Iiyama ProLite E2208HDS - 22" Full HD LCD

Image Quality:

Sure enough, all the usual TN hallmarks are present. Colour reproduction, for instance, is watery and lacking in punch and saturation. We've seen many worse TN'ers in that regard, but you still wouldn't call the E2208HDS particularly vibrant. Compared to a monitor with a good PVA panel, it's downright dingy.

In our suite of objective image quality tests, the E2208HDS puts in a tolerable showing. Colour gradients are fairly smooth, though the pixel jitter from dithering is just visible on close inspection, betraying the panel's 6-bit origins. Some compression of image data is also apparent at the extremities of both the black and white scales.

That said, it holds up pretty well in the colour scales, maintaining reasonable definition in both bright and dark tones. In other words, unlike a lot of TN panels, it manages not to dump half of the image data from the get go.


Overall, however, the E2208HDS can't quite shake free of its TN shackles. The viewing angles are no more than adequate with some evidence of colour inversion in the vertical axis at normal viewing distances. Admittedly, black tones are impressively deep for a TN panel. But the quoted static contrast performance rating of 1,000:1 is utterly fanciful.

Certainly this panel is not in the same ballpark as S-IPS or PVA screens rated at 1,000:1. The fact that it suffers from a spot of backlight bleed along the top and bottom edges of the panel is also worth a demerit or two.


However, what none of these somewhat arcane measures of image quality capture is the benefit of the full HD native resolution in a relatively compact display. There's a sharpness and tightness to the image that completely defies the abilities of conventional 16:10 aspect 22-inch panels. If you have the 3D hardware to drive this panel at native resolution and with the anti-aliasing cranked up, the result in modern games is spectacular, photo-realistic clarity. Of course, as it uses a TN panel, pixel response is excellent, adding to this screen's all round gaming prowess.

That said, bear in mind that some older titles may have hard-coded resolution options (most contemporary titles poll the video driver for available resolutions) and will therefore be reluctant to recognise the E2208HDS's 1,920 x 1,080 native setting. However, more often than not, this can be addressed by hand tweaking a configuration file, usually found in the game's install directory.