22 inches of widescreen goodness...with a twist!

I recently purchased an HP w2207 wide-screen flat panel monitor as a little gift to myself. I have to say, if not for some relatively minor flaws, this monitor would be a perfect 10.

Screen: The screen is big and bright and beautiful. The recommended resolution for my graphics card is 1680 x 1050 @ 60Hz, which is plenty high enough from my usage. This is the first monitor I’ve ever owned where I’ve actually had to lower the brightness and contrast settings out of the box. Most often, I’d have to boost both these parameters to maximum settings...but not here. I have both brightness and contrast set around 75 and it’s still brilliant with ambient daylight coming through the windows! One of my biggest peeves for all LCDs were their handling of text. Often LCD screens can’t match their CRT counterparts when it comes to text. They often show artifacts and seem fuzzy when compared to a CRT. This monitor shows text as crisp as any CRT I’ve seen...which weighed heavily in my decision to buy.

Software: The monitor’s software has a great wizard that walks you through the initial adjustments for color, aspect ratio, resolution, contrast, etc. Then, it prompts you to save those settings as a profile, which you can then set as your default. In reading reviews prior to my purchase, I'd only read bad things about the software. After a month, I've yet to experience anything negative.

Controls: The monitor’s menu controls are intuitive and easy to use. They offer all manner of adjustment, including: Switch Video Input, Brightness, Contrast, Image Control..., Color..., Quick View... (with presets for Gaming, Photos, Text, Movie, and Custom), Language..., Power Management, and Information. All items with “...” following them have numerous submenu control items, which I won’t get into here.

Positioning: This monitor comes with one of the most versatile pedestals of any I’ve seen. The screen can be raised or lowered a total of 3.5” and can tilt backwards almost 45 degrees.

USB ports. The monitor comes with 2 usb 2.0 compatible ports that you connect to via a supplied cable. It essentially turns one of your computer's usb ports into 2. The feature, so far, seems to work just fine. And beats having to reach around back of the machine.

Cable management. The monitor also has 2 brackets on the back of the pedestal, to control the monitor's power cable, video cable, and usb cable. There is room for one or two more which I've made use of.

Speakers built in. Most folks won't ever use them, but for those that would, they're built in and the monitor comes with an audio cable to hook to your computer's sound card.

The twist! This monitor can be viewed as widescreen OR it can be swiveled to view documents vertically on the fly! You simply rotate the screen 90 degrees and the image on the screen is automatically rotated and resized to fit. It is fantastic for viewing websites and minimizes the amount of scrolling you have to do. It’s also fantastic for viewing documents.

As mentioned above, I have a few minor issues with the monitor.

First, you really need a lot of space in which to swivel the monitor. I had to raise a shelf in my computer armoire in order to be able to use this feature. In order to swivel, you have to raise the monitor up to its top height, tilt it back slightly, then swivel it. Figure on at least 24" of clearance...slightly less if you tilt it farther backwards first.

Second, the pedestal tends to rock backward when swiveling the monitor, as it's not weighted enough. I've solved the issue by using some "fun tack" (you can also use 2-way tape), to keep it from rocking. It works like a charm.

Third, cable management...while it's a nice feature, there's only so much slack that can be taken up if you plan to use the swivel feature at all.

Fourth, the screen has sort of a glossy coating, which, while it makes the output look great, it also contributes to screen glare. Most flat screens have very little glare, or light reflection at all, but this one does. Using it with a light source behind you, especially daylight, could cause you some eye discomfort.

On the whole, I find this monitor to be a really great buy at around $250.