ViewSonic N2201w

Designed for use in tight spaces, the ViewSonic N2201w ($430 street) is ideal for dorm room or studio apartment living, or if you simply want to add a TV to your already-cramped home office. This versatile 22-inch HDTV/monitor hybrid sports a variety of entertainment features, including a built-in DVD player and a digital TV tuner, but its dark grayscale performance is lacking.
The 1,680-by-1,050 resolution panel, housed in a black cabinet with a shiny black bezel, is perched atop a wide oval base, which gives it a good measure of stability. Unfortunately, the stand is a tilt-only model that lets you angle the panel forward but not backward beyond the 90-degree point, and it doesn't support height or swivel adjustments. If you do decide to tilt the screen, make sure you use both hands, as the mechanism is very stiff.

The 3-watt speakers embedded in the lower bezel are a cut above the usual underpowered speakers found on displays. They are loud and deliver a full range of high and midrange tones. You won't get booming bass from these speakers, but they do produce more bottom than most.

Around back are a slew of connectivity ports, including a standard VGA analog port, an HDMI port, component video and audio outputs, S-Video and composite video inputs, 2-channel audio inputs, a digital audio output, and a coaxial TV antenna/cable input. There's also a DVD video output for playing videos on an external screen. Considering the lack of a DVI port, a second HDMI port would have been nice, but this is still a good mix of ports for a 22-inch monitor. The N2201w comes with a VGA cable, but you're on your own when it comes to HDMI, S-Video, and component cables. If you still need more connection options, check out the Samsung T220HD, which is also loaded with multimedia ports and provides two HDMI ports and a DVI output, as well.

A slot-loading DVD player with five control buttons, clearly labeled with white lettering, is integrated into the left-hand side of the cabinet. Below it is a conveniently positioned headphone jack. The same white lettering is used to identify the seven buttons (including the power switch) on the right-hand side of the display, one of which is a Menu button that takes you into the on-screen display (OSD) system. The other buttons are used to change TV channels, select an input source, and raise or lower the volume. They can also be used to toggle through and select menu choices while navigating the OSD, but it's much easier to use the included full-function remote, which features the usual array of TV and DVD player controls as well as closed captioning, favorite channels, MTS/SAP, and electronic program guide buttons.

While in PC mode, you can adjust contrast, brightness, and sharpness, and toggle between four Picture modes: Standard, Dynamic, Soft, and Personal (user-defined). I'd recommend sticking with the Standard setting, as Soft was very dark and Dynamic a bit too bright. Color temperature choices include Cool, Warm, and Normal, and you can adjust horizontal and vertical positioning and clock and phase levels. The same settings are available in TV mode, where you can select a TV signal source, scan for available channels, enable closed captioning, and set parental controls as well.

I was generally impressed with the L2201w's performance as a PC monitor. It did a very good job of reproducing the lightest shades of gray on my DisplayMate 64-Step Grayscale test. Colors were bold and uniform at the high end of the scale. The panel had a difficult time displaying the darkest shades of gray, however, making the deepest reds and blues darker than they should be. There also was noticeable backlight bleeding along the bottom edge and left-hand side of the panel. Still, color representation was generally good, and text was crisp and well defined at 6 points. Smaller fonts set to 5.3 points were slightly fuzzy but still legible.

The integrated ATSC/NTAC/QAM tuner's auto-scan had no trouble finding all of my available cable channels, and they all came in cleanly. Channel changing via the remote was a tad slow, but not unbearably so, and the 5-millisecond (black-to-white) pixel-response rate provided smooth motion handling. Using the HDMI port to connect to my cable box, I watched Sunrise Earth on Discovery's HD Theater channel, which comes in at 1080i. The picture was sharp, with no apparent jaggies or artifacts, and colors were very bright without appearing oversaturated. There was some loss of detail in darker scenes, which can be attributed to the dark grayscale flaw. The integrated DVD player performed flawlessly, but on several occasions the monitor was unable to sync up when I switched back to PC mode, requiring a reboot.