AG Neovo L-W22 review

If you’re after a monitor on a very tight budget, the AG Neovo L-W22 seems like something of a bargain. For just over £100, you get a 22in display with a Full HD (1,920×1,080 resolution) and VGA, DVI and HDMI inputs.

It’s handy having all of these inputs as you can, for example, plug in a games console and PC via the digital inputs and switch between them as you see fit. Unlike many budget displays, it also has a pair of stereo speakers. The quality of the audio isn’t particularly good and we found them quite tinny. As they face backwards, they can be inaudible unless they’re facing a wall to reflect the sound. For Windows sounds they’ll do, but for any other purpose a dedicated set of speakers is what you need.

We like the fact that the menu controls are proper buttons and they’re easy to operate. The menu is a little crude looking, but simple enough to work. In addition to the brightness and contrast controls, and colour temperature, you can adjust each colour (Blue, Red and Green) individually.

We found that we had to dial down the Blue channel to remove the strong blue cast to the image that ruined flesh tones and dulled colours. While our adjustment fixed the cast, to a degree, it also took quite a lot of the life out of the colour, meaning that everything looked a little dull and not as vibrant as we’d hoped.

Although the monitor has a claimed 20,000,000:1 contrast ratio, this is dynamic, where the backlight is adjusted on the fly to make the most of the image on-screen. We find this kind of transition quite distracting and prefer to turn it off. This highlights the poor natural contrast ratio of the display, and we lost detail in the darkest part of an image.

While we can forgive the L-W22’s budget glossy-black plastic case at this price, the blue cast ruins image quality, and while you can adjust colour temperature to compensate, the dull colours and poor contrast ratio still detract from it. The Philips 221V2SB doesn’t have an HDMI port, but it’s less expensive and has much better image quality.