The Viewsonic XG2431 is the yin to the Viewsonic XG270Q's yang. It has a faster refresh rate, a lower response time but sacrifices resolution and brightness for a smoother gameplay experience.
Design
All black, no-frills and easy to assemble out of the box. Rather than flirt with customizable RGBs like the XG270Q, the XG2431 opts for a leaner look.
It's easy to assemble out of the box, and took me all of 15 or 20 minutes to get it setup and running. The box itself is rather compact and neatly packaged.
The monitor comes dissembled into two halves, a sturdy base stand and the display itself. It's very easy to snap both of them in place, and assembly requires no tools.
The build quality feels premium, and the display has very thin borders along the frame, giving you a great viewing area. The base stand is covered in hard plastic, and is finished with brushed texture work that makes it look like metal.
The display itself can be swiveled to 90-deegres for a portrait orientation, and has generous movement from side to side. The hinges that make this happen, feel solid and smooth with no obvious stutters or stops when swiveling the display around.
Keys for the OSD menu and power reside on the bottom right of the display, and the connectivity ports are on the back. There are helpful plastic supports to route your wires through, for a tangle free desktop.
In a nice touch, Viewsonic includes a pull out support on the stand at the back, to rest your headphones if you want too, and there is an extra attachment that you can clip on, to help with cable management if need be.
There is also a handle integrated into the stand, to make lugging the monitor around easier. Overall, it's a well thought out design that provides functionality, and looks good.
As for connectivity options, the monitor has two HDMI 2.0 ports, one DisplayPort, a 3-pin power socket, one 3.5mm audio out, and two USB 3.2 ports.
Performance
The XG2431 hits you hard with big numbers right out of the gate, a refresh rate of 240Hz and a response time of just 0.5ms. The practicality of those numbers is something you need to experience for yourself to understand how it makes a difference.
While gaming, the high refresh rates really matter, and you can feel the difference in your aiming when you zip around the map in Overwatch or Valorant.
In fighting games like Tekken 7 or Street Fighter 5, the low-input lag is a blessing, making your inputs feel smoother and more responsive.
The XG2431 excels in scenarios where each frame that is rendered on screen matters, which makes this a perfect companion for pro players.
The low response time, combined with a high-refresh rate also have another huge benefit. The XG2431 is Blur Busters 2.0 certified, which means you see little to no motion blur in the image.
Viewsonic achieves this through a technique called backlight strobing, which quickly flickers the backlight on and off to reduce ghosting or artefacts. The drawback to this is that the overall brightness values of the display take a severe hit, and in the case of the XG2431, that tops off at just 350 nits, while in HDR mode.
Outside of HDR, that luminance value falls even lower, making it a chore to use the display in anything other than a fully-lit environment.
Now depending on how you look at it, this might be a worthwhile tradeoff, given the high refresh rate but it won't satisfy people who look for the best displays to consume entertainment. To be fair, this monitor isn't aimed at them, it's for the esports crowd where every millisecond matters.
The 1080p IPS panel covers 93 percent of the sRGB color gamut and out of the box, is balanced quite well. With a few optimizations, it is possible to get the panel color accurate but the black levels leave a lot to be desired.
While all of these may seem like overwhelming negatives, the monitor performs in the one area where it matters, low-lag, blur-free and high framerate gaming.
Helping with this is the support for AMD's Freesync technology that reduces screen-tearing and blur even further, but at refresh rates this high, I didn't find myself using it that match.
While it's not mentioned, the XG2431 also supports Nvidia's G-Sync through the DisplayPort but it hasn't been certified by Nvidia yet. I found no problems with using it though.
Should you buy it?
It depends really, on one hand the high refresh rate and low input-lag, have a huge effect on the quality of your gaming experience. On the other hand, the XG2431 is lacking in areas like contrast and brightness.
Depending on what's more important to you, this monitor may be the best thing ever, or something that is worth a curious glance. For eSports, where response times matter more than anything else, this monitor is a no-brainer.
The XG2431 has been priced at Rs 33,999 and is available on Amazon.
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