 So today we're going to be having a look at the Acer S231HLBID LED Backlit LCD Monitor. This is part of their Olympic edition monitor, so while the Olympics are over, it is still an Olympian of sorts in that it is a unique, well not completely unique these days, but it is a very, very unique product offering in that it has an LED backlight. And there are maybe other monitors with LED backlights, but I haven't seen one yet, so it's unique to me. See how I covered that up? Either way, let's have a look at what's included with this particular monitor and talk a little bit about the benefits of an LED backlit LCD versus a conventional fluorescent backlit LCD. So actually I want the cameraman to look up. A miniaturized version of that is exactly what is behind most LCD panels. So what happens is that you actually have, you tend to get what's called hotspots, so those lights are actual tubes behind your panel, and so it has to be diffused properly to get a nice even backlight. So you get some hotspots where it's more washed out and some dark spots where it's a little bit darker. With an LED backlit LCD, the whole thing is completely backlit with little points of light so you get a nice even backlight. One of the other advantages is it's a pure white backlight, so you don't have any of the disadvantages of an off-colored cathode light behind the panel. So you actually get better, more accurate colors, you get more consistent backlighting, and you also get better power consumption because LEDs are much more efficient than those fluorescent tube lights. So I've got all the accessories unpacked. Let's have a quick look at them here. Oh, the cameraman's probably looking at this. What is this? It's a LED backlight, and they're thinner. So because you have to have that tube light, you have to have some way in front of it to diffuse it so that it is evenly distributed. You end up with a thicker panel if you have a CCFL backlit LCD. So E-color, they're probably talking about more color. Oh yeah, better contrast ratio. Yet another advantage. This is a 12 million to one active contrast management contrast ratio. LED, maybe it's not quite that high. Specs for contrast ratios have gotten a little bit ludicrous over the last few years, but I can assure you that it's going to be better than a cathode backlight LCD. So we have a VGA cable, just in case you're still using one of those with your fancy new monitor. We have a DVI cable that is also included. I highly recommend using this one because that's how you're going to get the best image quality out of it. You've got a power cable. I'll just take that out, which plugs into a power brick. See there, that really speaks to the power efficiency of an LED backlit LCD. That's the power brick you're using. There's like nothing to it. Then we have the little stand that we're going to use to attach the monitor to presumably some kind of a base. So let's pull the monitor itself out. Okay, there's a piece of foam that is not the monitor. Now I'm going to pull the monitor out. No, this is the limited warranty agreement as well as a quick start guide on a CD for the monitor. Next, we're going to pull out the monitor. And not drop the monitor. It's okay. It dropped on the foam, so it's all good. The foam won't come out. There we go. We finally got the monitor as well as the base. So here is, oh, yeah, yet another cable included. The way they've packed this is just ingenious. I'm not even going to try and get that off there. It's an HDMI cable. There you go. So I'm guessing that this monitor supports VGA, DVI, and HDMI based on the accessories that we've seen here. Next we've got the base. So here is the one that has the terminal. There we are. So a nice shiny plastic base. And then there's a screw on the bottom here for attaching that little arm piece. So I'm going to get the display assembled as quickly as I can here so that we can have a look at the overall aesthetic. Because that's something that, you know, while you might have specs on your side and there might be all of these sort of marketing bullet points, one of the most important things about a monitor is going to be how it looks to you on your desk. Because you have to stare at it an awful lot. And if it doesn't look nice, then you're not going to like it no matter how good the image quality is. For a lot of people anyway. I mean, not everybody's like that. But for me, certainly, I wouldn't want a monitor that I found ugly sitting on my desk for, I mean, I don't know how long most of our viewers will keep a monitor, but I usually keep a monitor for at least three to five years. I typically don't replace them unless I absolutely have to. So here we go. We've got, oh, this was full of marketing stuff. Okay, so it's ultra thin. Now you can look at that while I'm taking off this cover on the monitor, unless that's boring. Oh yeah, this is the same stuff that was on the front of the box. So it's mercury free, you know, so not manufactured using mercury. That's good. All right. I'm making my way around here with these tape, which is quite difficult to remove cleanly. Sorry about this, everyone. Wow. They are really serious about protecting the front of this panel. It's like you got your tape, you got your plastic, you got like more tape and more plastic. There we go. Ooh, that's nice. Okay, so here for thinness, you're looking at about the width of, oh yeah, sure. Cameraman wants me to use his iPhone for comparison. So it's actually only about twice the thickness of an iPhone at the top of the monitor. So that's very, very cool. And that's just the bezel. So when you actually look at the screen itself, it's even quite a bit thinner than that because you've got a fair bound to the bezel up here in front of the monitor. So if we just kind of hold the iPhone there for thickness comparison, you can sort of see how thick the bezel here is and how thick an iPhone is. So it's incredibly slim. Now it's a little bit thicker down at the bottom because that's where you have all of the electronics for your inputs as well as, oh, here. Here's how we attach the base. So there's a little bit of a spot right here where we can put this in. So it just slides in presumably like this. Yeah, just like that. And then if I had a screwdriver, I'd be able to put this in more quickly, but I don't. So I'm going to have to drive the screw with my hand. There we go. Hey, innovation. That's in there pretty good. All right. And then let's go ahead and stand it on the base. So this particular model doesn't include any real tilt options or any of that kind of stuff, but if you're looking for something that's just really power efficient and offers good color, all that good LED backlit goodness, good contrast ratio, then this is probably the one for you. Now we're going to actually be testing this monitor a little bit better when we do a full NCIX Tech Tips episode comparing it against a conventional cathode backlit LCD. And that's really the whole reason that I'm unboxing this thing. But just for the sake of having a look at it, why don't we get the cameraman to do kind of some close ups and check out this particular LCD. You know what? I don't think I even mentioned the resolution and the size of it. This is a 23 inch model and it is a 1920 by 1080 resolution. So that means you can watch full HD video on here. It's not going to be scaled in any way. It has a 16 by 9 aspect ratio. So that means that you're not going to see the black bars on your content that you would on a 16 by 10 and that's a 1920 by 1200 panel. So let's have a look around at the back where we have our base amounts. So you got one, two, three, four of those. So you can mount this on a wall mount and it wouldn't even have to be a very strong one because this LCD monitor is incredibly light. So that's one of the really cool things about it. Then we've also got our inputs here, which as I guessed before, our HDMI, DVI and VGA in here is the DC in. So as I showed you before, it does have an external power brick, although it is quite small. So you just plug that in like that. It does have a Kensington lock here as well if you need any anti-theft security. So thank you for checking out my unboxing of the S231HL-BID LED backlit LCD monitor from Acer.