The Viewsonic VG2732m-LED is the latest addition to Viewsonic's VG line of desktop monitors, and as the name implies, it uses a 27-inch panel and LED backlighting. This versatile display offers good color accuracy, a speedy pixel response, and a generous feature set, but it's missing one of the most widely used digital video inputs and suffers from narrow viewing angles and middling light grayscale performance.

Design and Features
The VG2732m-LED looks like most other Viewsonic monitors. It sports matte black bezels, a matte black cabinet, and a matte black stand. The only splash of color comes by way of a tiny badge containing three Gouldian Finches (Viewsonic's official logo) on the left corner of the upper bezel. The word "Viewsonic" appears on the bottom bezel and again on the rear of the cabinet.

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The stand consists of a round base and an arm that provides 5.3 inches of height adjustment and 25-degrees of tilt, and it lets you pivot the panel 90 degrees for portrait mode viewing. The base gives you 356 degrees of swivel maneuverability as well. The VG2732m-LED is equipped with a four port USB 2.0 hub; two of the ports on the left side of the cabinet and the other two are around back next to a USB upstream port. Video inputs include VGA, DVI and DisplayPort, but this model lacks HDMI connectivity. A pair of audio ports (headphone and audio-in) are also around back, but the headphone jack would be much more conveniently located if it were mounted on the side or up front.

There are five buttons positioned beneath the bottom bezel that are used to access and navigate the settings menu, choose an input source, adjust speaker volume, change brightness and contrast levels, and power up/down the monitor. The use of black labeling on a black bezel is virtually unreadable. Picture settings include brightness, contrast, color temperature, dynamic contrast ratio, overscan, and Eco mode. If you're using an analog (VGA) signal you can adjust fine tuning, sharpness, position, and horizontal size.

Performance
The VG2732m-LED displays mostly accurate colors, as shown by the chromaticity chart below. In the chart, each box represents the ideal coordinates for reds, greens, and blues, and the closer the colored dot is to the center of its corresponding box, the more accurate the color. Reds are spot-on and blues are very close to ideal, but greens are a bit off kilter, although not by much and not to the point of oversaturation.

Grayscale performance was another story. The dark gray swatches on the DisplayMate 64-Step Grayscale test were crushed and light grays were clipped. Crushed blacks happen when the panel can't display the darkest shades of gray and they appear black (they should transition evenly from gray to black). Clipping is result of the panel not being able to reproduce the lightest shades of gray evenly, making them appear white. For more accurate grayscale performance, the IPS-based VX2770Smh-LED is a better choice.

As with most displays that use TN (twisted nematic) panels, the VG2732m-LED exhibits color shifting when viewed from an angle. Grays take on a blue cast when viewed from a bottom angle but the effect becomes much more apparent when the panel is rotated into portrait mode. On the plus side, the monitor's 3-millisecond pixel response (black-to-white) delivered clean and smooth gaming action while playing through a round of Far Cry 2 on the PC.

The VG2732m-LED used 26 watts of power during testing while operating in Standard mode. Changing the Eco setting to Optimize dropped power consumption to 22 watts without much dimming. The Conserve setting used just 18 watts but the picture was a little too dark. In comparison, both the HP Envy 27 and the AOC i2757fh used 30 watts of power, and the HP Pavilion 27xi used 22 watts.

If you're looking for big screen monitor with a generous feature set and solid color performance, the Viewsonic VG2732m-LED is worth a look. Although it comes with two digital inputs, it's missing one of the most widely used ports (HDMI), so keep that in mind if you'll be connecting the monitor to a gaming console. Additionally, its grayscale and viewing angle performance can't match that of the IPS-based AOC i2757fh, which remains our Editors' Choice for big-screen mainstream monitors.