HP W22 22" Wide LCD Monitor

 (5 customer reviews)

I've been looking at LCD monitors for some time but most of the previous 20" and larger LCD monitors just didn't look good. I compared the new Gateway 24" to this HP 22" and overall preferred the HP. The HP W22 is bright with excellent contrast. And as a bonus the integral speakers have a reasonably good sound. I don't run games so I cannot comment on how it would perform for those applications but so far for all other apps, it works great. We have a lot of high resolution pics of our kids and they also look great on this monitor.

HOWEVER - When buying an LCD monitor you must understand that these monitors only work well at certain screen resolutions. If you run them at other than their "native resolutions" (in the case of the HP W22 it is 1680x1050) the picture quality suffers greatly. I had to buy a new video card that would support the "native resolution" of this monitor but the end result is well worth it.

Realized too late that this monitor has a much lower contrast ratio than the f2105. You might not notice the difference if you hadn't already seen the f2105, but it's obvious that the w22 is not in the same league as the f2105. The colors are washed out, and the sharpness suffers, even though the resolution is supposed to be the same.

Odd how HP is regressing in their package deals...six months ago I bought a similar package with the f2105, and assumed that six months later, if anything, I'd get a better monitor. Wrong.

Live and learn.

The red gun completely died in my old-fashioned CRT about a week and a half before Christmas. Because of Christmas, I found it very difficult to find anything wide screen in local stores over 19" in stock with a decent resolution. Being pleased with a smaller HP monitor I bought for my parents last year, I bought this one directly from HP without seeing it in person. I was disappointed at first. I switched from VGA to DVI (there wasn't a dvi cable in the box, I had to steal one from work). It was a little better but still disappointing. My video card couldn't be set to display the optimum resolution that HP recommends for this monitor. I ran Microsoft Windows Update and found a monitor driver that allowed my old Nvidia video card to display the optimum resolution -- it improved greatly and am now pleased that I didn't throw my money away. Unforunately I can't compare it with the f2105 or any other similar sized monitor at this price point so I am limiting my review to 4 stars.