ViewSonic VX2250wm-LED review

At the risk of wheeling out a tired cliché, it really is a great time to buy a new monitor at the moment. Most manufacturers have launched their LED-backlit models and – as ever – are all competing intensely on price. ViewSonic’s new VX2250wm-LED isn’t exactly pretty, but its image quality is a step up from others we’ve seen.

The glossy piano black frame and base are highly reflective, and a little distracting compared to monitors with a matt casing, but at least the screen itself has a matt finish. We dislike the garish – and unnecessary – LED and 1080p Full HD logos on the bezel and we don’t much like the touch-sensitive controls on the right-hand side either. Unlike LG’s controls, ViewSonic’s don’t light up, but they’re quite responsive.

It’s refreshing not to find pointless colour effects in the menu, or other meaningless ‘technologies’. Instead, you have all the basic controls for colour, brightness and contrast. You can select various colour temperatures, or control the red, green and blue levels independently. When you’re not in the menu, you can hit the ‘2’ key to switch between the VGA and DVI inputs, or the up/down arrows to increase or decrease volume.

It isn’t immediately obvious that the VX2250wm-LED has speakers, since they’re built into the rear of the case, facing the ceiling. They’re loud enough for Windows sounds, but few people will be happy with their quality for music or even YouTube videos.

The good news is that you’ll be happy with the image quality. Unlike some LED-based monitors we’ve seen, contrast was good. Subtly different shades of the same colour were easy to distinguish from each other, and vertical viewing angles are better than we’d expect from a screen of this type. Horizontal viewing angles aren’t the best, but you’ll see accurate colours as long as you’re sitting roughly square-on.

Colours aren’t as vibrant as those on glossy monitors, but the lack of reflections far outweighs this minor downside. In any case, colours are lifelike and we’d be happy to edit photos and video on the VX2250wm-LED. Brightness is the only slight weakness, but you’d only notice that it isn’t quite bright enough in the sunniest room.

The real advantage of an LED monitor is its power consumption: we measured only 21W with the brightness set to maximum. That’s around half the power a 22in monitor with a traditional cold cathode backlight would use. One other bonus is the auto power off feature which switches the monitor off when it isn’t being used.

Unfortunately for ViewSonic, BenQ’s LED-based G2222HDL costs around £15 less than the VX2250wm-LED, has better image quality and is more stylish to boot. Unless you can find the ViewSonic cheaper, the G2222HDL is narrowly the better choice.