Home > Consumer Reviews > ViewSonic VX2235WM 22-inch Wide LCD Monitor

This is a superb monitor at a great price. The picture clarity, viewing angles and responsiveness are all I could wish for.

This is my first LCD monitor, and my first widescreen monitor, so I was a little wary of swapping out my CRT (which was also a Viewsonic). But the need for a bigger monitor and smaller desk space made this monitor attractive - particularly at this price. After using the vx2235wm for a few days, I couldn't be happier.

Running the monitor at its native resolution of 1680x1050, the image is remarkably crisp, and the colours are very consistent across the entire screen area. At other resolutions, the image is still extremely good, and only suffer when compared to the native res. The controls are fairly intuitive, and provide a nice balance between simplicity and flexibility. There are some preset contrast/brightness modes, but I selected "standard" and set my own levels. While running programs with a lot of movement - okay, games - I noticed little if any ghosting or shadowing. Playing movies is a joy.

A few points I would note that may be negatives for potential buyers:

- The maximum resolution of 1680x1050 is great, but there are 22" monitors out there with higher resolutions. Personally, I don't like to peer at small text or fiddle with font sizes or DPI, so this monitor suits me well. But if you want the highest number of pixels per screen inch you can buy, this ain't it.

- The monitor doesn't have a 1:1 or fixed aspect setting. This means that unless your graphics card supports these features, the monitor will stretch any image you send it to fill the entire (wide)screen. If you spend most of your time running desktop applications or playing newer games, this won't be a problem. But if you play older games that only support 4:3-style full-screen resolutions (800x600, 1280x1024, 1600x1200) the image will be stretched horizontally to fill the screen, making your opponents look chubby.

What's worse, determining whether a graphics card will fix this for you is tricky. Generally, Nvidia seems to do it while ATI doesn't, but there are exceptions in both cases. In short, if you're a hard-core player of older games, and this stretching will bother you, then this is not the monitor for you unless you *know* your graphics card will preserve the aspect ratio of 4:3 resolutions.

- The preset modes all have the brightness setting way too high for my tastes. I have a fairly dimly lit office, and some display modes are like staring into a headlight! After reducing the brightness manually, it was fine, although the image seemed to dim more noticeably when viewed at an angle. Maybe this is just business as usual with TFT LCD monitors, but it's behaviour you don't get with a CRT.

For most home users, office workers or game-players, this monitor has exceptional performance at an exceptional price. For those wanting a monitor for graphic design or professional photo editing, or hardcore players of older games, I'd recommend getting a more specialized monitor.

As I work with graphics design/photoshop/et al, I'll start with the bad points as that's what needs to be said first:

1. Brightness bleeding into the screen from the edges is apparent. Only bad if you use a lot of black in designs or gaming.

2. As has been said by another: There is an uneven brightness problem that gets consistently worse as one looks to the top. (e.g. a black and gray image will be washed out in all black) However, angling the monitor a bit downward seems to alleviate most of this problem.

3. I would beg for a 1000:1 contrast ratio, as other monitors of this price range do (OTOH they have funky fun-time problems of their own...)

4. The dot pitch of .0282 is about average. For $399, I'd have hoped for 0.0270. Okay, I'm not going to have a stroke because of this and text and graphics do look sharp, but a smaller dot pitch is always going to be better.

5. At the top of the screen, the text does develop a slightly glowing anomaly. Again, see point #2 which also alleviates this problem.

6. The built-in controls and how to access and change them is a bit annoying; once you get used to it you'll be fine... if only the OCD screen helped direct the user better.

7. The monitor is a 6-bit display with dithering seen in darker gradients. If you use the monitor's (or graphics card's) ability to soften the image, it'll look tolerable. But you might want to look elsewhere for a proper (full 16.7 million color depth) screen. That having been said, in some cases this monitor may still work out for you. Best thing to do is to give it a try.

That's all the problems I've seen so far.

For the plusses:

1. 22" is very nice indeed.

2. It's widescreen - SQUEE!!!!!!!!!!

3. The CD comes with monitor profile files to make calibration easier - this is a must for anyone who works with printing graphics.

4. It's affordable. Even with its faults, a little time to tinker yields a better looking display

5. 3 year warranty on parts, labor, and screen.

6. 5ms timing speed is GREAT for games. 8ms is too slow and results in a weird ghosting effect.

I still wish CRTs were being sold, but that's a dream. In the nightmare of LCD monitor inconsistencies, I have to say this Viewsonic model just about makes migrating to LCD the thing to do.

First the good, the monitor is fantastic for the price, they keep getting better and cheaper and since this monitor is about half the price of the 24" LCD's out there it provides for a great price/performance ratio. Monitor has both DVI and VGA, I have the DVI connected to my PC and the VGA connected to my laptop (switch between the two with the #2 button) and both produce excellent color and text. I have calibrated this monitor with a Pantone Huey and it looks beautiful and matches well with Photoshop, but still not as good as a CRT (but they are getting better all the time!)

Now the bad, the monitor does show some brightness falloff dipping down from the top and coming up from the bottom, but it's not bad. But the worst part about the VX2235wm is that the bezel is a glossy black and it reflects everything in my office and is extremely distracting. Viewsonic also has a VG2230wm that is the same panel but with a matte black bezel instead of a glossy bezel.

I give the monitor 3 stars because of the inconsistency of the brightness and the glossy bezel, other than that it would rate 5 stars in my book.

I bought this from Costco, instead of Amazon because they had a price that was "too good to be true". And it was!

Unfortunately this screen was a non-starter for anyone who does digital imaging or critical viewing of anything. I'm very happy with my Viewsonic VX900 19" screen, and was hoping to get the same image quality w/more desktop space.

The problem w/this VX2235 was, at least on my screen very uneven lighting from top to bottom and side to side. Of course, no LCD is perfect and many hardcore graphic artists stick to CRT's for critical work. However, while my old and still current monitor has a very even brightness,unless you look at it from acute angles, the VX2235 had stark image issues.

I returned my monitor after just a day. It may be ok for the casual web surfer, but not if you're doing photography with it.

I'm on my 4th VX2235WM. The first one - top left was darker than any other area on the screen. 2nd - stuck red pixel on the top area. 3rd - stuck green pixel in the middle of the screen. 4th - low volume, high pitch coming from screen - pinch the sides and it goes away for a little bit, just to come back later. This is extremely aggravating when you're trying to work with no music on. I've called Viewsonic to ask if there were any known problems. Of course the answer was along the lines of "no, it's our newest monitor!" I'm beginning to wonder why none of the big guys have reviewed this monitor. It may be giong back so that I can get the Dell 20" wide. The extra 2" are hard to justify when you've got less video ports and the lower quality panel. I definitely see more variance in shades from top to bottom than on the Dell.

Yes, it's flashy for video, but if you want to do any kind of work with this monitor, it's aggravating...and after exchanging it 4 times, even though there were real problems, I feel like I'm taking advantage of the store.