Reviews for Tripp Lite B112-002-R VGA Switchbox

Useless Monitor Switch

Strengths: Low price.

Weakness: One color channel usually missing. Horrible ghosting and reflections. Requires wiggling after every switching to luck into correct position.

This switch is not worth buying.

I am not at all happy with this switch.

It does not make cleanly in either direction. It requires a lot of very fine wiggling each time it is switched to luck into the correct position. Without the wiggling, it causes horrible ghosting and reflections. Worse yet, most of the time one of the color channels switches in very weak or missing completely, causing the entire monitor to have a red or blue overcast.

I thought I might just have a bad unit, so I bought a second one. After twenty switchings or so, it behaved just like the first one. In fact, now that it's almost a month old, maybe 300 switchings total, it is getting very difficult even to find a position where all three color channels are fully on.

I bought this switch because I want to use the same CRT monitor with two computers, but have no use for sharing the keyboards or mice. This was the cheapest solution I found, even including the fact that I had to buy two more video cables to hook up to it (be warned that they are not just standard monitor extension cables, either -- they are male on both ends). I now have a KVM switch, and just don't use the keyboard and mouse inputs on it. It cost me more than twice as much (if you don't count the cables), but at least it works.

I can't imagine an application that this switch would be good for, now that green monochrome text-only monitors are a thing of the remote past.

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