Roundup: 22-Inch LCD Monitors : Hyundaï W220S
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Digital Versus,
published on July 27, 2009
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6. Hyundaï W220S
3D for all?
3D is already here: we have already seen a couple of monitors equipped with the technology and more and more games are available too.
'Ordinary' computers, or, more specifically, standard graphics cards, though, are not yet ready.
To test the W220S's 3D capabilities, Hyundai supplied an MSI machine which included a GeForce 9600 GT.
Despite running this high-end computer, we found that it was tough to get good 3D results without slowing everything down.
If you want to have the latest 3D technology and keep your computer accurate, then you're going to need some very expensive hardware.
In the same way that it's surprising for us to think that the first generation of computer users relied on black-and-white monitors, it might seem just as odd to our descendents we relied on 2D technology. The future is here, and it's in 3D.
While companies like iZ3D and Zalman were the first to consumer market with 3D displays, here comes Hyundai's own attempt at a 22-inch 3D screen. If you've been keeping a close eye on our reviews, you might recognize a similar design to the W220D: a glossy frame around the screen with the back in matte white.
The connectivity is largely unchanged, with the trio of VGA, DVI and HDMI providing the inputs. More disappointing is the redesigned stand, which no longer allows the monitor's height, rotation and orientation to be adjusted as was possible on the W220D.
The 3D technology used on the monitor means that it ships with a pair of 3D glasses with polarizing lenses, and, thankfully, Hyundai's are much than those supplied by Zalman.
3D Performance
In games, cut scenes look truly spectacular, and other images seem dull and lifeless by contrast. During gameplay itself, you need to keep your wits about you because visual fatigue can creep up quickly. Concentrating hard, we found some games gave us a headache after just half an hour of 3D action.
When watching movies, one of two things happens. Recent releases, often with computer graphics specially designed to exploit 3D, look great, with objects flying out of the screen into your living room and whatnot. Older movies, on the other hand, don't benefit very much at all from the conversion to 3D.
In both cases, though, you need to be sitting directly in front of the screen for the effects to work at all. You can forget about those invitations to 3D movie night.
2D Performance
Another aspect in which this Hyundai model improves on the Zalman is that it's much better at handling 2D images, with no visible polarization: the distracting phenomenon of horizontal lines moving across the picture is absent. We found the advertised response time of 5 ms to be about right. While this is on the slower side of thing for a 22'' LCD today, the results are far from frustrating, and should satisfy all but the most demanding of gamers, particularly when immersed in 3D mode.
By default, the colors are a little too red, resulting in a deltaE score of 4.7, representing the gap between the colors requested by the graphics card and those actually shown. To put that in context, the untrained eye normally can only see color difference above deltaE 3, and only the very best monitors get it down to below 2. Spending a little time playing about with the OSD, we discovered that the 'bluish' settings gave the best results, although even these were far from spectacular, getting deltaE down to 3.7 by replacing red dominance with blue. Across all color settings, the contrast was consistently good.
While companies like iZ3D and Zalman were the first to consumer market with 3D displays, here comes Hyundai's own attempt at a 22-inch 3D screen. If you've been keeping a close eye on our reviews, you might recognize a similar design to the W220D: a glossy frame around the screen with the back in matte white.
The connectivity is largely unchanged, with the trio of VGA, DVI and HDMI providing the inputs. More disappointing is the redesigned stand, which no longer allows the monitor's height, rotation and orientation to be adjusted as was possible on the W220D.
The 3D technology used on the monitor means that it ships with a pair of 3D glasses with polarizing lenses, and, thankfully, Hyundai's are much than those supplied by Zalman.
3D Performance
In games, cut scenes look truly spectacular, and other images seem dull and lifeless by contrast. During gameplay itself, you need to keep your wits about you because visual fatigue can creep up quickly. Concentrating hard, we found some games gave us a headache after just half an hour of 3D action.
When watching movies, one of two things happens. Recent releases, often with computer graphics specially designed to exploit 3D, look great, with objects flying out of the screen into your living room and whatnot. Older movies, on the other hand, don't benefit very much at all from the conversion to 3D.
In both cases, though, you need to be sitting directly in front of the screen for the effects to work at all. You can forget about those invitations to 3D movie night.
2D Performance
Another aspect in which this Hyundai model improves on the Zalman is that it's much better at handling 2D images, with no visible polarization: the distracting phenomenon of horizontal lines moving across the picture is absent. We found the advertised response time of 5 ms to be about right. While this is on the slower side of thing for a 22'' LCD today, the results are far from frustrating, and should satisfy all but the most demanding of gamers, particularly when immersed in 3D mode.
| Hyundaï W220S | |
|---|---|
| Pros | Cons |
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Hyundai's W220S is a good screen, and it's definitely better than Zalman's 3D effort, but we reckon that offerings in 2009 from Samsung and ViewSonic will both be more mature demonstrations of 3D technology.
- Hyundai W220S 22...
first
wait...wheres the conclusion
I am a HUGE fan of LG's flatron monitors. They're generally very competitively priced for the quality you get.
One word of advice though, Dont buy a monitor online unless it has a zero-dead pixel guaranty as well as free return shipping. With the extremely high pixel counts of today's LCDs, the odds of getting a dead pixel are actually quite high, so the ability to take it back to the store and exchange it without any fees is a real benefit.
Need to see data, not just "record-breaking response times." A few of the monitors have some numbers but others have nothing more than a description.
I second the blue dominance on the 2253BW as well. It's a shocker unless you reduce the blue to almost nothing.
I have the Samsung 2253BW. They are right about the color and view angles. Took me a full day tinkering just to get the colors and positioning the way I wanted... big PITA. Once all setup its pretty nice. Best use as a gaming screen, built in hand drip makes moving around easy too.
I found the 2253BW has bad buttons and bad button positions. My "menu" button doesn't really work and since you can't see any of the buttons it can be hard to find them sometimes.
Thanks for the review. It helped me select which LCD Monitor worked best for me.
Maybe I'm the only Toms reader not up on my display type acronyms, but TN could have been briefly defined prior to using it on every page of this writeup. For those also not in the loop it's Twisted Nematic.
Aren't Dell LCDs just rebadged?
I dislike the trend to adding cheap speakers in all monitors above like 22" makes me feel like i'm paying for something i'll never use.
which one the model that has true 24 bits color?
I've got the samsung 2233rz 120hz refresh. GREAT GAMING MONITOR. Plus the 3d with Nvidia is awesome. Some good games are Mass Effect, Fallout 3 and Left 4 Dead. Mass effect is the most visually pleasing of them all, but Left 4 dead is the most fun to use it with.
Also, it's about time that TOMS finally did a piece that GAMERS might be interested in. By the way, your new GPU charts stink, I don't want subcatagories of high end and low end, just the GPU's for the last 3 years. If you want, color code the charts to price brackets or better yet, Generations of models.
You guys have lost touch with what gamers want. Plus your website was extremely laggy on the few articles I found interesting in the last month.
Hi Toms
How about a roundup in the 24 inch class.Many of us feel a 24 is the way to go?Please Consider.Thank-You for this articles non the less.
Xsamitt
I'm satisfied with the Samsung T240. I was using a CRT 19 before and this is quite an upgrade. Not the best monitor out there, but I got it for a heck of a deal!
When I built my first computer (the one I have now) I went with the LG W2252TQ. My niece has been using an LG monitor for a long time and she highly recommended I try one, so I thought I would take the hint. I picked this monitor up from my local Best Buy where the kind computer tech hooked it up to a PC for me so I could see what Windows looked like on it. I was sold immediately. This has turned out to be the best monitor I have ever owned.
Very glad to see a LCD review. I'm dreading the day my current tube dies, as most LCDs still can't match them(decent tubes that is). Unless you get in to the 1000 dollar range. Just wish the resolution was better. 1680 x 1050 is losing some space to the traditional 1600x1200. Though 1920 x 1080 is a bit better.
Hopefully more reviews and more consumer research will prompt companies to start making good quality LCDs and cheaper prices. Dell is kind of annoying, they used to sell some of their dispalys with PVA, and then changed them to TN, without changing the model #/Name. Grr.
Oops, in regards to my last post. The Dell monitors weren't changed from PVA to TN, they were changed from S-IPS to TN.
I'm just not on my game anymore. My two previous posts are wrong. Dell didn't switch from S-IPS to TN. They switched from S-IPS to PVA. Not so horrible. I got to work today and sat down at my computer, which is a 4 head box with 4 Dell 2007FP displays. 2 are S-IPS, and 2 are PVA. I can now see a bit of a difference, but its not so bad. S-IPS still looks a little nicer. But I never noticed until I started digging into it and figure out they were different techs.
Too bad, I've just started using ViewSonic VX2262wm a few days ago...
As the review said, even for the untrained eyes, the colors are noticeable bad and unable to get it right through OSD, which is disappointing.
Viewing angle is bad. So bad that if you look at it at the distance closer that 30 cm, you're starting to see dark shadows on the top and the bottom of the screen. You should have keep it at 50 cm distance to see uniform color.
The responsiveness are OK, but just don't compare it to CRT.
The internal speakers are jokes. Maximum volume is relatively small compared to standard active speaker. If you turn up a little bit bass, the sound is cracking. At 100% volume setting, you can hear a little annoying static high frequency hiss/noise, even if you don't plug in the audio cable. To set it to almost unnoticeable, I can only set the volume level at around 60%. Included are the EAX virtual sound card that using up computer resources, so that there is silent moment every half a second.
In short, don't buy it because of the speaker. ViewSonic should have put the money to improve the quality of the monitor instead of installing a pair of cheap speakers.
To the credit of ViewSonic, the first unit that I ordered contained one dead subpixel. They replaced a new one for me.
I've managed to improve the above-mentioned monitor's display accuracy by using the webpages...
http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/