Asus VK222H

Full Review

The Asus VK222H included a webcam, but unfortunately, this was the only stand-out feature of this 22-inch monitor. The lack of Full-HD, poor image quality, and really low viewing angles doomed this monitor to a lower ranking. Funnily, Asus doesn’t include a USB cable in the box, so you can’t plug in the webcam unless you have one lying around. Once you plug in a cable, the cam does show up in Windows Vista without the need for any additional drivers, and it has acceptable quality for video chats. It works well in differing light levels, even in slightly darker conditions.

Performance levels were not up to the mark though. This monitor had the lowest brightness of the eight monitors we tested in May 2009, and the contrast ratios were poor as well, at 400:1 for the full contrast and 300:1 for checkerboard. The Displaymate tests exposed the poor white level saturation and its inability to distinguish between various shades of gray. Fonts were not sharp, and this was the only monitor to exhibit these issues.

Even though it does not support a Full-HD resolution, this monitor does not do too badly on the specifications front - it has input ports available for VGA, DVI and HDMI. The quality of the in-built speakers is so-so and nothing to write home about. The webcam is a useful addition, but we wish they'd added a mic as well. We could not recommend this monitor, especially at this high price. We’re hoping that Asus’ next model fixes these flaws.

Bottom Line

A webcam may be nice to have, but there's no point if the panel itself suffers from too many flaws, and that's the case with this monitor.