LG L222WT-BF 21.6 inch Widescreen LCD Monitor Review

Introduction

Up until fairly recently, I had a multi-monitor setup here in my home office. Two standard 19 inch LCD monitors comprised my dual display desktop and as a result, I was quite happy and content with things - that was until my 8 year old 19 inch NEC monitor decided to die on me. All of a sudden, gone was the real estate afforded to me by two 1280 x 1024 displays and suddenly a single 19 inch display felt utterly handicapping - especially when you’re writing a lot of articles for a blog site like Krunker (or if you’re writing code etc). So.. what to do? I decided to go out on the market for a nice 20 to 22 inch widescreen LCD monitor. After searching around, I was pleasantly surprised to see these widescreen LCD monitors in the range of $200 to $300 dollars. But what exactly was the difference between a budget $200 dollar monitor vs. a higher end $300+ monitor? I decided to experiment and find out by getting the LG L222WT-BF 21.6 inch widescreen LCD monitor which was on sale this week (Week starting 11/18/2007) at Best Buy for $219.99 before taxes. Join me as I quickly go over this monitor and see if it’s worth the asking price or whether it’s better to drop a bit more cash for something a tad bit better.

Specifications

First off, let’s go over the specifications for the LG L222WT-BF:

Viewable Screen Size: 21.6 inches (what the heck.. they couldn’t just use a 22 inch panel??)
Maximum Resolution: 1680 x 1050
Aspect Ratio: 16:10
Response Time: 5 ms
Brightness: 300 cd/m²
Contrast Ratio: 3000:1
Inputs: 1 DVI-D, 1 D-sub
Compatible with PC and Mac
Height: 16.8 inches with stand (13.3 inches without stand)
Width: 19.8 inches
Weight: 12.1 lbs with stand
Depth: 9.2 inches with stand (2.3 inches without stand)
Viewing angles: 160 degree horizontal and vertical viewing angles
Wall mountable with optional mounting kit

Packaging and Contents

Because we all love pictures, here is a shot of the outside packaging.

Let’s open up the box and take a look inside:

Content wise, you get the following:

LCD Panel
Stand neck
Stand base
CD software
VGA cable
Power cable
Instructions

Unfortunately you don’t get a DVI cable even though the monitor supports a DVI-D connection but then again.. this is an inexpensive monitor right? Good thing DVI cables are also fairly inexpensive!

Here’s a look at all the things inside:

Setup

Yes.. there’s some assembly required folks! If you plan on using the LG L222WT-BF on your desktop, then you’ll need to spend a few moments putting things together. Luckily, it’s literally a snap to do this (and I do mean a snap!). If you plan on mounting the display, then you won’t have to worry about assembling the stand.

The first step is to lay the screen down on something soft.

Now insert the neck into the bottom of the screen until you hear a snap.

Once the neck is in, simply slide the stand portion right into the bottom of the neck and you’re all set!

A look over..

Going with the theme that a picture is worth a thousand words, let’s take a look at the LG L222WT-BF from all sorts of different angles. Here’s a shot of the monitor after being completely assembled:

Just got kicks..let’s put this 22 inch widescreen up next to my 46 inch Samsung 1080p LCD bad boy.

It’s a humbling experience for the 22 incher isn’t it? Not so big afterall? Ok.. enough of that. The truth is - the 22 inch display is plenty large enough for computing purposes - maybe just not for the living room.

Let’s go to office space and put this monitor next to my Dell 19 inch LCD monitor (a standard display - hard to imagine eh?). Truth is - that Dell 19 inch monitor is a beautiful display - I just wish it was larger and had a higher resolution.. oh and I wish it was widescreen too.

Now that’s a noticeable size difference if you ask me (not to mention that 1680 x 1050 is far better than 1280 x 1024!).

Here’s a close up shot of the front of the display (after everything’s been connected):

Here’s the back side of the display.

The power cable connects to the left side of the monitor while the monitor cables attach to the right side. As mentioned above, LG packages one set of VGA cables but fails to package a DVI-D cable in case you have a computer with DVI output.

Here’s a shot of the rear left side:

Here’s a shot of the rear right side:

There is one nice small feature on the backside of the monitor - you’ll find a handy cable management piece attached to the back of the neck. You can route your cables through this piece to add some order to your cable mess.

Thoughts and Impressions

Now that everything was assembled and connected to my PC, it was time to fire up the monitor and see what the overall picture quality and user experience was going to be like. Since the previous monitor in place was a Dell 19 inch LCD monitor, I had to inform Windows Vista that I needed to go to a completely new display resolution. Vista took a few moments to figure out that I had a new monitor installed and then enabled the 1680 x 1050 resolution option within Display Settings.

LG includes a device driver for the monitor on the packaged CD. You can install this driver for Windows Vista or you can alternatively use the generic profile that Vista always seems to default to.

Once the correct resolution was established, I sat down and took a good look at my new display and much to my dismay.. I was immediately disappointed. Right off the bat, I noticed the display was way too bright, the colors too washed out, and the backlighting uneven going across the screen. The backlighting dims fairly significantly as you get to the edges of the display.

Alright.. no problem - this is probably just the default settings for the monitor. Every display needs a bit of tweaking right? To adjust settings, there are several buttons located on the lower right hand corner of the front of the display. From left to right, there’s a Zooming button, a Menu button, a “Down/Engine” button, an “Up/Source” button, an AutoSet button, and a power button.

Using a combination of the menu button and the up/down/autoset buttons, you can modify the brightness, contrast, color temperatures etc for the display - everything that you would typically find on an LCD monitor. If that doesn’t work, you can even try the four “engines” found on the LCD display which includes “Movie”, “Text”, “User”, and “Normal”.

After fiddling with the settings for over 30 minutes, I never found settings that I was completely satisfied with. The problems I first noticed just would not completely go away. If there was a single problem I would cite with this display, it would have to be the uneven backlighting (followed closely by the washed out colors). It’s one of those things where.. once you notice it - you simply can not shake it. (Those of you who notice dead pixels will know what I’m talking about here). Even if the brightness was uniform across the display, the rendered colors were just a bit too washed out for my own tastes. Finally, the other major problem with the L222WT-BF was how much the brightness and color changed when viewing the monitor off center.

Now, if it wasn’t for the overall picture quality, I would be completely jazzed up about this monitor. Who wouldn’t want a nearly 22 inch widescreen display for a cool $220 dollars or so? (Speaking of which - LG just couldn’t make use of a 22 inch panel instead of a 21.6 inch panel eh?). There are some positive aspects to the display. It has a fairly high response rate at 5ms. Video playback was certainly pleasant.. as long as you can overlook the brightness uniformity issues mentioned above. In all honesty - for a little over $200 dollars - this is a decent monitor to have as a secondary monitor in a multi-monitor setup, or as an upgrade to a small 15 or 17 inch monitor. However, if you have or are used to a high quality monitor, then you might want to look elsewhere.

Finally - one more con to this display. For a 22 inch monitor, you get a limited set of input connections. The display only accepts DVI or VGA connections. No HDMI, composite, or component inputs whatsoever.

Summary

Ah.. a $220 dollar 21.6 inch widescreen LCD display - a bargain for the size of the display right? Well in the case of the LG L222WT-BF, you certainly get what you pay for. While the monitor is easy to set up and install, the overall display quality is unfortunately less than satisfactory. The display suffers from uneven backlighting, washed out colors, and poor viewing angles. But then again - it’s about expectations. If you have low expectations coming in, then perhaps the L222WTF-BF will be a pleasant surprise to you. After all, it does offer a 5 ms response time and a contrast ratio of 3000:1 so on paper, it’s a good monitor for watching movies and playing most video games. However, if you’re picky about picture quality and you’re used to more polished displays, you might want to save a few more bucks and purchase a higher end display. That’s ultimately the path I chose and hence this particular monitor went back to Best Buy.

It should be noted that this monitor received fairly high review marks on the Best Buy website. Clearly there are a number of people who have enjoyed this monitor so make sure to read their takes before deciding one way or another. Perhaps I was just being a bit too picky. If you’re budget is confined to the $200+ range, then the LG L222WT-BF isn’t a bad choice at all. Just level out those expectations please.

Pros: