22'' monitors come in all shapes and sizes. The most advanced versions have very wide viewing angles, sit on smart stands that are height-adjustable and can pivot from side-to-side and use several video inputs or even a built-in digital tuner, allowing your monitor to stand in as a TV.  Since the end of 2008, there is also a choice between two different resolutions: some screens are at 1680 x 1050 pixels while others are at 1920 x 1080 pixels. The choice is yours: you can either go for more pixels to cram more information onto the screen, or fewer for better readability.

At the other end of the market, the cheapest 22'' screens aren't necessarily bad, but certainly more basic. On these models, the stand is usually fixed, and there is often just a VGA port, although DVI is becoming more popular even on entry-level monitors. These screens use TN panels with a 5 ms response time, which means that the image fades to black when you look at it from below and that games will suffer from ghosting, with moving objects looking a little blurry.

An (Almost) Perfect Screen?

For us, a perfect screen would:

1. be very responsive (fewer than one frame behind on an average scene) and not too much input lag
2. have correct colours by default (a deltaE score of below 3)
3. have excellent contrast (contraste > 800:1 at 200 cd/m² = black < 0.25 cd/m²)
4. use wide viewing angles that give even colours
5. benefit from high-end features, like a smart stand on a rotating base that's also height-adjustable

Let's be realistic: a screen this good just doesn't exist, or if it does it's far too expensive for us. However, for a screen to walk off with that famous five-star rating, it'll need to match at least four of these criteria. If it only has three, then it'll never get more than four stars, unless there are some pretty remarkable extra features.

20'', 22'' or 24''?

Up against today's 22'' screens, 19'' and 20'' monitors are largely outclassed given how close they are in price. Instead, it's time to look in the other direction, as the price of 24'' monitors is now falling rapidly. So much so, in fact, that the cheapest 24'' screens can be cheaper than some mid-range 22'' models. Moving up to 24'', the screens are easier to use with a larger display area, but the disadvantage is that they take up more space.

One last thing: the latest generation of monitors is beginning to rely on some innovative new features to stand out. There are some which include TV tuners, others that can display certain games in 3D using special glasses, and others that show 120 images a second rather than 60, completely obliterating ghosting and improving the fluidity of movements.