Acer M230HDL

Despite already offering standard monitors, 120 Hz monitors and touchscreen monitors, Acer has decided to expand its collection once again with a hybrid TV-monitor, the M230HDL.

This 23'' model comes with a Freeview tuner, and like any television worthy of its name, a remote control.

Note: despite what you might think from its name, the M230HDL doesn't have a HD TV tuner.

Hardware: lots of options


Like all TV-monitor hybrids, there are a lot of different inputs: two HDMI ports, a VGA input, SCART, composite video, S-video, and, of course, the TV tuner.  That's enough to plug in a PC, a Blu-ray player or a DVD player for instance.  For audio, there's a pair of 2 x 5 Watt speakers, a headphone jack, and a coaxial S/PDIF output.  Once again, there's a lot on offer.

The biggest disappointment was the lack of a stand that, at the very least, allows you to move it up and down.  Given that TN panels have such narrow vertical viewing angles, being able to move it up to level with your eyes would have been handy.

A media player on the side

On the side, there's a second HDMI input, as well as a USB port.  This is connected to a multimedia player, which can play MP3s, show JPEGs and play MP4 and DivX video, as long as the latter are in an MLV container. 

Responsiveness: a little slow for gaming

Coloured   Transparent
Average ghosting over 10 frames

As you'd expect from a monitor with a 5 ms TN panel, the M230HDL isn't the best choice for gaming.  It's fast enough to handling less demanding platform games, but fast-moving objects in FPS titles aren't anywhere near smooth enough.

The input lag we found was a little higher than what we've seen on recent monitors, and is touching the limits of being visible to the human eye.  If you're keen on multiplayer gaming, you'll want to pick a different monitor.

Colours: you'll need to calibrate it to get good colours

Before we start, we should point out that we measured the accuracy with which this monitor reproduced colours when it was connected with a VGA cable, which is the connection that we recommend if you want to use the M2380HDL as a desktop monitor.  The results using the HDMI cable are absolutely dreadful.

Ideal Colours

Ideal Colours Compare the Acer M230HDL to other LCD monitors in our Product Face-Off

Even with a VGA connection, though, the M2380HDL is hardly going to set any records for reproducing accurate colours, with a deltaE of 7.1.  Our equipment revealed a very strong blue tinge, which affects every other shade.  Allow you can reduce this by moving from Standard mode to Warm (deltaE: 5.6), we couldn't get rid of it completely.  You'll have to rely on a calibration profile if you want accurate colours.

The contrast isn't excellent either.  With a contrast ratio that barely climbs over 600:1, we're a long way from the 850:1 average that we've found on monitors recently

Movies: not much different from normal monitors


This is the one area where we'd expect a TV/monitor hybrid to do better than a traditional monitor.  That's why we connected it to a player with a HDMI connection to see how it did.  Unfortunately, though, we did't have to get any technical equipment out to see how bad it was: with a deltaE of 6.4, it did no better than with VGA.

It didn't do upscaling better than any other monitor.  The only positive aspect is the fact that noise and blurriness are kept to a minimum.