Eizo S2242W - 22in widescreen TFT review

Objective Image Quality Analysis

As usual, we ran the S2242W through the Lagom suite of image quality tests, a handy collection of benchmarks that are simple to use and yet reveal much about a monitor's characteristics in metrics such as colour rendering, contrast, viewing angles, pixel response and more.

For the most part, it puts in an extremely impressive display. Calibrated to a gamma setting of 2.2, lots of detail is visible in both the white and black scales. Ample extension is also apparent in the colour scales. In short, very little image data is lost when displayed on the S2242W.

Confirming its full 8-bit per colour channel underpinnings, colour gradients are extremely smooth, with very, very little evidence of banding and a total absence of the irritating “fizz” that is symptomatic of a monitor that requires dithering techniques to achieve large colour spaces. Further plus points include excellent stability in the viewing angle tests and good suppression of the tell-tale flashing in the animated pixel response test.


Handy as the Lagom and similar image-based tests are, of course, a professional panel like this rather demands calibration and assessment with a proper light meter. We therefore hooked up the S2242W with X-Rite's i1Display 2, a popular colourimeter.

This is something we're looking at adding to many of our display reviews going forward. Currently, we're still finalising a standardised suite for colourimeter testing including full colour accuracy tests. However, we can say that our assessment of the S2242W using the i1Display revealed a few interesting foibles.


Firstly, maximum backlight brightness checks in at 360cd/m², very much in line with the claimed 350cd/m² specification. Perhaps more importantly, we had no problem reducing the luminance to 120cd/m² which is the broadly accepted ideal level for a professional display. For the record, that figure is achieved at approximately 30 per cent of the maximum backlight setting.

A measured contrast of 1,080:1 is also a great result. Admittedly, it's a little short of the 1,200:1 official claim, but we suspect the gap between the spec list and reality is much, much larger with most monitors Slightly less impressive is the fine control of gamma. Set to 2.2 in the OSD menu, the measured value is actually below 2.1. What's more, even after calibration, the gamma graph has a few unwanted curves.