Viewsonic's latest wide-screen offering is targeted at the highly competitive 22-inch space -- and actually uses the same screen as many of its competitors, the popular ChiMei Optronics panel. Where Viewsonic is able to offer an edge is in their electronics, features and styling of its monitor.
Design
The piano black chassis is certainly attractive and would draw sidelong looks from anyone who happened to be passing by. It's a bit on the heavy side -- although this is a good thing, as it allows easier adjustment of the stand. This is one of the areas where Viewsonic shines, allowing you to adjust height as well as including a swivel mechanism on top of the usual tilt adjustment.
The menu buttons are annoyingly on the side, which despite the legend on the front can be difficult to use even once you've memorised which is which, and are a bit small for large fingers. The menu itself is fairly straight forward and aside from wrestling with the buttons is easy enough to use.
Finally, for the neat and tidy a pair of plastic rings are on the neck for cable management, allowing you to neatly loop power and video cables down the back of your desk.
Features
The VX2255wbm's standout feature is the 1.3 Megapixel Webcam that sits at the top of the screen, capable of recording at a maximum 1280x1024 resolution at nine frames per second (fps). While a little choppy, this is more than fine for Webcam use, and if you're after smoother results they can be found at the 640x480 resolution which allows up to 30fps (close to TV). For those still on dial-up, there's a highly conservative 160x120 at five fps.
The Camera Assistant software included to control the camera is both simple and intuitive, although the actual capture screen tends to crash quite a lot. The small menu bar always sits on top of your other applications, and can only be positioned in three places on screen -- at the top, on the left or the right, with no ability to place it in a custom position. You can set it to "autohide", meaning that after a few seconds it retracts off screen, requiring you to move your mouse to where it used to be to reveal it again, although in games this causes havoc, the menu wrestling to display on top of the game, resulting in flickering. On top of the usual video recording and picture taking, the camera also identifies itself as a simple USB camera -- meaning that you can use it in programs other than the one Viewsonic provides, like Windows Movie Maker.
To complement the Webcam, along for the ride is a set of speakers and a microphone built into the fascia. Unfortunately to get the microphone to record at a decent volume we had to position our mouths right in front of it, while at an ordinary sitting distance the sound was disappointingly faint, regardless of how high we set the recording volume. Speakers were similarly disappointing, with several notebooks we've seen providing vastly superior tonality. A headphone passthrough is included on the monitor should you wish to bypass the monitor speakers and have the benefit of a closer headphone port, although the same offer is not made for the microphone. Either way, we suggest you use your own sound equipment.
It supports HDCP as well -- which is fortunate, as this means should you ever decide to purchase a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD drive for your PC, you'll be able to watch movies unhindered on your monitor.Performance
Of course all of this means nothing if the display doesn't actually perform well, and here it does indeed -- the ChiMei panel used is a known performer, and apart from some slightly shallow vertical viewing angles due to the technology used, is more than acceptable, providing a bright image that's excellent for applications, video and gaming. The 1,680x1,050 resolution screen is excellent for productivity applications and games alike, and while the 700:1 contrast ratio could be a little bit better, it certainly passes muster and the 5ms response time is no slouch either. There is a small amount of white light bleeding from the top and bottom of the screen, although this is normal for a screen of this type and at this price.
The Viewsonic VX2255wbm is an excellent screen for the price point. If a Webcam isn't on your priorities list you could save cash by looking at competing screens from Samsung or ASUS -- but as an entire package the Viewsonic is hard to beat.
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