED

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backlit goodness good contrast ratio then this is probably the one for you

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now we're going to actually be testing this monitor a little bit better when we

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do a full NC Tech tips episode comparing it against a conventional cathode

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backlit LCD and that's really the whole reason that I'm unboxing this thing but

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just for the sake of having a look at it but what we get the cameraman to do kind

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of some closeups and uh check out this

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particular LCD I you know what I don't think I even mentioned the resolution

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and the size of it this is a 23in model

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and it is a 1920x 1080 resolution so that means you can watch full HD video

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on here it's not going to be scaled in any way it has a 16x9 aspect ratio so

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that means that you're not going to see the black bars on your content that you

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would on a 16 by10 uh and that's a 1920

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x 1200 pound so let's have a look around at the back

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where we have our Vasa mounts so you got 1 2 3 four of those so you can mount

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this on a wall mount and it wouldn't even have to be a very strong one

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because this LCD monitor is incredibly light so that's one of the really cool

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things about it then we've also got our inputs here which as I guessed before

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are HDMI DVI and VGA in here is the DC

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in so as I've showed you before it does

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have an external power brick although it is quite small so you just plug that in

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like that it does have a Kensington lock here as well if you need any anti- theft

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security so thank you for checking out my unboxing of the

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s231hl bid LED back lit LCD monitor from Acer