Iiyama ProLite PLE2208HDS review

The move to 1080p continues, with last week’s super-wide screen from Viewsonic now followed by this offering from Iiyama. It’s a 22in model with a 1,920 x 1,080 resolution, but unlike the ViewSonic it’s as bare bones as can be – and very affordable as a result.

The screen is wider but shorter than a standard 1,680 x 1,050 monitor, which can suit certain uses more than others. Obviously, entertainment is the key beneficiary with widescreen movies and games getting closer to their intended aspect ratio. Work, however, is a different matter: though lining up browser windows side by side is easier than ever, those who work on long documents will probably moan about it as much as they did the original move to widescreen.

Whatever your opinions, manufacturers are making it happen. Iiyama’s vanilla approach means a basic, fixed stand, with just VGA and DVI connections on the back, along with a set of 1W speakers on the front. They lack punch as you’d expect, but the volume isn’t at all bad and there is some bass.

The picture’s pretty good, too. We achieved the best tone by switching to User colour and tweaking the levels manually, which was pretty simple given the intuitive menu and plainly labelled controls. We had to lower the contrast a little to prevent the brightest colours from washing out, and there was some minor backlight bleed at the bottom on a dark screen. But other than that it coped with our technical tests well, with colour gradients perfectly smooth and well distributed across the range.

Throughout our real-world tests it produced plenty of detail, particularly at the bottom end of the spectrum, and rendered photos of green jungles, sandy deserts and fruit accurately. In fact, its colour reproduction impressed us most, with neutral greys and only a slight green hue that popped up occasionally.

But there were a few notable issues. The Iiyama struggled with scaling – playing Crysis at 1080p is tough for most PCs, but lowering it to more playable resolutions resulted in some blocky images and pixellation, while the same occurred when scaling video. We also noticed some juddering in our response time tests which, while not a deal-breaker, did occasionally become noticeable during gaming.

But weaknesses are to be expected at this price. We haven’t seen such a high-resolution display at this low price before, so if it’s just the pixels you’re after the Iiyama is well worth considering as a multitasking, everyday monitor. Just bear in mind that a 1080p sticker doesn’t automatically make it an entertainment monitor.