Design and Features
The 22-inch, 1,680x1,050 VP2250wb is ViewSonic's "professional-grade display", ideal "for graphics production, film editing and financial professionals where precise color rendition is vital" according to ViewSonic's website. While a financial professional corroborated our suspicions that precise colour rendition wasn't at all vital in their field (only the relative shifts between colours), the VP2250wb does sport a more expansive colour palette than usual, at a claimed 106 per cent of the NTSC gamut. For those looking for better colour representation than normal, yet are constrained by a budget, it's not a bad choice.
ViewSonic has gone with the austere industrial look; a plain black frame and five buttons situated at the bottom of the bezel in the centre. The neck sports two loops for cable management, and the base has an extremely large footprint, with three legs splayed equidistantly, the rear one stubbier than the front two. While this gives it solid support, it takes up considerably more room than competing solutions at 29cm in depth, so make sure you've got plenty of room on your desk. It offers swivel, height, tilt and rotate adjustments, all of which are implemented well and offer a decent range of control. Under the monitor are DVI, D-sub and four USB ports, as well as the connection to the PC to enable the USB hub.
Navigation of the on-screen menu is easy, with a range of colour temperatures, sRGB and User modes available. Unlike the VLED221wm, the option to turn off dynamic contrast can be found in the menu, and we suggest you do so. There's also three speed settings for the response time should the accelerator get in the way of your work, offering "Standard", "Advanced" and "Ultra Fast" modes. Unfortunately when using advanced or ultra fast modes the cursor would ghost to an extreme level across a white background — so we recommend you use standard mode. You can switch between "PC Mode" and "HD Mode", essentially RGB and YPbPr options, depending on your source.
Viewsonic includes a copy of "PerfectSuite Plus", which helps calibrate the VP2250wb — while we're sure it could work on other monitors, its feature set was greyed out until the application window was on the VP2250wb's screen. The software also enables auto-transposing of Windows' resolution when rotating the monitor through software called "PivotPro", accessible through the monitor properties control panel.
PerfectSuite Plus unfortunately isn't as smart as it needs to be in multi-monitor set-ups. While it worked fine with two ViewSonic screens hooked up in tandem, it greyed out options on the screen that wasn't designed for it. When we replaced one monitor with an HP screen it detected it perfectly fine, but swore black and blue that the VP2250wb was a "Legacy Display" and gave it no other options. Switching off the HP monitor, terminating PerfectSuite Plus through the system tray and relaunching it allowed the application to find the VP2250wb and help calibrate it accordingly; the colour, brightness and contrast wizards helping to set up a more balanced image. Despite PerfectSuite Plus being a welcome addition, we found that manual calibration using the monitor controls and Nvidia control panel tended to give better results.
Performance
While some reds still went neon, in general the VP2250wb's handling of wide gamut was greatly superior to ViewSonic's other recent monitor, the VLED221wm, especially after calibration. Viewing angles were also acceptable, showing a larger amount of forgiveness than is usual for a TN panel.
DisplayMate results were passable, and while it didn't display the smoothest gradients we've seen, it was uniform in its gradation and no worse than the norm.
Shifting the screen into a darkened environment revealed a noticeable amount of light leakage from the top of the screen, which could be an issue for some users, specifically gamers or movie watchers.
Separate of backlight issues, gaming performance was fine so long as the response time accelerator was set to standard — anything else produced unacceptable colour bleeding throughout testing with Valve's Portal, the Companion Cube ending up with streaks of pink and red through it whenever we moved.
The VP2250wb can be found online for between AU$520 and AU$600. While it's definitely not a professional monitor, as an all-purpose monitor it does well, offering a step up within the 22-inch space.
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