Review on ViewSonic VX2235WM 22-inch Wide Monitor: Crisp 1680X1050 Resolution on a Wide Screen by Brian Lawrence

This is an excellent monitor at a great price. Image 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 bit wary of changing my CRT (which was also a Viewsonic). But the need for a larger monitor and a smaller desktop made this monitor attractive, especially at this price point. After using the vx2235wm for a few days I couldn't be happier. The monitor runs at a native resolution of 1680 x 1050, the picture is surprisingly sharp and the colors are very even across the screen. At other resolutions, the picture is still very good and only suffers when compared to the native resolution. The controls are quite intuitive and strike a good balance between simplicity and flexibility. There are several preset contrast/brightness modes, but I chose "Default" and set my own values. When running programs with a lot of motion - okay, games - I hardly noticed any halos or shadows. Watching movies is a pleasure. A few things I could point out that might be a downside for potential buyers: - The 1680 x 1050 max resolution is great, but there are 22-inch monitors with higher resolutions. Personally, I don't like looking at small text or playing around with font size or DPI, so this monitor suits me. But if you want the maximum number of pixels per inch of screen you can buy, this isn't it. - The monitor does not have a 1:1 or fixed aspect ratio. This means if your graphics card doesn't support these features, the monitor will stretch any image you send to fill the entire (wide) screen. If you spend most of your time running desktop apps or playing new games, it's not a problem. However, when playing older games that only support 4:3-style full screen resolutions (800x600, 1280x1024, 1600x1200), the image is stretched horizontally to fill the screen and make your opponents look chubby. Worse, it's difficult to determine if your graphics card will fix the problem for you. Usually Nvidia succeeds, ATI not, but in both cases there are exceptions. In short, if you're an avid gamer of older games and that stretch bothers you, then this monitor isn't for you unless you *know* that your graphics card maintains a 4:3 aspect ratio. - All preset modes have too high a brightness setting for my liking. I have a fairly dimly lit office, and some display modes are like staring into a spotlight! After manually reducing the brightness, everything was fine, but the picture seemed to dim more clearly when viewed from an angle. Perhaps this is common with TFT-LCD monitors, but this behavior does not occur with a CRT. For the majority of home users, office workers or gamers, this monitor offers exceptional performance at an exceptional price. For those who need a monitor for graphic design or professional photo editing, or for hardcore gamers of old games, I would recommend buying a more specialized monitor.