Gadgetory

welcome back to hadron box time published a lot of monitor reviews on the channel over the last couple of weeks companies just keep wanting to send them to us lately I guess that's pretty nice but this should be the last one for at least a few weeks is very soon we'll be getting right into some Nvidia RTX coverage but the monitor I'm looking at today the vo-tech NB 24c is one of the more interesting ones this is a super budget focused display cost just a hundred and fifty US dollars and comes with a 24 inch 1080p code VA panel with a maximum refresh rate of 75 Hertz now you can get cheaper 24 inch 1080p 75 Hertz monitors but almost all of them use fairly mediocre TN panels the NB 24 C gives you a display quality boost through the use of a VA panel but doesn't cost that much more than TN equivalents in fact it's one of the cheapest non TN displays of these specs which makes it a pretty attractive product for budget shoppers the design of this monitor is very similar to the GN 2040 biotech accidentally sent me a couple of weeks back biotech says these 75 Hertz displays more offers focus than the 144 Hertz gamer grade G and 24 C but the design is just as nice with slim bezels on the front and a simple elegant rear constructed from a single piece of matte black plastic there's nothing crazy about the build but I reckon it looks pretty good particularly as vo-tech hasn't fallen into the trap of using chunky blocky plastic with their budget display the stand is different with the NB 24 C it's a more traditional flat wire shape constructed entirely out of metal it's sturdy and looks great though there's a bit of wobble at the connection point on the rear of the display section it's also a very basic stand only offering tilt adjustment and it's it's fairly low so you might need to raise it yourself considering there's no height adjust feature the NB 24 C is a curved monitor with an 1800 hour curve to be precise I don't think the curve adds anything to the experience whatsoever at 24 inches and I'd prefer to be flat particularly as it's supposed to be designed for office use that said the curve is reasonably subtle and I'm just puzzled as to why panel manufacturer would even choose to create a 24 inch curved display I would have thought for budget products there would have been more demand for a flat version for inputs there and HDMI and VGA input if you want to use the built-in speakers you'll have to utilize HDMI audio is there's no other audio input and for controlling the on-screen display we have a row of simple buttons along the bottom edge of the monitor so no directional toggle which is a bit frustrating that said there are barely any features or settings in the OSD so there's not a lot to navigate through you do get a low bool out mode though and some cheek crosses though I guess that is about it the NB 24c is a free sync monitor however the adaptive sync range is only 48 to 75 Hertz so the monitor does not support low framerate compensation this really limits the usefulness of free sync and practices you'll have to keep your framerate while gaming within that narrow window to ensure the best variable refresh experience dropping below 48 FPS can result in a rather jarring reduction to smoothness which you wouldn't get from a monitor with AF C and a larger refresh rate range just something to keep in mind though in terms of brightness there between 4c isn't a very bright monitor sitting at around 222 nits which is very close to biotechs stated 220 net specification when I say isn't very bright I do mean in comparison to other monitors that are typically more around the 300 nits mark personally I reckon 200 nits or lower is fine for most indoor users unless there's you know a lot of glare or reflections that sort of thing the contrast ratio had actually exceeded my expectations with the default ratio of nearly 4,000 to one well above typical 3000 to one ratios for VA panels black levels are really good from this monitor but there is a very small amount of backlight bleed around the edges present when viewing dark images for response times I noticed a bit of conflicting information from vo-tech their spec sheet notes 8 millisecond grader gray response times while their product listing claims 5 milliseconds northern either is all that important because I actually measured an average greater gray response time of ten point nine eight milliseconds which puts this panel firmly in entry-level VA territory VA is the slowest type of LCD technology though some of the higher performance gaming displays can put up decent times with overdrive however the NB 24 C uses a more budget oriented display and there is no overdrive functionality so what we're left with is the default panel performance which is unsurprisingly fairly slow and unimpressive that said it's around the mark of the ace of nitro VG 240 y another 24 inch 1080p 75 Hertz monitor these is a flat IPS panel instead input lags unimpressive as well though again it's well within what I've expect for an entry-level display if you want the absolute fastest response you'll need to upgrade to a higher-end display even a budget 1080p 144 Hertz display should suffice for most users and more casual gamers this input lag performance won't affect your experience all that much time to look at color performance and here again we're getting an entry-level experience in other words very little has been done to ensure this panel is calibrated at the factory judging by the wild CCT curve and strange gamer performance I'd suggest biotech took the panel straight off the shelf and integrated it without any additional work which I guess isn't all that surprising for a hundred and fifty dollar product delta-e averages range from four point six one in grayscale to three point one four in saturation and three point six four in color checker with maximum Delta is in the 7.0 range luckily overall srgb coverage still exceeds biotechs rated 92% at more like 97% so there is some quality to this panel that should be correctable with calibration unfortunately biotechs on-screen controls are very limited you can adjust brightness and contrast along with user color but that's you crucially there's no gamma adjustment feature so it's impossible to fix the gamma curve and with only basic color controls it's hard to fix this CCT curve you can see the red green and blue lines don't run parallel the blue and green lines cross so basic color controls are unable to fix this sort of behavior I was able to adjust either the low gray range or the high Gro range to a decent level of accuracy but that's just throughout the other range and nothing really improved performance so unfortunately there's none of what you can do in terms of setting tweaks to improve the color accuracy of the NBD 24c that said it is possible to achieve decent performance through a full calibration when you're coming from so far back it's hard to get elite level calibration normally the goal is to get things within the ballpark with OSD setting tweaks and then finish it off with nice CC profile but here it's just relying on the profile and as you can see the CCT curve isn't fully accurate and while the grayscale Delta II average is lower than 1.0 there are still a couple of loose values it's a similar story with the saturation and color checker results overall though not bad considering where the NB 24 Series act you can thank L man 5 for that as always we do provide our calibration profile for this monitor to our patreon links to that in the description below however the profile can only do so much and due to panel variation it won't provide these exact results for other units ideally you'd want either great factory performance or the ability to make a few tweaks using the OSD but understandably a budget display isn't going to give you that calibration all also has the effect of reducing brightness and contrast in fact now the monitor tops out at just 200 nits of brightness and with a contrast ratio of just 3480 to 1 the contrast ratio is still decent for a rear panel but brightness is hit even harder from an already low base uniformity is also an issue with the NB 24 C the panel is both entry-level and curved so there's a double whammy there in terms of getting a uniform image most of the panel is ok it's just the outer left side that deviates significantly with very high Delta ease of above the 7.0 so you will have just seen a bunch of performance metrics that aren't exactly amazing relatively wick brightness slow response times weak input lag and poor calibration from the factory with poor uniformity but let's not forget that we are talking about an entry-level monitor and it's ridiculous to expect professional-grade calibration or top-end response times from a display that cost just a hundred and fifty dollars the main thing to talk about is whether the NB 24 C performs below what you'd expect for a budget monitor and of course all these metrics I don't really think that's the case in terms of factory color accuracy response times and input lag certainly the NB 24 C falls within a range that's typical for an entry-level monitor in fact in many of these areas it performs similarly to the ASA nitro VG 240 Y a competitor with an IPS panel the main question at this point is whether you should buy something like the vo-tech NB 24 C or a cheaper TN panel of equivalent specs if you really don't care about how the monitor performs in terms of color quality and just want a cheap 24 inch 1080p 75 Hertz display I'd go out and buy the absolute cheapest tier monitor of these specs which will set you back around a hundred bucks these days but if you care about color quality in particular there are plenty of reasons to spend one hundred and few dollars on the NB 24c instead it has a far better contrast ratio and far bit of black levels than any budget T and display and you get superior viewing angles - even though factory calibration isn't great you'll get a better picture quality with this VA display compared to those dirt cheap $100 T ends so if you are after better picture quality from your budget 24 inch 1080p 75 Hertz display I'd recommend the vo-tech n B 24 C because it one hundred and fifty dollars it's one of the cheapest non t n displays with those specs on the market and it does deliver a meaningful quality improvement in some areas this is kind of where the ace of VG 240 why I reviewed a few weeks back fell short it wasn't better than the budget TN in terms of picture quality despite being an IPS display and it actually cost more than this via tech at $180 at that price you were better off spending 200 bucks on a 144 Hertz TN but the vo-tech doesn't have such issues it's cheaper sitting almost perfectly between budget tiens and 144 hurt stearns while offering an actual upgrade on those $100 displays that's it for this via tech NB 24 c review as always subscribe for more monitor reviews and hit that Bell icon too while you're at it consider supporting us on patreon for access to our discord chat and our calibrated monitor profiles and I'll catch you in the next one