Recently, we had reviewed Acer’s 19-inch widescreen panel that offered a 16:9 resolution and had come away fairly impressed with its performance with regard to movies. In a similar vein, we will be reviewing another 16:9 monitor - BenQ’s E2200 HD - which has a native full resolution of 16:9 and manages to pack this in a 22-inch frame. Read on to find out how it fares.
The one thing that I have always loved about BenQ, is the fact that their monitors come in very simple and plain designs eschewing functionality over form. The E2200 HD is no different in this respect, as it has sensibly chosen to make the LCD panel a matte finish, with the bezel and stand being the only aspect of the monitor that have been given a glossy finish. The dimensions of the monitor are 20.58 x 16.06 x 7.35 inches with a weight of just over 4.7 Kgs. This makes it quite the “guy in shape” when you compare it to other “fat” monitors of its range on offer from other manufacturers.
The physical construction of the monitor is fairly sound, with the only downside here being that its base is very basic. It offers no height/swivel adjustment. The monitor can be tilted a bit, but that is also quite minimal. Luckily the height of the LCD panel from the base is fairly decent, so one does not need to put a notebook underneath it to get it to the correct height for good viewing.
In the past, BenQ has always offered very comprehensive options when it came to OSD menus on its LCD panels. This has not changed here, as the E2200 HD comes with the standard variety of controls for brightness, contrast, color, aspect ratios (4:3, 16:9), along with their preset definitions like “movies, games, standard and SRGB”. The OSD menu unlike previous BenQ panels is fairly snappy, quite intuitive and allows a good degree of customization. Another feature that I found impressive were the OSD controls. The provided buttons are large and fairly responsive, which is a good step up from the competition as it offers easy manipulation of the OSD menus.
Connectivity-wise the E2200 HD packs in VGA, HDMI and DVI inputs. This makes it a sweet deal for gamers, who are looking to combine their consoles and PCs. It also has 2 PC speakers, which is typical nowadays.
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The E2200 HD as we have already mentioned is a full HD TN panel with a 16:9 resolution of 1920x1080, has a 5ms response time (2ms Grey to Grey) and has a contrast ratio of 1000:1 (DCR of 10,000:1). We tested the monitor after calibrating it with Displaymate. After this, we put it through its paces utilizing HD movies, Displaymate’s various sample tests and plain image viewing. Here are the results we got.
The performance of the E2200, were fairly neutral with regard to its brightness and contrast levels, unlike the aggressive performance that is often seen in this test. The color tests were not as good, however, with the monitor tending to slip towards cooler colors with a faint blue tinge that showed up everywhere. It required extensive calibration of the monitor, to tone this problem down and hence was an irritation. The grey levels of the monitor, were another trouble-spot, as it was fairly spiky and at a 60 percent setting showed incredible variance by spiking to 8000k leading to a fairly warped display and odd artifacts in places. The black levels of the monitor however were spot on and this came as a surprise seeing its jaggy performance in other areas.
Our next test was gaming and here the monitor again caused a few problems with older games. Thanks to its 16:9 resolution, a lot of older titles, which didn’t support this setup were handicapped as they had to be played at less than optimum resolutions. However a few modern day titles such as WoW: Wrath of the Lich King, COD-4 and Crysis Warhead had no issues with the monitor. There was no visible ghosting even in the most intense action scenarios. Our final test was to check out HD samples that were encoded to 16:9 aspect ratios. The lack of a black band here that one has gotten used to was a most welcome sight.
The E2200 HD is available for a market price of Rs. 12,800. At its price and its HD resolution it virtually stands out by itself. Though it’s hampered by uneven performance in certain areas, this can be alleviated to a great extent with a simple Displaymate tuning session. Once tuned, this monitor delivers on all fronts i.e. connectivity, image quality and good performance.
We recommend it without any reservations.