Roundup: 22-Inch LCD Monitors
1. Product Survey: 22'' LCD Monitors
Our Tests
We assess monitors on a lot of different criteria: design, handling, measuring color accuracy, response times for games and movie watching.
The ideal screen, of course, would excel in all of these areas. Unfortunately, that's rarely the case, and a compromise is often necessary. If you're touching up photos, then you might want to put an emphasis on accurate colors, but if you're a gamer, then quick response is what you'll need.
This roundup includes products released within one year preceding the publication date of this article. The product selection consists solely of review units made available to Tom’s Guide by vendors. While the products listed here do not constitute a comprehensive listing of all products in the category, they do represent a broad range of what is available to consumers in this category. We will quickly update this roundup with new products as they become available to Tom’s Guide, and soon add data relating to product specifications and test dates. In other words, these roundups are a work in progress. Please check back frequently to see what’s new.
In 2009, 22 inch LCD monitors have fast become the norm for day to day computing. Whether you’re buying one from your favorite online outlet or picking one up in a desktop package deal at your local big box retailer, it's not worth going any smaller as you won't save any money. Today's 22'' monitors start at about $150, and can go up beyond $400. While a 21.5 or 22 inch screen is nothing new, the game has certainly changed as of late. Up through 2008, you would expect a 1680 x 1050 resolution on your 22 inch monitor. But recent trends and the embrace of High Definition content has led to newer 22 inch monitors packing a 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution, allowing for Full HD gaming and movie watching at a reasonable price.
22 inch monitors come in all shapes and sizes. The most advanced versions have very wide viewing angles, offer a plethora of inputs (VGA, DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPort), and sit on smart stands that are height-adjustable. Even built-in digital tuners are becoming more readily available, allow your computer monitor to serve as a PC display, console gaming display, and TV all at once. Since the end of 2008, there is also a choice between two different resolutions: some screens are at 1680 x 1050 pixels while others are at 1920 x 1080 pixels. The choice is yours: you can either go for more pixels to cram more information onto the screen, or fewer for better readability.
The cheapest 22 inch screens aren't necessarily bad, but certainly more basic. On these models, the stand is usually fixed, and there won’t be any HDMI port next to your VGA and DVI connectors. These screens use TN panels with a 5 ms response time, which means that the image fades to black when you look at it from below and that games will suffer from ghosting, with moving objects looking a little blurry. In recent months, however, 2ms monitors have begun to appear below the $200 price point. If games like Quake Live and Left 4 Dead occupy most of your day, a 2ms monitor on the cheap will be your best friend.
An (Almost) Perfect Screen?
For us, a perfect screen would:
- be very responsive (fewer than one frame behind on an average scene) and without too much input lag
- have correct colors by default (a deltaE score of below 3)
- have excellent contrast (contraste > 800:1 at 200 cd/m²= black < 0.25 cd/m²)
- use wide viewing angles that give even colors
- benefit from high-end features, like a smart stand on a rotating base that's also height-adjustable
Let's be realistic: a screen this good just doesn't exist, or if it does it's far too expensive for us. However, for a screen to walk off with that famous five-star rating, it'll need to match at least four of these criteria. If it only has three, then it'll never get more than four stars, unless there are some pretty remarkable extra features.
20'', 22'' or 24''?
Up against today's 22'' screens, 19'' and 20'' monitors are largely outclassed given how close they are in price. Instead, it's time to look in the other direction, as the price of 24'' monitors is now falling rapidly. So much so, in fact, that the cheapest 24'' screens can be cheaper than some mid-range 22'' models. Moving up to 24'', the screens are easier to use with a larger display area, but the disadvantage is that they take up more space.
The latest generation of monitors is beginning to rely on some innovative new features to stand out. There are some which include TV tuners, others that can display certain games in 3D using special glasses, and others that show 120 images a second rather than 60 (120Hz), completely obliterating ghosting and improving the fluidity of movements.
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/