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The Asus VE278 arrives in a large brown box, which isn't as heavy as it looks (9.8kg).
Inside, the monitor is protected between two thick Styrofoam pieces. All the accessories are at the top of the box, stored within recesses in the Styrofoam.
Asus include a power cable, DVI cables, a VGA cable, speaker cable, monitor stand and literature on the product.
The stand slides into a metal bar which locks into place with a large screw. No tool kit required.
The Asus VE278 ships protected with sticky plastic wrap on all edges. It takes a few minutes to remove.
The VE278 is an attractive design, but doesn't offer anything radical to stand out in such a crowded market. The Bezel isn't too thick, and the HDMI logo is positioned top left, with the name of the company in the central position along the bottom of the screen. It is a substantial construction and weighs around 6.5kg.
The VE278Q has an ‘AI light' option which enables the VE278Q to automatically adjust the brightness to suit environmental lighting, helping to reduce power consumption by up to 25 percent.
The stand rotates and pivots, between +20 degrees and -5 degrees. It feels strong and well designed to last the distance.
The back of the screen and the surrounding bezel is finished in piano black, which is not only extremely reflective, but attracts finger prints and dust extremely easily. The interface ports are arranged in a row close to the bottom of the screen at the back.
At the left of the I/O panel is a standard power connector. On the right side we have a DisplayPort, HDMI port, DVI and VGA port. At the far right are input and output audio ports. This screen has onboard speakers, rated at 3W x 2 RMS.
The VE278Q has a row of physical buttons along the bottom of the screen to change settings, which is a refreshing change from touch sensitive panels. This particular panel also has PIP (Picture In Picture) support.
Only 1080p for this display? I found that disappointing. I like high resolutions, but don’t need the extra size. At 27″ I’d expect 2560×1440. Obviously that’d cost more, but if I went to 27″ I’d expect that. Let’s hope the trend of ultra high resolution panels coming soon to tablets will extend to desktops in the future. Otherwise it would look rather silly to have 2048×1536 or whatever at 10″ and 1920×1080 at 27″.
The Sony Z series has a 1920×1080 option on the 13 inch screen, thats pretty impressive, although it actually might to ‘too high’ for ease of reading unless you have eagle eye vision.
Looks ok, I prefer a 23-24 inch at this resolution as I think the screen is too big for the resolution and you can actually see the scanlines sometimes.