It’s Philips’ big return!  Since having a few problems and having to close some of its production facilities, they have been very discreet.   They now come back with an attractive monitor, the 220CW.  The design is sober, no nonsense and quite nice.  It’s hard to say, ‘’love at first sight’’, but at least this screen was conceived in good taste with no useless extras and can fit easily into a variety of settings.  In terms of characteristics, it is consistent with this year’s trend:  there is a fast panel and an announced response time of 2 ms. Between its look and this information, here is a screen that could potentially be very popular.

The first quality we noted was excellent color rendering.  Our eyes noticed and then our sensor confirmed this with an average difference of only 2.3 - one of the best lowest scores since we put this test into place.  If we wanted to be picky, expert eyes can detect (and the sensor confirms) a very slight excess of green in grays.

Good colors, but reactivity is inferior to the best 2 ms monitors.

Reactivity is a bit disappointing.  It’s identical to the Samsung SyncMaster 2232BW’s, or in other words, halfway between a true 2 ms and a 5 ms.  Given our experience in testing screens, this is immediately perceptible as soon as we launch animated sequences.  And again, our tests show this when the Philips 220CW is placed side by side with a very fast screen (for example, the recent Iiyama E2201W).
Finally, ergonomics are very basic.  There is a fixed base, pivoting the screen isn’t possible, and there is no hub or card reader.

In short, this is an attractive and good product.  A few months ago, it would have received 5 stars; however, now there is slightly better for the same price like the ViewSonic VX2240w, which doesn’t have a green dominance and includes a zero hot and black pixel warranty.