Acer X233Hbid Review

I just bought myself a new monitor for my MythTV box, as I’ve moved my beautiful Acer AL2416W 24”er to my new desktop. The chosen monitor, based on price, reviews and features, is the Acer X233Hbid. It’s a 23” 16:9 (not 16:10) monitor that runs at 1920x1080, provides true 1080p, and has an HDMI input (not that I’d ever use a restricted connection). After a few minutes of having it turned on and running, the picture quality is quite nice, even with quite a bit of glare.

However, I have two major complaints within the first ten minutes of unboxing it:

1. No real manual, nor an online copy. The monitor comes only with a Quick Start Guide. There’s no printed full manual. More distressingly, it isn’t even listed in their list of monitor models on their Support site. There’s no manual copy online either. There was a CD provided with the user’s manual on it. However, for a company that sells netbooks with no CD drive, this seems like quite a bad decision. But why, you ask, would I need a manual for my monitor?
2. No VESA mounting instructions One of my main criteria in choosing a monitor was that it allow VESA mounting, as I have my MythTV monitor on a monitor arm (easily adjustable angle so others in the room can see). The Acer X233Hbid has a 100x100mm VESA mounting space on the back. However, in a rare design mistake (unlike my 24” Acer AL2416W), the monitor stand is two parts - one rectangular column about 4” long attached to the back of the monitor, and a base with a column which mates with the one on the back of the monitor. Unfortunately, the column part on the back of the monitor came pre-attached, and there was no mention in the manual of VESA mounting or how to remove the column.

Column removal: The part of the monitor base which ships attached to the monitor is a fairly easy removal. Though I was originally worried about breaking something on my beautiful new screen, I found two plastic pieces on either side of the pre-attached part of the base which appeared to be snap-in trim pieces. Prying them off with a screwdriver revealed four screws which hold this piece to the monitor. Not only was removal easy, but the trim pieces snapped back into place for a nice clean look.