ViewSonic VX2235wm 22" LCD Monitor - Pcperspective Shopping

Love It!

Strengths: Beautiful picture, no dead pixels, rich color.

Weakness: This is really picky, but it's the only thing that slightly (and I mean slightly) bugs me - the front panel buttons are kind of hard to press as they don't stick out at all.

I just replaced my VX2025 (which I love and is moving to my office) and was slightly afraid to purchase this since some reviews had some minor complaints. The second I plugged it in and turned it on, I literally was like "Wow!" That's what I was hoping for. The size is definitely great, and the picture is beautiful. I thought my VX2025 was great, but this definitely has a better picture. I would...
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By toml712206 - Jan 30, 2007

Good monitor

Strengths: Very big screen, wide screen excellent for games that support it, low response rate

Weakness: No HDMI inputs like some other monitors, eyes have to be aligned at top of screen to get right colors

This is an excellent monitor for the price. Before I upgraded, I was using a 17". The wide screen is excellent, allows for me to fit more on the screen at once rather than having to minimize or have windows hidden behind other windows. It's great for games but you will need a good video card to run them at the native resolution. Widescreen movies are great too, because they take advantage of the...
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By philchin - Dec 17, 2006

Good Screen but has its flaws

Strengths: huge screen, extremely bright, nice colors, sharp

Weakness: Flickering with certain patterns, no fixed resolution mode available, videos slightly grainy, too bright at times, up/down viewing angle limited, no landscape mode, slight shadow on some text(see note below)

My first impression of this screen was "Wow! its huge!" and I was instantly impressed with the colors, brightness and resolution. As I used it more I found some weaknesses that are actually making me question the purchase. This is my first LCD monitor so I apologize if many of the problems I mention are common with most lcds, I only have my laptop lcds to use as a comparison. Also I only used the...
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My first impression of this screen was "Wow! its huge!" and I was instantly impressed with the colors, brightness and resolution. As I used it more I found some weaknesses that are actually making me question the purchase. This is my first LCD monitor so I apologize if many of the problems I mention are common with most lcds, I only have my laptop lcds to use as a comparison. Also I only used the analog VGA input as I do not have DVI which might cause alot of the problems I mention.

If you view web pages or any image that uses a grid pattern(screen door effect) such as on some windows dialog boxes the pattern will flicker/flash when stationary. when scrolled it will flash/flicker even worse. As I'm entering in this review, if I scroll the text that I am typing(black on white), the text flickers quite a bit until the scrolling stops. Also I notice that certain colors of text/backgrounds cause a slight shadow effect, biggest place is black text on gray backgrounds that you see in the "File Edit View" menus of all your programs.

Another issue I have is the inability of the monitor to do fixed resolution without stretching. It always stretches the image regardless of the size. For somethings(such as games) I would like to have it not stretch and leave black borders on the left/right of the screen. If this is important to you, this screen is not for you.

Another thing is the up/down viewing angle isn't perfect. its not horrible but just moving up down a bit in my chair I can see the brightness drop off, especially if you are sitting close as the screen is so big you can move your head up and down enough to cause parts of the screen to be darker than others. The top of my screen is darker than the bottom. I can tilt the screen to make the top brighter but then the bottom is darker. Side viewing angle is fine. it does lose quite a bit of brightness but its still visible if you are standing to the side and looking. much better than most laptops I've seen.
The screen is so bright, at first I liked this but all white background are blinding, even turned all the way down to zero the screen is still visible. if you put up a completely black image, it looks gray and there is some visible light bleeding on the edges.

Final thing is videos(avi's, wmvs for example) do not look as nice. I see alot of blocking and artifacts when playing video files. I read that this LCD is a TN panel and that this is a common problem with LCDs compared to a CRT. Part of the problem is due to the extreme brightness as it brings out more flaws in the video. as a comparison I tried playing a raw capture 720p video on it and that looked beautiful even stretched to full screen it still looked good. so just be aware that if you are coming from a smaller screen or a CRT, your once good looking videos might look terrible on this new screen.

The monitor is very basic in terms of features but at this price you can't expect to get all of the extras offered on the more expensive dell and gateway 20inch lcds. I wish it had the rotate to landscape mode that the dells offer, it is a nice feature for coding or reading long webpage. It doesn't have any extra inputs(such as composite, svideo, or component) other than dvi/vga, so if youd like to hook up other devices to it you'll need a different screen.

Overall I do like the screen most of the time but if I could do it overagain I would not buy it. I'd either wait for better quality 22inch lcd panels or I'd get one of the higher quality 20inch screens which viewsonic does sell as well.

By grimfand - Oct 28, 2006

Great monitor! Great price!

Strengths: 5ms response time, clear vibrant picture, brightness

Weakness: None!

This is a great monitor! I got this at Costco for $299 instore which is a steal! I do a lot of video editing and graphic design and this monitor is exceptional! The viewing area is large and roomy with vibrant colors! I definitely recommend this!

By daweing - Oct 21, 2006

Excellent monitor for $300

Strengths: Huge screen, bright, sturdy, good text qauality. Perfect monitor for internet/email/word proccessing/gaming!

Weakness: Control buttons are difficult to press (and your gonna need em) - colors looked washed out on default settings. Not a good choice if perfect color accuracy is critical.

If you want a large impressive looking LCD monitor for under $400, look no further, unless you are a photo editing junky or need lots of connectivity options. This monitor was just to good a deal for me to pass up ($299 at Costco with $50 coupon). First of all, lets be clear about one thing. This is not a high end monitor. This is a value monitor. You're not going to get perfection for $299. That...
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If you want a large impressive looking LCD monitor for under $400, look no further, unless you are a photo editing junky or need lots of connectivity options. This monitor was just to good a deal for me to pass up ($299 at Costco with $50 coupon).

First of all, lets be clear about one thing. This is not a high end monitor. This is a value monitor. You're not going to get perfection for $299. That being said, this monitor is worth alot more than $299, in my opinion.

What you get:
1. A big wide screen. You get alot of realestate to work with. This replaced my 19" Dell 4:3 CRT, so it really looks huge to me. Widescreen is awesome. I'll never go back.
2. It's plenty bright. I turned the bightness down a bit for my liking.
3. Text quality looks great.
4. Gaming performance is great. I am a FPS gaming junky, so I needed a monitor with a fast response time. This monitor shows no blurring or ghosting of any kind during my gaming. I have no complaints in this area.
5. Some other reviews have complained about backlight bleed. I specifically looked for this flaw in my monitor the day i bought it, and sure enough it was there, right along the top and bottom edge of the monitor. That was the last time I ever noticed it. In other words, you will never notice it unless you are looking for it, or maybe if you play movies with really dark scenes. How often do you have a super dark image on your entire screen? Even during night operations in my games, I have NEVER noticed it.
6. That said, I don't normally watch DVDs on my PC, but I popped one in for this review, and it performed great. I didn't see any ghosting or anything like that. The image flowed very smoothly.

What you sacrafice:
1. My biggest complaint - The default settings, out of the box, make the image look somewhat washed out and the colors are just not quite right. You will almost certainly want to change the monitor settings in the control menu to attain a better quality image. I was able to get rid of the washed out look, but have yet to get the color accuracy exactly right. Don't get me wrong, my photos look really great on screen, but if I'm editing pictures for the purpose of printing, color accuracy is extremely important, and while it looks good, it's just not perfectly accurate.
2. That brings me to my next complaint... the control menu buttons are very small and somewhat cumbersome to press. You can't just press them with your finger, you sort-of have to use your fingernails. It's a pain, and because of complaint #1, you're gonna use those buttons alot when you first get the monitor home. Fortunately, once you get the monitor set up the way you like, you will probably never press them again.
3. Almost no position adjustments for this monitor. You can tilt it forward and backward...that's it. No hight adjustment, no swival, & certainly no rotating to portrait mode... not for $299. So make sure it fits where you plan to put it.
4. Very little conectivity. You get one DVI and one VGA port and that's it. No component, no S-video, and no USB ports.

Conclusion: If color accuracy is critical, this monitor is not for you; however, it's a perfect monitor for gaming, surfing the net, email, word processing, spreadsheets, and basic photo work. And best of all, you get a 22" widescreen Viewsonic monitor for about $300. It's a smoking deal.

By squeeken - Nov 26, 2006