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LG Flatron W2252TQ 22in LCD Review

Author	Ardjuna Seghers
Published	19th Jun 2008
Manufacturer	LG Electronics
Price	£162.18 (Exc VAT)
as reviewed	£186.51 (Inc VAT)
Latest Price

Design
Features
Image Quality
Value
Overall

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If you're waiting with baited breath to find out just how fantastic the vaunted 10,000:1 contrast ratio really is, then prepare to be disappointed. LG calls its contrast system DFC (Digital Fine Contrast) and though results on the 20in Flatron L206WU were impressive, this time around the results are not nearly as encouraging.

A dedicated f-Engine button switches between Demo, Normal, User, Movie and Internet modes. Again, the Demo mode offers a split-screen view to show what a difference DFC's activation makes. And here it's obvious that in its quest to achieve a headline contrast figure, the Flatron W2252TQ has simply sacrificed dark detailing. Yes, blacks do look inky, but at the cost of so much detail that it's just not worth it. Consequently, the only f-Engine setting you'll want to consider is the User mode, where you can tone things down a bit.

Unfortunately, there's more bad news to come, with the W2252TQ clearly struggling in our DisplayMate tests. Viewing angles are particularly poor due to severe colour and contrast shift. It also failed to distinguish subtle colour gradients, and produced really pronounced banding in both colour and greyscale. There's colour contamination over blacks and whites, and a noticeable amount of backlight bleed from both the top and bottom of the display.

Like most TNs, the LG suffers from shimmering in movies, but despite this and the above defects, managed to provide an acceptable entertainment experience provided you're not too demanding. Indeed, to be fair, this Flatron is not much worse than many other cheap TN panels, and at around £190, the W2252TQ won't break the bank. But 22in displays from brands like Acer, Iiyama and BenQ may be had for much less, and are likely to provide at least comparable image quality.

Verdict

Unfortunately, the LG Flatron W2252TQ's main claim to fame, a stunning 10,000:1 contrast ratio, turns out to be nothing more than hopeful marketing and the rest of the monitor isn't good enough to make up for it. Though affordable, with minimal adjustability, a particularly awkward OSD, some serious image quality issues and a ‘fun' mode that's unusual but little more than a gimmick, in this case you get what you pay for.

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Niforean said on 30th July 2008

I grabbed this monitor at a local computer fair for $270AUD last week. Shipped with a stuck pixel, tried every trick in the book to get it off. Good monitor generally, perhaps a li... more

Dynaverse said on 22nd June 2009

There are so many things about this monitor I hate! I bought it initially to watch movies and play games, because I like the idea of wide screen aspect ratio! you get a chance to see more in your 3D environment giving you a edge for gaming. After 2 hours of playing around with it, my monitor died completely and refused to turn back on!

Luckily however I had a chance to run 3D mark on it, look at some pictures, test the resolutions, tweak around with the settings in and out of games, watch & tab in, and out of action scenes in movies before this unfortunate and highly unpleasant ordeal took place. Before I start let me emphasize this strongly, if you've ever owned any decent LCD monitor before, BE WARNED this LG W2252TQ is certainly NOT for you.

Upon opening you get this Korean cheap overdone glossy feeling, (as if they are trying to make it better then it is). after connecting the cables you notice that the controls on the monitor are a nightmare to handle, someone positioned them under the actual screen and Its really hard to get to.. Very unpleasant and user unfriendly to operate. Moving on, you look at the screen and the first thing you see is the color, brightness and contrast. I swear no matter what I did I couldn't get them to work and make at least one picture look good, worst of all the put some type of in build speaker which made these terrible Prince of Persia sounds!. At this point i was getting annoyed and after using a Acer 17inch prior to this, I hate to admit it but I got far more pleasure out of that then seemingly i would out of this. This was riding to be a disaster, 20 minutes just spend on trying to make the monitor presentable for certain movies and games! There never was a WOW feeling with the LG, it was more agitation on how to tweak it to make it half presentable to watch.. At one point I was like "where is the look better, give me good strong vibrant colors button?" To my dismay no such button was found. After a quiet sigh the quest went on! I put 3D mark on, up close i could tell that there was some ghosting, this is advertised as 2ms but i swear I saw ghosting, oh wait.. its 2ms with certain options, but its 5ms stock.. ah.. i see how they've marketed it... smart! I started watching the battle scenes from Star Wars Episode III on a scaled down 1080-1050 version and man it lookt awful. There is a difference between 1080 and 1050, to anyone reading this, get a monitor that supports 1080 (1920×1080), it really is important and gives your monitor a huge lifetime. You won't loose your hair in years time when everything is Blue ray and you have to resort to pulling back 1080 movies to 1050! It will be like a thorn on your head, constantly jabbing you..

I swear this monitor makes me feel as if its a cheap mass produced product for a Internet lounge, so the companies owning the venues can buy cheap products while milking the masses for email usage and the occasional kids for their 2 hours of counterstrike source. Ughh! by now I wanted this nightmare over, I started playing games, testing out settings, various brightness and contrast problems kept coming up, I could never get it just right for me to enjoy the game. Another 10 minutes on tweaking and I started getting a unpleasant heavy feeling in my chest! I realized that no matter what I did, i would never be happy with any of these settings.. A thought abruptly emerged in my head.."Why Oh why did I buy a LG?".

There really is very little to love about this monitor, with my 17 inch Acer I got far more then the money i put into it. With this I feel like I get half of what i paid for. I began ignoring some of the obvious problems and decided to focus on wide screen gaming. 16:9 ratio running 2 x 4830 ATI cards simply to sustain this high end resolution on 80fps (opposed to 140 on a lower res) I started finally seeing some positives, and for a while I was enjoying it and forgot about everything. Owning a 22inch is really something! when all of a sudden my monitor went black! I thought a cable came out, but after extensive checking I realized that the monitor has had.. enough! The South Korean revolt into LCD monitors was finally over, the guns were silent my brand new LG monitor died after 2 hours of usage!

After this I can happily say that, I'm never buying anything LG again, I waited 4 days for this monitor to be delivered only to use it for 2 hours and decide its complete garbage!

There are so many things about this monitor I hate! I bought it initially to watch movies and play games, because I like the idea of wide screen aspect ratio! you get a chance to s... more

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