Please help me set up my monitor.

January 5, 2012 7:14 AM

I just purchased a Viewsonic VA2702w 27" LCD monitor, which I am connecting to a 13" 2011 Macbook Pro running Lion. I think I need a little help calibrating it.

The colors look great, but the text is still a little fuzzy on some websites. I have set the monitor to its native resolution (1920X1200, 60MHZ) and fiddled with the Mac color calibration as well as the settings on the monitor, but things just seem a little off. Interestingly, the text at Metafilter looks fine, but things are a little jagged on other sites.

My previous monitor was a 24" Samsung, so what I'm using now is not much larger than what I am used to.

Thanks, as always.

posted by 4ster to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

The native resolution of your monitor is not 1920x1200, it's 1920x1080. Not sure if you made a typo in your post or if you actually have it set wrong. That would definitely be enough to cause things to look "a little off."
posted by bcwinters at 7:38 AM on January 5, 2012

Response by poster: My bad. I did make a typo. I should have said 1920 X 1080.
posted by 4ster at 7:39 AM on January 5, 2012

Best answer: I don't think this is as much a calibration issue as much as a resolution issue. 1920x1080 on a 27 in monitor is not that many pixels per inch, so sites that don't use an anti-aliased font may indeed look jagged, since you can more easily see the individual black pixels that make up the font. Others that use a lot of anti-aliasing may look fuzzy, because, again, you can see the grey pixels that would otherwise resolve to a smooth line.
posted by rockindata at 7:46 AM on January 5, 2012

I had the problem with Snow Leopard and am not sure if the problem still exists with Lion but you could check out this reference and this . Worked for me with my external monitor.
posted by PickeringPete at 8:55 AM on January 5, 2012

Native resolution on that model is 1920x1080. Also make sure you are using the DVI port and not VGA.
posted by wongcorgi at 9:31 AM on January 5, 2012

Response by poster: I figured it out: My old monitor is 1900X1200, and I think I was just accustomed to the higher resolution.
posted by 4ster at 7:39 AM on January 18, 2012