It’s Iiyama’s big return.  After a superb 24''--the five star ProLite B2403WS--this is the Prolite E2201W.  Quite simply, it's the most interesting 22'' monitor to be launched at the end of this summer.  Its main advantage is that is combines a (very responsive) 2 ms panel with an attracitve price.

It also features a smart design and a DVI input that supports the HDCP standard (needed to watch DRM-protected Blu-ray and HD-DVD content).  Iiyama has gone for a matte black bezel with sharp angles and straight lines.  However, it cannot pivot or be vertically adjusted.

Gaming

The advertised response time of 2 ms is correct, and there is a very noticeable difference when you compare ghosting (the presence of trails behind moving objects on screen) to then 5 ms panels found on the majority of competing 22'' screens.  That makes this monitor paricularly suitable for fans of FPS games like Quake and Unreal where there's plenty of running and shooting.  Another feature that will appeal to gamers is the total lag of input lag compared with a CRT cloning the same feed: both screens appear to be perfectly synchronised.  The Samsung SyncMaster 226BW S got close to this perfection, but didn't quite make it.

Downsides

So is the ProLite E2201W perfect?  Should we rush out and buy it?  Before you do, allow us to point out two things.  The first is a typcical complaint of ours: the default colours are good, but not perfect.  The average difference between the signal sent by the graphics card and the colours actually displayed on the Samsung 226BW S series gave a deltaE value of 2.6;  the E2201W had an average of 4.4.  Unusually, we found shades of grey to be dominated by greens, although this was not too problematic, as it can be corrected using a few manual adjustments.  We set our test model to brightness 79, contrast 30, red 94, green 91 and blue 98, reducing the delaE to an average of 3.6--a noticeable improvement.

The second problem we found--poor viewing angles--was more worrying.  So as not to confuse this with another area, we'll start with a little detour to examine the homogeneity and brightness of the screen.  When we moved our test sensor over the panel, there was an average difference of 8% between any two points which climbed to 25% if the brightest and dimmest parts of the screen were compared while showing a plain white test card. 

Although that might seem high, it's absolutely normal.  However, if you stare at the centre of the screen, and then move your eyes up to the top without moving your head, then the image appears darker.  Inversely, if you look at one corner and then across at the opposite side of thes creen, the first will seem to show the right colour but the second will appear to dip to black.  This is because the viewing angles are very narrow--so much so that it becomes critical, in fact.  Why?  We think the problem seems to stem from a filter applied to the front of the screen, rather than the backlighting or the LCDs themselves.  The race to produce the cheapest possible screens has produced some casualties. 

So is this a fatal flaw? For some, yes.  Just to have a clear conscience, we asked for another screen from Iiyama to verify that this wasn’t a random defect. Unfortunately, the two monitors have identical behavior.