Asus VS229H-P. It's being called the new 1080p budget king. But it's GRAINY, with high pixel variance on light colored content. You can't tell on dark stuff, but it's really bugging me. This IPS-E stuff is fantastic. Good contrasts, color, and viewing angle. But can anyone recommend an alternative I can exchange this with from Buy.com that's not going to be so grainy? Seriously, it reminds me of the eMagin OLEDs, sans the dead pixels. OLED still had better contrast and very low res, but similar issue. I have two days before I need to either keep this and get my rebate, or definitely decide I'm not keeping it. Am I being too tough on it?

Can you take a picture and post it here? It probably shouldn't be doing this.

It's either a protective film you forgot to peel off, or the 3M anti-glare coating was used a bit too much...

It's not a removable film. It looks like pixel luminance/contrast variance from pixel to pixel, like the eMagin OLEDs had. Much smaller pixels, given it's 1080p instead of 800x600, but the same thing. It looks like a 35mm movie still. I had on Jennifer’s Body, and you know how the faces always have extra film grain compared to everything else? I used to shoot motion film, so that's normal. It's like a layer of extra grain on top of that, but doesn't move or shimmer with the movie's grain. Very obvious on light scenes or a white webpage. Hideous. It fouls up X-Plane 9's textures. I can't believe graphics professionals would buy this just for its viewing angle, which admittedly is fantastic. I highly doubt my HD webcam would pick it up in the image due to Logitech's compression noise, and there's no way for me to verify what I'm looking at on this screen, obviously. I will say it is sort of subtle, but I don't see it on my laptop screen, my roommate's apple screen, or my other roommate's LCD TV. Anything medium darkness or lighter is affected. Dell's website says "sparkle" is a quality control issue with LCD manufacturing that they've been attempting to get better at measuring and improving. The (unfortunately scratched) Samsung 2233SW I was going to buy from someone for 60 bucks didn't appear to have this much grain and sparkle. So your guys' monitors with just a white area looks uniform and texture-free? I know I'm pretty sensitive to texture and contrast subtleties in fine detail (always turned me on in cinematography), but I can't believe other people, especially reviewers wouldn't notice it.

Now that I look closely at it, maybe it is the 3M coating. Because there is zero glare and I can't see myself in the black screen at all even with a light behind the monitor.

IMO, I'll never get another Asus monitor, although I'm a big fan of their other products.
VW246H never looked right, most obvious with a 2nd monitor alongside it. On another pc in the house, it looks ok without a reference monitor near it, but the difference is still noticeable after being used to something with a better picture. It had great stats, but even with adjustment helpers it never looked right.

Since you aren't complaining about color/contrast issues though, I'm going to out on a limb and ask if you're using the VGA instead of DVI inputs? Analog simply doesn't compare, especially anywhere related to any text.

Was going to ask that myself.

DVI/HDMI is superior to VGA in quality of picture.

I have 3 Asus Screens , in my Sig below.

DVI of course.