ASUS VW222 22-inch Wide-Screen

Date: March 10, 2008 - Author: Matt Serrano

The display market is chalked-full of models that fill up the quality spectrum, from sub-par up to high-end. The VW222 falls into the sub-par category, sadly, with overall poor color representation and noticeable screen-door effects, resulting in a model that should not be considered for purchase.

Introduction

March 16th Addendum: After reading the article, ASUS strongly believes that we received a defective unit. Their in-house units don't display some of the problems laid out here, so we are receiving a fresh unit this week and will update the review with our latest thoughts. If contemplating this monitor, please check back to this review later this week! (March 16 follow-up: We've revised our Final Thoughts.

In my past reviews, I regret to say that I have ranted a lot about the current state of the display market. In short: What we buy now, for the most part, is crap. I hate to repeat it, but the unfortunate truth is it's not going to change anytime soon.

Most monitors today are TN panels, and they're popular for a reason. The main rational is the fact that they bring costs down - TN panels are far cheaper to manufacture. Since they're cheap, they also allow for larger sizes, which are attractive for consumers. Compared to other types of panels, such as S-IPS or MVA, they also provide the fastest response times, which gamers and movie aficionados tend to prefer.

Beyond that, however, TN panels are in superior to every other alternative out there. Others do have different drawbacks (color shifting and black levels come to mind), but the infamous TN panels suffer from poor color representation (with most displays being 6-bit panels), smaller viewing angles, generally worse aspect ratios. Other common problems are more monitor-specific, so I don't want to open that can of worms.

We have reviewed monitors with TN film panels in the past, and some have gotten decent scores. Some drawbacks are present across the board because there's only so much that can be improved with the technology, but some decent performers still remain. So are all monitors using TN technology bad? Not necessarily. In most cases? Yes, yes they are.

I have to vent about my frustrations with this particular monitor. The ASUS 22" VW222U highlights more of the issues with TN panels than I have ever faced with another monitor, and it's a shame. It simply does nothing to remedy any of the technology's faults.

Closer Look

Monitor packaging usually isn't interesting. In this case, we have a box, a monitor, a DVI cable and VGA cable, a quick start guide and warranty card. The display comes with a simple stand that does nothing more than tilt, and the rubber feet don't do a great job keeping everything steady when something is moved. It doesn't sound too impressive so far, but we haven't gotten to the important bits yet.

I don't have much against the design considering there's little to comment about it. The ASUS logo is seen at the bottom of the bezel with a silver strip below it, which the controls blend in with. I don't personally care for the stickers placed on the right and bottom sides, and frankly that's something that's bugged me about certain companies. But to their defense, these stickers might be included with display and review models only, not retail units.

There doesn't seem to be a myriad of ports here to choose from, you'll only get DVI and VGA, along with a jack for the speaker. The inputs and power connector are located at opposite sides of the monitor. ASUS uses a simple yet effective means of organizing everything with a small hook connected to the stand, which seems to be a bit flimsy but shouldn't break off unless you plan on frequently changing cables.

The overall construction is fairly solid, but I do feel that cheaper plastic was used to house the electronics. The backside and stand have a different feel than the bezel, and while I'm not crazy about it, it still works well together, so I don't see it as much of a complaint.

My first impressions were very disappointing. Because of the monitor's pixel pitch ratio, there was a visible "screen door" effect making each individual pixel visible at my usual viewing distance. The annoying viewing angles constantly pestered me, and I'll get into the detail about the image quality in further sections. Because of the panel's nature, viewing angles will be poor no matter what's implemented, but for some reason the screen never looks uniform.

For example, the screen's contrast ratio will look fine at eye-level, looking toward the top edge. However, the picture will look washed out when looking at the bottom, even when the point of view is unchanged. In my opinion, color shifting to this degree in unacceptable. I tried for days to get used to it, but the annoyance was too much to bear use it day-to-day without wanting to switch back.

This wouldn't be much of a problem for people just picking up a monitor with no prior experience, but for someone with another display to compare it to, the problem instantly stands out.

Specs, OSD

Nothing seems too out of the ordinary with this monitor. If you're looking at it on paper, it has what you might expect for a display in its price range, but sadly it doesn't include extra features like any sort of hub or extra connectors.

The on screen display is easy to use and understand, even if it is fairly standard. The buttons on the monitor are: Spendid/exit (which select color profiles), volume/down, menu, brightness/up and the power button.

Pressing the menu button will first bring you to the Splendid menu, which displays profiles to use in different situations, which include scenery, theater, game and night.

The image tab will display options for brightness and contrast, as well as ASCR, sharpness and saturation which are only available when using a VGA connection.

The color tab gives the option of setting color temperature and what's called "skin tones", again, only available when using VGA.

The second to last tab is a relatively boring one, input select, which simply switches from DVI to VGA. There isn't a button to toggle the signals, which is annoying, but obviously wouldn't be much of a bother if you're one to use a single source.

The last tab, system setup, allows for the configuration of the OSD and language settings. There's also the option to change the volume (which would only make a difference if speakers are connected) and view information about the current settings (signal, resolution frequency and refresh rate). Last, there's an option to reset all changes made, which puts the display back to the manufacturer's settings.

In the final section, we'll be reviewing the monitor's performance and going over our final thoughts.

Testing, Final Thoughts

I have used the monitor on and off over the past few weeks, both on a Mac and PC, and to deal with my frustrations, I've tried doing a variety of things to get the display to look acceptable. On the Mac side, I had the most luck with using the Adobe color profile, but the colors continued to look washed out to some degree even after calibrating it. I had worse luck with Windows, but changing the settings with NVIDIA's control panel did help remedy the quality.

Generally the display was very washed out (even discounting the color shifting). Out of the box, I wasn't impressed with the way it looked, and the brightness was almost unbearable. Looking at whites and other bright colors was almost painful because it was so harsh. There was also a moderate amount of backlight bleed, which I wasn't impressed by either.

I found this to be one of the most difficult displays to calibrate to look acceptable with both images and the desktop. I was able to set it when looking at a color palette, but when I got back to the desktop, things were still incredibly washed out. The problem could be fixed with a hardware calibration tool, but if you're going to make that kind of investment, you're better off getting a better display in the first place.

To test the display for gaming, I played a few levels of Half-Life 2: Episode One. I didn't notice any ghosting while playing, or in my standard trailing tests which was to be expected, but I did discover an odd issue in the earlier levels. The VW222U and a Dell 2007WFP was set up, across from each other mirroring what was on screen. In the earlier levels where the gravity gun was used, I could see a visible halo around the edges of light emanating, while the IPS panel on the Dell exhibited no such problem.

Another problem I discovered by chance was with gradients and changes in color. The display does have problems displaying them uniformly as some banding is present, which I'm willing to give a level of credence to, but it also has problems displaying certain colors at all. This may be because the panel is a 6-bit panel instead of an 8-bit, but I've taken a look at other TN displays and I haven't seen the problem anywhere else.

The monitor should be capable of displaying each increase in color as separate blocks. The last group of colors (nearing the 90-100% mark, or in some cases, even less) seems to be collected together as if they are one color. In other cases, looking at images which should have contained gradients didn't display at all This is very alarming to graphic professionals who need the accuracy, but I would try to follow a general rule to stay away from TN panels all together if accuracy was something of concern.

There doesn't seem to be an outstanding reason to purchase this monitor. The sub-par quality leaves me with a bitter taste in my mouth. I really wish it could have performed better, but in the end, there is nothing I could find to justify the cost.

Even if you're a gamer, I would look elsewhere simply because there are other options that are better suited. Any TN panel would be perfectly fine for gaming, and an MVA or IPS panel would look even better, even at the risk of higher response rates (which can be negligible anyway). The lack of input options and style do phase me, so it ends up looking like a budget monitor with little afterthought for the consumer.

Pros
• It's a monitor, and it turns on

Cons
• Doesn't scream the ASUS quality we've come to expect
• Less-than-average color
• Screen-door effect is noticeable most of the time
• Other similarly-priced monitors offer better quality

March 16th Addendum: We have since received our replacement VW222 and have noted some noticeable improvements. Our original sample was indeed defective in some regards, but even our replacement didn't blow our pants off.

The replacement showcased better color, with the gradients looking more defined. In addition, there is virtually no backlight-bleeding on this new unit at all.

So while our replacement unit proved better than the original, we still don't think very highly of it. At its price-point, there are numerous other 24" models on the market that would deliver better overall image quality.

We originally gave this monitor a 4 out of 10 as our final score, overlooking the fact that we meant to discontinue including ratings with monitors, as we do with other products that proved too difficult to be handed a simple score. We've been doing this for a while with our notebooks and processors. Instead of handing our simple scores, we will focus more on our pros and cons list to let people award their own score, since everyone will weigh their pros and cons differently.

After consideration, though we have removed the original rating of this monitor (to reflect our new method), the resulting score, if we had one, would be bumped up to 6/10 thanks to the few improvements we have seen.

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