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Product Survey: 22'' LCD Monitors >
LG Flatron L227WT
Diagonal screen size 22 pouces
Type TN
Resolution 1680 x 1050 pixels
Response time 2 ms
Interfaces (HDMI / DVI / VGA / YUV) 0 / 1 / 1 / 0
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Options 0
Viewing angles (H/V) 170 ° / 170 °
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Vincent Alzieu
Test date: April 09, 2008
Is wider gamut a silver bullet?
LG describes its monitor as 97% gamut. Well 97% of what? This isn’t specified but it probably involves the NTSC colour space, or in other words, colours that will only be of interest to a certain group of professionals. Normal digital cameras work with the most common, colour space sRGB.

Now, if a manufacturer offers an extended gamut screen (capable of producing colours more intense than those produced by a digital camera)--that is, wider than the sRGB colour space--it's absolutely essential that that it makes sure the screen can natively display accurate sRGB colours. Unfortunately, the L227WT doesn’t do this.

The result: professional photographers, for example, who work with the Adobe RGB colour space, will want to avoid this screen which has poor default settings. And everyday consumers will want to steer clear of the washed-out sRGB colours.
Color handling
2 ms, contrast at 5000:1, 170° viewing angles from all directions, a stylish look, thin, glossy, and finally, a ''97%'' gamut.  And along with those excellent specs, the L227WT comes at a reasonable price--or at least it could have been a lot more expensive, given the feature list.

Unfortunately, our tests put almost all of these promising claims into perspective. The gamut is indeed wider than usual, but LG neglected to set colours properly, and the result is that they are totally off.  With default settings, the average difference is 7.8: one of the worst measurements we’ve taken in the last few years.  Not a single colour is well rendered!  The greys, for example, are so lacking in blue that they end up looking yellowy-brown.

Blacks are washed out at 0.6 cd/m² with whites at 200 cd/m², giving a resulting contrast ratio of 550:1, a score that is much more modest than the advertised figure (either way this should have included the word ''dynamic'', which actually means nothing).   At this point, we were quite disappointed.  The sRGB setting found in the OSD is a little bit better and the average difference is then 5.8 (a good screen is less than 3) and black is deeper (0.20 cd/m²); however, the monitor then lacks brightness and produces whites at just 160 cd/m².

What it lacks in colours ...
Responsiveness
... it makes up for in responsiveness.  We have to admit it is very good, but there is a problem similar to what Samsung went through in mid-2007: the overdrive (a way to accelerate liquid crystals on the panel) doesn’t function as well as it should .  Instead, there is a slight dark afterglow image that is less marked than on the Samsung monitors that were affected last year, but still noticeable.

Handling
As for hardware, it is basic but sufficient.  There is a rotating base and digital input (DVI + HDCP) on the back in addition to analog.  Otherwise, it’s not vertically adjustable nor is there a card reader or USB hub.

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Design of the bezel

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DVI + HDCP

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Responsive

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Colours. The wide gamut has very little interest for this screen

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Subject to slight black ghosting

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Much lower contrast than announced

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No zero dead pixel policy

A very promising screen on paper but it actually has defects in almost all domains. In the end, it’s simply nice to look at while there is better elsewhere.

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