Acer was founded in 1976, and the group employs 28,000 people worldwide. The 99SL is the first product from Acer we've seen in the Labs. Primarily geared for the budget market, the monitor has a shadow-mask instead of the Flatter Square Tube (FST) as found in some of the monitors in this test. Most shadow-mask monitors suffer the negative effects of reflection on the surface of the tube. FST technology gives a better focus, less image distortion and a reduction in the negative effects of reflection. Connectivity is via a D-SUB captive cable supplied, with no BNC or USB connections.

The Acer has a pleasing short-length; unlike other bulky affairs we have seen in the past, this will appeal to buyers for whom space is a premium. The monitor has a viewable diagonal image area of 18", whilst that is good, the curvature on the shadow-mask tube did little for us in terms of ergonomics, but the dot pitch size of 0.26mm did compensate slightly. The recommended resolution by Acer is 1280 x 1024 at a refresh rate of 85Hz, this is normal for a monitor of this size if you are merely using it for standard graphics work, however for the CAD/CAM users amongst you the monitor does support a resolution to a maximum of 1600 x 1200 with a refresh rate of 78Hz. Acer provides a 1-key solution for auto-calibration called i-key which takes away the pain of manual adjustments.

The Acer 99SL clearly failed our Dark Screen test despite the anti-reflective coating; we could clearly make out all images, in the background. This can be a major distraction if you spend hours on your PC. In the Geometry and Distortion section the Acer was passable, it did however fail the Screen Regulation test completely, the image expansion was severe. In our Sharpness and Resolution section the Acer 99SL failed both the Horizontal Line and Bar resolution test, the Corner resolution test produced problems in the bottom right corner with blurry boxes, this test checks the sharpness and resolution in the corners of the screen, in both cases adjusting the controls made very little difference.

Overall, the Acer is a competitively priced monitor, whilst writing this review we were still missing the full specification sheet we send out to manufacturers to complete, and as such the monitor was excluded from getting points in our specification and features section and hence does not do as well as it should have. Should you wish to short-list this monitor, then make sure you can see it in action, before purchasing one.

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