Benq E2200HD - A full 1080 HD Monitor

Posted by Hans de Ruiter

Moving back to New Zealand was a good time to get a new monitor. The cost of shipping my old monitor would have been more than it was worth, and I really needed a DVI capable monitor in order to test the DVI output. After looking around at what was available at what price, the final choice was the 22 inch Benq E2200HD. The E2200HD is one of the few monitors (right now) with 1080p HD as its native resolution (i.e., 1920x1080). This means that HD videos can be viewed at full resolution without stretching or extra black bands above and below the image. More importantly (for me), it has three inputs, DVI, HDMI, and VGA. This means that I can connect my Laptop and both graphics cards in the Amigaone (A1-XE) to the monitor without needing a KVM.

A Quick Review

This monitor's image quality can best be seen by comparing it to my Laptop's screen (an Acer Ferrari 4000):

Whites are whiter, colours are more vibrant, and the screen doesn't reflect background light, making for very pleasant viewing. Please note that the photographs do not show how sharp and vibrant the image really is (obtaining good photographs of a computer screen is a challenge). A summary of my observations/opinions are:

Good

• Very sharp and clear images,
• Vibrant colour,
• No noticeable ghosting with moving images,
• Native 1080p resolution (1920x1080), can view two pages of text simultaneously,
• HDMI input (with HDCP).

Not so Good

• When the screen is completely black, very slight bleeding of the back light can be seen around the edges (invisible at any other time),
• The stereo speakers produce tinny audio (as is expected with thin LCD panel speakers), and
• HDMI did not work with my Sony HD camera (but I am unsure as to which device is the culprit)

Final COmments

There are those who would argue that a wide-screen monitor is only good for gaming and movies. However, I disagree; a high resolution wide-screen monitor makes it possible to display two pages of text side by side. This high resolution also has one drawback, the Radeon 9000 card in my A1-XE has only 64 MiB, and the screen-buffer alone takes up almost 8 MiB. Thus, graphics memory can run out very quickly. This provides even more motivation to write drivers for RadeonHD cards since they all have 256 MiB.

Thank You to Those Who Donated

At this stage I would like to thank all those who donated money to the RadeonHD for Amiga OS 4.x project. The donations made it possible for me to buy a good DVI monitor that will help me to improve the driver further. 

Where to Buy

Below are a few links to Amazon stores that sell this monitor. Of course, there are many other shops that stock this item; too numerous to list here.

Comments (1) | 13 January 2009