As a leading brand in PC monitors, ViewSonic’s products are a familiar sight in corporate offices due to various factors such as affordability, reliability and an established sales and service network in India. The company’s offerings include basic home and office monitors, gaming monitors, touchscreen monitors, and high-resolution entertainment-friendly monitors. The ViewSonic product I’m reviewing here is an entertainment-focused option that claims to be well-suited for both productivity and recreational use.
Priced at Rs. 28,990 in India, the ViewSonic 32-inch 4K Entertainment Monitor (VX3211-4K-mhd) is a simple yet capable option for anyone looking to invest in a large, high-resolution monitor. As the name suggests, the monitor has a 32-inch Ultra-HD (3840×2160-pixel) TFT-LCD display and you also get built-in speakers and decent connectivity options. Is this the most versatile monitor you can buy for less than Rs. 30,000? Find out in this review.
ViewSonic 32-inch 4K Entertainment Monitor (VX3211-4K-mhd) design
Virtually every regular television these days has an aspect ratio of 16:9, as this is the most commonly used format for content. This allows a screen to fit different types of content without leaving too much blank area or image distortion. So it’s no surprise that ViewSonic would choose this aspect ratio for an entertainment-focused monitor. At this size, it also allows a good Ultra-HD (3840×2160-pixel) resolution.
The ViewSonic 32-inch monitor resembles a similarly sized television in most respects, and even works just like that, just without the smarts you’d expect. There are thin bezels around the screen and the monitor sits on a one-piece center-mount table-top stand that is interestingly pre-attached in the sales package. You can also make the monitor VESA mount if you want, but no wall mounting kit is included.
My review unit came with two 1.5m power cables with different style plugs and a 1.5m HDMI cable in the box. Oddly, one of the power cords had a large 16A plug instead of the more common 6A plugs that fit into most Indian outlets. The second power cord in the box had an American style three-prong plug and I was able to use it thankfully with an adapter.
The pre-assembled stand is quite wide – almost the entire width of the monitor itself – and therefore needs a table wide enough to place it on. However, it is a solid and well built metal stand, and this makes the whole setup feel very stable. There is room to tilt the screen 13 degrees back and 5 degrees forward. You can of course remove the stand fairly easily if you want to mount the monitor on the wall or use a VESA-compatible arm.
On the back of the ViewSonic monitor are two 2.5W speakers for stereo sound, along with six buttons to operate the device’s menus. The markings for the buttons are on the front and apart from the power button on the bottom, everything else is dynamic and their functions change according to your selections on the screen. That said, I found it quite difficult to navigate or control anything on the monitor with these buttons, as I couldn’t see what I was pressing, and often ended up on the wrong one.
The ports and connectors on the ViewSonic 32-inch 4K Entertainment monitor are all on the back and face down, which I found a bit clunky. Options include two HDMI 2.0 ports, one DisplayPort 1.4 input, and a 3.5mm jack to route audio. Of course, you can use headphones, including Bluetooth headphones, directly with any source device you have connected. USB Type-C with power supply would have been nice, but I wouldn’t call its absence a fault at this price.
ViewSonic 32-inch 4K Entertainment Monitor (VX3211-4K-mhd) Specifications and Features
The ViewSonic 4K Entertainment Monitor features a 32-inch Vertical Alignment (VA) TFT-LCD display, with support for high dynamic range content up to HDR10 format. The monitor has a maximum brightness of 300 nits and a standard refresh rate of 60 Hz. Viewsonic claims that the color reproduction of this monitor covers 95 percent of the NTSC color gamut. All of these specs make for a good productivity display for your computer or laptop, as well as a sort of ‘television’, provided you have the correct source device(s) to plug into it.
Unfortunately, the ViewSonic 32-inch monitor doesn’t come with a remote control and all interactions with the menus have to be done via the fiddly and difficult buttons on the back.
Other key features include AMD FreeSync compatibility, a blue light filter for eye care, an energy-saving ‘Eco’ mode for less power consumption, and several image presets including Game, Web, Movie, Text, Monochrome and MacOS. HDR can be set to automatic mode and is activated when HDR content is detected by the monitor.
ViewSonic 32-inch 4K Entertainment Monitor (VX3211-4K-mhd) performance
The ViewSonic 32-inch 4K Entertainment Monitor (VX3211-4K-mhd) is suitable for entertainment thanks to its 16:9 aspect ratio, Ultra-HD resolution, HDR10 support and built-in speakers, just like the Samsung M7 monitor I recently reviewed. Still, the screen and image quality are set up to be used primarily as a monitor.
However, the major difference between the two lies in Viewsonic’s lack of cleverness, which explains the significant price difference between them. The ViewSonic provides a home screen with no native user interface, apps or connectivity, and relies on your source devices for all content. This can be easily remedied by connecting a decent streaming device to the ViewSonic monitor or even watching videos through your connected computer.
I had the ViewSonic 32-inch 4K Entertainment Monitor set up with the Realme Book Slim for most of this review, using a DisplayPort to USB Type-C cable. This allowed Windows to scale to the Ultra-HD resolution of the monitor, at 60 Hz. I also had a MacBook Air connected through the monitor’s HDMI port to test the picture-in-picture mode, and a Xiaomi Mi Box 4K to stream Ultra-HD HDR content directly.
While it may seem like the lack of cleverness is a drawback, it actually isn’t. As long as you have the right devices to handle the connectivity and treat the monitor like a typical non-smart TV, it’s a workable and convenient solution, especially considering the lack of a remote. That said, it was quite a hassle to make adjustments to picture quality or monitor settings, including adjusting the volume, activating picture-in-picture mode, and changing picture mode.
Picture-in-Picture mode is useful if you have two source devices connected at the same time. It worked well for watching videos in a secondary (and much smaller) window, using the rest of the screen as my primary computer. The PiP display was too small to read text or actively work on a secondary computer because it couldn’t be resized. I preferred to switch to my MacBook Air as the primary source and use it full screen when needed.
The monitor’s size and resolution make it ideal for reading, photo editing, and occasional collaboration and group tasks such as drafting letters, note-taking and video calls. I did find that the ViewSonic 4K Monitor’s colors were a bit warm, but the display was sharp and held up even at corners and under the glare of daylight.
The monitor worked well for me as a reference screen during productive hours and sometimes for writing and editing text. The high resolution made for very easy readability of textual content, and the experience was expected to be good when watching videos and viewing images. I had the monitor about three feet from where I was sitting, and I thought it was the ideal distance for one of this size.
With the Mi Box 4K plugged in, I was able to stream movies and TV shows. Picture quality was good from a close range and HDR mode was activated automatically when the monitor detected such content. HDR videos seemed a bit brighter and had more impactful colors in Netflix shows like Somebody Feed Phil, but the differences weren’t significant.
The ViewSonic monitor was useful as a sort of extra television in my home, but many may even find it useful as a primary TV for after-work entertainment. I found it a bit tricky to control the volume on the monitor due to the lack of a remote, and also found the 5W speaker system rather disappointing. These speakers are good enough for the occasional casual YouTube video, but I preferred using headphones or separate speakers for a better entertainment experience.
verdict
There’s nothing out of the ordinary about the ViewSonic 32-inch 4K entertainment monitor (VX3211-4K-mhd), which I think is good for a monitor expected to be an everyday workhorse. It has the specifications that matter, such as a good size, high screen resolution and decent connectivity. It performs well as a monitor, considering the price. Features like HDR support and a picture-in-picture mode justify its entertainment-friendly credentials.
That said, there are some drawbacks, including the lack of a remote, disappointing sound quality from the built-in speakers, and potential compatibility issues with the included power cord. If you can find a workaround for this, or work around it, the ViewSonic 4K Entertainment Monitor is a good option to consider, especially for working professionals with limited space at home who may want a monitor that doubles as a TV.