Things are changing in the world of 22'' monitors: this is the first model that we've tested to sport a Full HD 1980 x 1080 pixel screen. 

What's more, it's no more expensive than a 'regular' 22'' LCD which only supports the lower 1680 x 1050 pixel resolution.  So: a higher resolution screen for the same price--where's the catch?  It certainly isn't with the power consumption, which is a perfectly acceptable 35 W.

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In short, this monitor is acceptable for your home office or watching movies, but not gaming.  A lot of productivity applications benefit from the higher resolution: you can see more columns on your spreadsheet,  for instance, or look at two documents side by side, provided you don't mind the text size being a little on the small side.  Equally, you can work with a source document on one side and your output on the other for creating web pages or presentations, for example, bringing some of the functionality of a dual-monitor setup onto just one screen.

For movies, the improved Full HD resolution brings some obvious benefits, but to get the most out of it, it's best to make sure you're sitting far away and directly in line with the monitor.  Without an image correction chip, the image suffers from the traditional faults of excess noise and visible compression.  In fairness, the Samsung T220HD is the only model on the market to feature such a chip.

Featuring a TN panel, the E2208HDS has a very reduced vertical viewing angle.  When rendering text, traditional 22'' monitors draw 'bolder' characters, but the increase in resolution means that letters and numbers look more like they do on the 1440 pixel screen of a 17'' laptop: text is lighter and narrower, but perfectly legible when you get used to it.

Handling

On the market at a very attractive price, the E2280HDS is not a monitor with any exciting points in terms of its handling and connectivity.  Nevertheless, we were pleased to find a digital input (DVI) to complement the analogue VGA.  A pair of 1 W speakers mounted on either side of the monitor is fairly mediocre, but does at least allow you to watch online videos without missing out on the sound.

Colour & Contrast

Although some manufacturers manage to create default configurations for their monitors which give decent results, that certainly isn't the case with Iiyama's ProLite E2208HDS.  Our lab tests showed that the average gap between the colours shown on the screen, the DeltaE score, was consistently around 4.5, where we'd ideally prefer it to be below 3 and the LG Flatron L226WU manages 2.2.

In reality, this is translated as very marked green dominance that we just couldn't budge whatever changes we made using the OSD.

Gaming

We honestly can't say that the Iiyama Prolite E2208HDS is suitable for demanding gamers.  On the one hand, its TN screen has a 5 ms response time leading to noticeable ghosting, while its higher resolution, although appreciable, really stretches some graphics cards.  Switching to the Full HD resolution of 1980 x 1080 pixels means the graphics card increases the number of pixels it has to control by 18%, and, naturally, the framerate drops to compensate for this.  The end result is games that look sharper and more pleasing to the eye, but with less fluid movement.

Given its price point, we weren't surprised to find that this monitor is below average in terms of ghosting, with colour images trailing 1.1 frames behind, which, although not annoying, is far from the LG L226WU's 0.45 or the Samsung 2243BW's 0.35.  Finally, the input lag of just 11 ms is barely even noticeable.