Asus VK222H 22" widescreen LCD monitor

Features & Build Quality

The VK222H’s spec sheet is fairly typical for a 22-inch widescreen monitor, but Asus is targeting this particular model at multimedia lovers, thanks to the inclusion of a 1.3 megapixel webcam.

Before we started out though, we were faced with disappointment – Asus didn’t include a USB cable in the box, which is either a big oversight or an annoying cost-cutting measure.

With this in mind, we instead had to dig around our cable supplies to find a USB A to B cable to get the webcam running. However, once we’d found a cable, the webcam was picked up natively by Windows Vista x64 – there was no need to install a driver, which is a good thing, and we were soon chatting away with the VK222H’s webcam enabled on MSN Messenger.

We tested this out in several different levels of light and it appeared to work fairly well with reasonable image quality—even in darker environments.


Asus includes three input options on the VK222H – both HDMI and DVI connectors are HDCP compliant and there’s also an analogue D-Sub socket for those wanting to connect an older PC or maybe an HDMI-less Xbox 360 up to the display. While we’re speaking of the Xbox 360, we were disappointed to find that the display didn’t allow us to change the aspect ratio for 720p, 1080i or 1080p resolutions with our Xbox 360 connected over HDMI; instead, the option in the monitor's menus was greyed out.

Following this, we then tested the display connected to a PC at resolutions other than its native 1,680 x 1,050 and we found that it offered limited aspect ratio correction, but no 1:1 pixel mapping mode. For example, setting our Windows desktop resolution to 1,280 x 1,024 enabled us to set the aspect ratio to “Full” or “4:3.”


When this option was set to “Full”, the image looked stretched, but with the scaling set to “4:3”, the image was displayed at the correct aspect ratio, but stretched to 1,050 pixels high – at 1,280 x 960, there were more pixels used to display the stretched image, which confirmed that the display was indeed scaling at 1,280 x 1,024’s 5:4 aspect ratio and not 4:3 like the menu wants you to believe.

Specification Summary

• Diagonal: 22 inches
  
• Panel Technology: TN+Film TFT
  
• Backlight: C CFL
  
• Native Resolution: 1,680 x 1,050
  
• Contrast Ratio: 5,000:1 (dynamic)
  
• Brightness: 300cd/m²
  
• Pixel Response: 2ms (grey-to-grey)
  
• Viewing Angles: 170/160 degrees H/V
  
• Inputs: HDMI, DVI, D-Sub, USB 2.0 B (for webcam), 3.5mm stereo audio
  
• Chassis Adjust: Tilt
  
• Extras: 1.3 megapixel webcam, 2x2W stereo speakers, 3.5mm stereo audio out
  
• Warranty: Three years (parts and labour)