Philips 220CW9 - DigitalVersus

Philips 220CW9


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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	Hub USB
Viewing angles (H/V)
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Alexandre Botella
Updated: March 11, 2009 - Test date: February 20, 2009

What is reverse ghosting?

With the aim of suppressing ghosting of objects in movement to a maximum, manufacturers use electrical impulses to accelerate the passage from one colour to another. When all goes well, this operation can, for example, allow you to transform your 5 ms TN monitor into a 2 ms. Unfortunately constructors often mis-manage the process. This is when you get what is known as reverse ghosting. In such a scenario the phantom images that they were trying to remove only become more marked. In some extreme cases, the effect becomes visible when you do no more than move the mouse, leaving a black trail that follows the cursor everywhere.

Here Philips has a monitor that, above and beyond its technical spec, is also very easy on the eye. The 220CW9 is a 2 ms 22'' screen with glossy black panel and stand.

Handling

Philips has opted for VGA and DVI inputs to the detriment of an HDMI, an option that has nevertheless become popular in this class. The base gives no mobility except for a small inclination of the panel. A strange choice on the part of the manufacturer: the USB hub has only one output, although that does mean you can free up some USB ports if all of the ones on your computer are used up. Although two stars for handling might seem a very low mark, it's not uncommon for 22'' screens.

Colours

Color handling

To the naked eye, it doesn’t seem to suffer any colour handling difficulties. The tests, however, show up poor brightness management in the grey tones or gamma. The deltaE, or average difference between colours requested by the graphics card and those displayed on the monitor, shows this up. A score of 3.3 for default colours is far from poor but the best screens get as low as 2. Setting the "Gamma" option at 2.6 brings the deltaE down to 2. An excellent score for a general consumer monitor. Its contrast is however a lot closer to the average with a ratio near to 750:1.

Gaming

Responsiveness

The default reactivity is 5 ms, which is among the slowest on current screens. To take it down to 2 ms, you need to activate the "SmartReponse" option. At least in theory. In practice this option has been badly set and activating it causes reverse ghosting. A shame for any gamers who were hoping to buy this monitor, but for FPS type games (Doom, Quake…) it will be a bit slow. This is even more the pity as its display delay is under one image. You can therefore count on a zero handicap in multiplayer games. For office work or games that are less demanding in terms of reactivity, it will be more than equal to the task.

Movies
Once the gamma has been set properly, you just need to reduce brightness by half to get a clean video image. Do not hope to get the quality of a TV however. Without a video correction chip, upscaling remains mediocre but at least with the 220CW, any flickering is greatly attenuated. This is already pretty good for a monitor.

Colour handling

Flickering is nicely contained during films

Reverse ghosting

TN panel = reduced angle of vision

Poor ergonomics

Good colour reproduction and a nice design at an affordable price. It’s a shame that Philips didn’t make a bit more of an effort in terms of responsiveness of the screen.