Hyundaï W220S

In the same way that it's surprising for us to think that the first generation of computer users relied on black-and-white monitors, it might well seem just as odd to our descendents to learn that we relied on 2D technology.  The future is here, and it's in 3D.

After our test of the Zalman ZM220W, here comes Hyundai's own attempot at a 22 inch 3D screen.  If you've been keeping a close eye on our reviews, you might recognize a similar design to the W220D a glossy frame around the screen with the back in matte white.

The connectivity is largely unchanged, with the trio of VGA, DVI and HDMI providing the inputs. More disappointing is the redesigned stand, which now lo longer allows the monitor's height, rotation and orientation to be adjusted as was possible on the W220D.

The 3D technology used on the monitor means that it ships with a pair of 3D glasses with polarizing lenses, and, thankfully, Hyundai's are much better quality than those supplied by Zalman.



3D Performance

In games, cut scenes look truly spectacular, and other images seem dull and lifeless by contrast.  During gameplay itself, you need to keep your wits about you because visual fatigue can creep up quickly. Even concentrating hard, we found some games gave us a headache after just half an hour of 3D action.

When watching movies, one of two things happens.  Recent releases, often with computer graphics specially designed to exploit 3D, look great, with objects flying out of the screen into your living room and all the rest.  Older movies, on the other hand, don't benefit very much at all from the conversion to 3D.

In both cases, though, you need to be sitting directly in front of the screen for the effects to work at all. You can forget about those invitations to 3D movie night …

2D Performance
Another aspect in which this Hyundai model improves on the Zalman is that it's much better at handling 2D images, with no visible polarization: the distracting phenomenon of horizontal lines moving across the picture is absent. We found the advertised response time of 5 ms to be about right.  While it's around the slowest for a 22'' LCD today, the results are far from frustrating, and should satisfy all but the most demanding of gamers, particularly when immersed in 3D mode.

By default, the colors are a little too red, resulting in a deltaE score of 4.7, representing the gap between the colors requested by the graphics card and those actually shown.  To put that in context, the untrained eye normally can only see color difference above deltaE 3, and only the very best monitors get it down to below 2.  Spending a little time playing about with the OSD, we discovered that the 'bluish' settings gave the best results, although even these were far from spectacular, getting deltaE down to 3.7 by replacing red dominance with blue.  Across all color settings, the contrast was consistently good.