Table of Contents

Introduction

Manufacturer: Viotek
Product: GFV24C
Price: $159.99 at the time of review at Amazon.

Viotek has been in the monitor business for quite a while, and they lead with the dedicated idea of imaginative research and development to achieve performance with the aim to be a leader in the industry. Viotek caters to many areas of the display world, from office to cinema and gaming, they even have offerings for the design market with VA and IPS panels both curved or not depending on what you would like to add to your desk Viotek has you covered.

Today I get the opportunity to try another first in the monitor department for myself. I have tried, 1440p, 1ms response time, TN and IPS panels but the Viotek GFV24C will be my first VA panel boasting a nice and high 144Hrz refresh rate with a 4ms response time when in Overdrive experience! If everything meshes up well this here should be one smooth and colorful 144Hrz gaming experience. Now, as usual, I want to point out I do not have a color calibrator as of yet, and I am still fairly fresh to a few monitor technologies like high refresh rates and things like VA panels. So I will be approaching this review as a new user, how does this feel to the various other monitors I have owned and where and how I see the differences from purely an enthusiast gaming perspective.

Specifications

Closer Look

As I have grown used to seeing in monitor boxing these days, the panel is nicely packed with all the necessities to set up and use your Viotek monitor in a Styrofoam clamshell.

Opening the box up you will see the parts tucked away in some cavities on the thicker piece of foam. Here you will find:

The monitor and stand assembly
Display Port Cable
User Guide
Power Cable
Vesa Mounting Screws
Screw Driver

Everything listed above laid out and easier to see.

The stand is really simple to put together. The stand is a bit wobbly but at this price point, the stands are never really the focal point and considering the type of features packed into the monitor I think a tad wobbly stand can be forgiven. In all honesty, the wobble is almost non-existant when sat on my solid wood desk.

Popping the thick foam top off reveals the panel in a foam cover that helps to protect the screen from scratches during shipping.

Here we can see the stand mounting as well as the OSD controls (sorry they are upside-down) Starting left to right is the Power, Exit, Up/Down, and Menu buttons.

Here are the provided ports and this is a really solid selection for a 144Hz VA panel coming in at $160. Included are 1x Display Port 1.2 and 2x HDMI 1.4 as well as a 3.5mm audio out.

Here is the front of the GFV24C with the GFT27DB I recently took a look at behind it. They have exactly the same bezels just in a smaller form factor housing a 4ms VA panel instead of a 1ms TN. If there is one thing I really love about the few Viotek monitors I have had a chance to look at so far is the bezels. They are very thin and non-obtrusive, during my testing I used the GFV24C as both my main monitor as well as my secondary right next to the GFT27DB and this was a match made to be. The bezels meshed up very well and the only way the dual monitor setup could be improved would be by matching two of the same panels.

Here is the back of the panel and the 75×75 VESA mounting. I will note that when I set this up with the included standoff screws that they did dig in a little because of the slope of the backside of the panel. This was not major but was there.

Monitors these days are getting thinner and thinner while having more tech packed inside. This is a really thin profile for a monitor in my opinion.

Screen

On to what we are all here to read about, the operation of the monitor itself. Now here I am going to talk about the contrast and color, I don’t really have a way to accurately show the detail I am seeing but I will do my best to explain. The GFV24C is a VA panel and that means much darker blacks and richer colors all around over a TN panel. During my testing, I was looking for some smearing from the 4ms response time, but I am happy to report that to my eyes there was no noticeable difference between my 1ms TN and this 4ms VA panel when playing eSports and RPG style games, FPS games there was a little bit but nothing that would distract during gameplay. Now, in the color department they couldn’t be any different from one another, the GFV24C has much richer colors and deeper blacks, making this a very nice eSports title or RPG type of gaming monitor.

The sharpness and color department of the GFV24C is very impressive, everyday consumption of web content will be a pleasant experience with the level of detail this panel is capable of. This is what is to be expected from a panel like this, taking the 1920×1080 resolution spread on an optimal 23.6-inch canvas the relative pixel density is 93.34. When comparing this to the GFT27DV a 1440p 27.2-inch panel which has a pixel density of 107.99 down to my cheapest panel a 1080p 27.2-inch coming in at 80.99 you can start to see why this panel makes reading and consuming content much easier. The higher this number the better, the software used is a PPI Calculator at CalculatorSoup to get my results.

Here you can see one of the strong points of a VA panel and that is in viewing angles. When viewed directly from the front you have quite a lot of wiggle room with your viewing angles as demonstrated below. As you can see even at an extreme angle you do not lose a lot of detail below with the GFV24C.

This photo is from our GFT27DB review, and is of a 1440p TN panel, here at a much less extreme of an angle you can see how much more detail is lost when compared to the GFV24C VA panel above.

Gaming

The GFV24C uses AMD FreeSync, which I was not able to test today since I am still using GTX 980 Ti as my daily driver. This was not a huge deal for myself though since I was able to drive over 144fps in 90% of the titles I tested on my system depending upon the graphics settings. Some of these titles include (BF4,1,5, Call of Duty BO4, League of Legends and PUBG to name a few). This would be a different story and FreeSync would be very helpful for a slightly less powerful system (one with an RX 580 for example).

With that said from just a not overly experienced in the gaming panel department kind of view, this was an amazing experience. In darker situations I found myself spotting targets faster, and having the ability to push a solid 144fps in a first-person shooter-style game was a rather freeing experience the GFV24C allowed me to experience. From time to time there was some slight ghosting in FPS titles but overall it wasn’t a highly noticeable issue and the fluid movement of everything on the screen more than made up for any ghosting that I did see.

In titles like League of Legends, Neverwinter and Witcher III the visuals were something to behold. With a wide and deep color gamut and high 3000:1 contrast ratio, this was almost the best visual gaming experience I have had the pleasure to have and most definitely the smoothest. The only way the colors would be beaten is by one of the IPS panels I have owned in the past and those were not gaming but rather editing monitors.

Since League of Legends is easy to run and get fairly consistent runs that max the refresh rate of the monitor out the entire time I am using it again here. What we are looking at in the chart below is the Frametime at the bottom, it peaked at 1104.9 that is from a load screen and the 0.0 was from Alt-tabbing out of the game to pause and get a screenshot. The main point here is that while playing League I saw a fairly solid 6-10ms Frametime with the spikes being when teleporting back to base. During gameplay, this pretty consistent Frametime made for really solid and smooth game experience and being able to achieve as close to a 6ms Frametime consistently is important to smooth gameplay.

Conclusion

Performance – This is my second dive into a 144Hz gaming monitor and I was in no way disappointed. For $160 you are getting a whole lot of performance on an entry-level gaming monitor. I chuckle just thinking that a few short years ago such a monitor was just too rich for my taste and now I look around and see monitors such as the GFV24C coming in at sub $200 offering a list of features backed by solid performing panels. Not only that but now we are getting high refresh rates coupled with low response times in VA panels offering an even more immersive experience with richer and deeper colors. Tack all of the above on along with features like PIP/PBP, AMD FreeSync, FPS/RTS Optimization, Low Blue Light and an Anti-Glare Treated screen and you are getting quite a complete and well-performing gaming package.

Design – Again the design of the GFV24C just like the recently reviewed GFT27DB was sleek and minimal which is a huge selling point in monitors these days. The colors and contrast are amazing, tying that in with the 1080p FHD resolution and high Refresh Rate create a very pleasing gaming experience. Overall the monitor feels well put together, the stand is a bit lacking but will do the job after all. The stand isn’t what matters the panel itself is and Viotek is offering a very good panel in a sleek and minimal design packed full of features. Overall I think that outside the stand this is a 9 out of 10 budget gaming monitor in the design department. The slope on the back is a tad cumbersome when using a VESA mount but that is not really something I feel needs griped about, just be careful to not overtighten the included standoff screws and you will be fine. Again Viotek has made sure every penny spent goes to performance, color and connectivity allowing you to do Single device Picture-in-Picture (PIP) and or Picture-by-Picture (PBP) where you can view content from two devices at once on the same screen. Top that off with AMD FreeSync bringing you some of the smoothest gaming experience possible even during the lowest frame drops drums this up as one well-designed monitor.

Value – The value of the GFV24C can be seen across the board. With rich and bright colors and well displayed and contrasted blacks coupled with the high 144Hz Refresh Rate and low 4ms Response Time, FreeSync and well all the features already mentioned this is one strong monitor to consider when deciding on a gaming or productivity monitor. The value of a panel like the GFV24C comes in the form of the perfect monitor for a 16:9 aspect ratio 1080p streamer while also having the right stuff that with a color-calibrated profile you could easily switch from gaming to content creation. This is a very versatile monitor and would make a great addition to anyone looking for a color-rich monitor to edit their videos on and have all the performance where it is needed to get some game time in as well. NVIDIA 10 series or newer GPU owners don’t dispair this monitor will play just fine with GSYNC by all accounts that I can find. I hope to get to start testing GSYNC on a FreeSync panel in the near future.

For what Viotek is offering here in the overall design and performance of the package as a whole I want to give them both the Value and Recommended Awards for the GFV24C. I can highly recommend this monitor for gaming or light content creation and can see it being an option for many streamers desks.