AOC 2230Fm

The 2230Fm is an innovative 22'' monitor.  Thanks to its built-in memory card reader and the supplied remote control, it can play DivX files--and plenty of other video formats, too--without you needing to switch on your computer.

Naturally enough, that means it has speakers and a headphone jack as well.  It has a great specification, too, with HDMI, VGA and DVI inputs, and an ostensibly responsive 2 ms TN panel to show it all off.

There's no TV tuner, but is that really necessary these days?  You can connect your ADSL modem to it directly over HDMI, and access other content using the various inputs.

Let's take a closer look at the monitor though: at the front, it sports a glossy black frame, but uses matte materials behind.  The stand doesn't offer much room for manouevre though, with no pivot mode or the option to slide it up and down.  That makes it a lot more like some more traditional 22'' screens.

Gaming

Coloured    Transparent
Average ghosting over ten frames

Despite boasting a response time of 2 ms, gaming with 2230Fm is not a particularly enjoyable experience.  It suffers from a problem that we've seen before on monitors aimed at gamers: reverse ghosting.  It's an electronic problem that causes trailing frames to have the opposite colour to those left behind.


So instead of having the 'blur' created by fast-moving objects on a 5 ms screen, here our red super hero is followed by a blue trail.  Worse, this reverse ghosting is much more irritating than the kind blur found on a 5 ms screen, which rules the 2230Fm out for gaming.  It's impossible to spot when running office software, though, and text doesn't leave a trail behind it as you scroll though a page as happens on some of the worst monitors.

Colours

Default Colours

Ideal Colours

Using the default configuration, we noticed several problems with the colours on the 2230Fm.  In grey areas, the brightness doesn't correspond at all with what it should be, as you can see from the test card above.  It's cause by an inaccurate gamma, which is at 1.8 instead of 2.2.  Another cause for concern is that these same shades of grey seem to be dominated by reds, while white is tinged with blue.  That makes it difficult to correct for one of these problems without worsening the other.

The solution is to adjust the gamma setting from 1 to 3.  The different shades of grey then reach their correct brightness, and lose a little of the red tinge we described.  Correctly configured, the 2230fm has a deltaE of 3.1, instead of 5.2 using the default settings, and has a contrast ratio of 800:1.  This helps pull up its score in this section from two to three stars.

A Multimedia Player


Inside this unassuming monitor is hiding a media player.  Using either the memory card reader or the USB port, you can access files without even turning your computer on.  You can view JPEG photos and play music that's been encoded as an MP3 or WMA file, while standard definition XviD and DivX are supported for video.  When watching VOB files from a DVD, you have to choose the language for audio and subtitles every time you play a new movie if the default choice doesn't suit you.  Subtitles are also available with XviD and DivX, but the synchronization has to be perfect as you can't adjust it on screen.  HD is entirely ignored, so if you want to watch that sort of content, you'll need to play it back on your computer.

The lack of power in the speakers is painfully evident.  With some movies, you need to lean in close to strain to hear what the characters are saying.  A decent set of headphones or some speakers would be a worthwhile investment, but remember that you won't get much out of video on a screen this size more than two metros away.

One final, but crucial, detail: what ever you do, don't lose the remote.  Without it, navigating the media player is an absolute nightmare.