Acer X223W

Similar to the P223W we reviewed earlier, Acer's X223W is a 22in widescreen PC monitor. It sports identical specifications, but comes with a less fancy design and a slightly reduced price. The issues we found on the other model are again evident here, including a noticeable blue tinge in shades of grey and some contrast problems, although overall it offers a good option for day-to-day computing and the occasional bout of something more entertaining.

One thing that stood out to us using the X223W was the excellent blacks. They were rich and dark and should please film aficionados. Unfortunately this model had some contrast issues which hurt its performance in our movie and game tests. Detail in patches of darkness was really lacking, which hurts many genres of film and video games. This was also evident in some of our contrast chart tests, where definition between sections was lost towards the dark and light ends of the spectrum.

In most of our other tests, however, it performed well. Desktop icons were sharp and text was crisp. The 5ms response time is quite speedy and ensured we saw no ghosting or blurring in our film and game tests. There was no image noise or flickering, and uniformity was excellent right across the length of the display.

Our DisplayMate Video Edition charts were rendered quite nicely, although there were some shades of blue evident in the greyscale images. We tried to correct this using the on-screen calibration options, but lowering the level of blue adversely affected all the other colours too, so we had to put it back to normal. This issue won't be evident in many situations, but is noteworthy nonetheless. Other colours were reproduced accurately.

It has reasonably good viewing angles, with specifications of 170 degrees horizontally and 160 degrees vertically. There was some minor loss of detail at extreme angles, but performance was more than adequate for multiple people to watch the display at once.

Aesthetically this unit is a little plainer than the P223W, with a matte black bezel rather than the eye-catching glossy finish found on its sibling. It looks more suited to an office environment than as part of a flashy, high-end PC setup, but that's a minor thing. It can be angled backwards slightly but no other motion is possible.

Calibration options are roughly as we expected. You can alter contrast, brightness and colour levels, as well as use a variety of presets, which is more than adequate for most users. A PC can be connected via either D-Sub or DVI, but as usual we'd strongly recommend DVI, as using D-Sub results in a lot more noise and a strange flickering that really detracts from the quality of the picture.