Review: BenQ V2220H

My life was about to be complete. I had just received the Knight Rider DVD box set and was gearing up my home office (which doubles as a media center) for a weekend of curly mullets, fast cars and smarmy talking computers. I just had one problem: My monitor was literally a holdover from the same era. I could almost hear KITT, "Your tech is obsolete, Michael."

Thankfully, to help in my quest to attain true Hasslehoff nirvana, I tested BenQ's V2200H monitor. Sporting a 1080 x 1920 Full-HD native resolution, it's an ideal screen for watching movies without scaling or cropping, and the 16 x 9 widescreen format is also perfect for viewing two documents side by side for easy comparison and editing.

The V2200H easily handled any graphics task I threw at it. It was quick enough to keep up with even the fastest action games and Blu-ray movies without ghosting or blurring, while the LED backlighting helped maintain exceptionally even illumination with fantastic contrast levels.

The screen displayed very deep blacks and grays, yet still managed to keep the subtle details of shadows alive. Highlighted areas were very bright without looking washed out. This not only helped with movies and games, but also made text reading a bit easier on my tired eyes, and helped photo-editing accuracy.

Color reproduction can be fine-tuned to near perfect, if you're patient and take the time to tweak all the individual settings. However, BenQs proprietary "Senseye" tech — which is used in the Movie, Photo, and Game modes — over-exaggerated contrast and saturation levels, making grays bluish and rendering skintones too red.

Aside from the usual DVI and VGA ports, the V2200H comes armed with an HDMI port and 1/8-inch audio-out port, so it can even double as a small TV ... sort of. While you can connect virtually any HDMI equipped device, from a game console to an AV receiver, the V2200's audio port emitted a horrible buzz while automatically switching video modes. While not a complete deal-breaker, you'll definitely want to plug in an external set of speakers.

Measuring just over half-an-inch at it's thinnest, the V2200H bulges out to over an inch near the video ports, but it's a pretty sleek-looking monitor. Unfortunately, the lame stand is an Achilles heel. It can only adjust for 15 degrees of forward tilt, there is no swivel or height adjustment, but worst of all, the tiny base feels as tippy as a toy sailboat.

While BenQ's V2200H has handicapped ergonomics and audio, it does have good graphics chops to handle daily computing, movie watching, and even multimedia or AV applications. After all, this screen made KITT's hot wax look great without much hassle. The Hoff would definitely approve.