Philips 221EL2SB

Monitor Reviews: 22'' LCD Displays

This is often one of the main weaknesses with Philips monitors, and it's the case yet again here: the 221E doesn't have a height-adjustable stand any more than it has speakers or any other useful accessories—or even a HDMI port for that matter. All that's left is a thin frame and DVI and VGA inputs. Or, to put it another way, nothing that will score more than one star. It's hard to win over avid gamers if your monitor uses a TN panel with a response time of 5 ms. The 221EL isn't very responsive, and fast-moving objects aren't displayed fluidly. This is especially noticeable when playing video games, so we suggest you restrict this monitor to office work. We were all the more disappointed to find such an unresponsive monitor, because with the almost total lack of input lag, it would have been perfect for network gaming. It's immediately obvious that's something wrong with the colours. Our hardware tests confirmed that this was the case: the 221EL has a very strong blue tinge, which pushes its deltaE—the average discrepancy between the colours shown on screen and those requested by the graphics card—up to 3.5.