Asus VK222H 22" widescreen LCD monitor

Subjective Image Quality Analysis

In addition to the battery of targeted tests, we ran the Asus VK222H through a selection of more real-world scenarios to see how the display held up and to see if our initial findings with the company's "Splendid" technology had a similar effect in normal use.

These tests included photo editing on a pair of displays cloned so we could check quality side-by-side, watching video, gaming on both PC and Xbox 360, along with browsing the Internet and, finally, writing this review.

One of the first things we did was to reduce the sharpness because text was overly sharp. This was even after tweaking to get reasonable image quality and to remove some, but not all of the visible artifacting around the edges of text.

Thankfully, Asus has allowed the user to adjust the sharpness – I’d find this display completely unusable if it wasn’t adjustable, put it that way! After fixing this, both Internet browsing and word processing were fine on the VK222H – there was nothing wrong with what we saw, as text was sharp without being overly sharp and the artifacting had almost completely disappeared.

Image editing was understandably poor given what we saw on the previous page and using Asus’ Splendid technology just made things worse. The experience was anything but splendid, since you asked – there was visible banding in shadows and even across large gradients of colour, just like we saw in the more synthetic tests. One thing is clear here – the Asus VK222H isn’t designed for image editing and you’ll be sticking with functions like ‘Auto Smart Fix’ and ‘Auto Levels’ if you are brave enough to venture into Photoshop Elements with this display.


Moving onto watching video, the Splendid modes appeared to work in some scenarios but fell flat on their face as soon as we started to watch motion pictures using a wider selection of the colour spectrum. We witnessed a lot of banding in dark underwater scenes and when looking into bright sunlight in particular. The problems were at these two extremes, for the most part, and they were fixed as soon as we reverted back to our manually configured settings. Sadly, the dullness returned with the change of settings – we prefer the slightly sludgy colours over some quite serious banding, though, as it’s about making the best of a bad situation.

The same applied with gaming as well – we played some Burnout Paradise on Xbox 360 before moving back to the PC to play some Trackmania Nations and Counter-Strike: Source. All of these scenarios proved to be on the dull side, lacking a lot of colour vibrancy. However, we felt our decision to focus on getting as many colours out of the VK222H as possible was better than letting Splendid make a complete mess of something that wasn’t very good to start with. We also tried out the Asus Dynamic Contrast Ratio technology in some of the games we played and it again proved to be a very blunt instrument – in Counter-Strike: Source in particular, it was more of a hindrance and a distraction than it was an aid. Our recommendation is to stay well clear of these settings because they tend to do more harm than good.

Final Thoughts...

At over £175 including VAT, the Asus VK222H on the expensive side for a 22-inch widescreen monitor if you don’t factor in things like the webcam and HDMI port. However, when you do, it’s a reasonably priced HDMI-equipped 22-inch monitor with a webcam thrown in for kicks. If the webcam isn't on your list of requirements, there are cheaper 22-inchers with HDMI on the market but they don't appear to be as stylish as the VK222H's unassuming lines.

Having said that, the monitor's looks aren't going to give us reason to gloss over the poor image quality because, if you’ve got this far, you’ll realise that we don’t really like the Asus VK222H a great deal – our experience with it was one that involved a lot of patience and frustration because every time we thought we’d fixed some image quality blemishes, more would show up elsewhere. The TN panel in the VK222H is mediocre at best and we witnessed incredibly poor viewing angles for a modern panel without even trying hard to expose them.

Simply put, there are much better monitors on the market – and if you need an HDMI port, we'd recommend spending just that little bit more to find something with a panel that's a level or two above the VK222H's unremarkable example.

• Features
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

• Image Quality
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 4/10

• Value
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 6/10

• Overall
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 5/10

What do these scores mean?