Acer P243WAid 24" LCD

Examination:

The Acer P243WAid monitor isn't as stylish as say an Apple 30" Cinema display, but it's certainly not bad considering its price. The bezel around this monitor is plastic but it's much thicker and heavier strength than what we found with the Acer AL2223Wd Office LCD last year. At the same time though, the quality of construction doesn't match their Prestige series, which had a metal base and trim. With the P243WAid, the front plastic on the bezel is a shiny black while the side trim is silver and then the back of the unit is a drab black.

At the bottom of this 24" LCD monitor is Acer's "e", Auto, Menu, Left, Right, and power buttons. When the monitor is turned on there is a blue LED that is illuminated above the power button. The "e" button is for "empowering technology" and just allows the different color display modes to be toggled (we will have more about the on-screen displays later in the article). Unlike some of Acer's LCDs, the P243WAid has no integrated speakers. At the center of the bottom-edge of the bezel is Acer's logo while the P243W marking is on the upper right hand side.

The base for the Acer P243WAid is a silver plastic and has a good size footprint. Unfortunately, the stand for this unit doesn't have any height adjustments nor can the monitor pivot at a different angle or can the orientation of the monitor be changed. The only adjustments that can be made to the monitor are tilting it forward and back by a few degrees. At the back of the monitor are the inputs for power, VGA, DVI-D, and HDMI. As this stand is quite small, there are no integrated cable management abilities. Around the Acer sticker on the back of the monitor that contains the serial number and other pertinent information is the standard VESA wall mount.