The 22" Viewsonic VA2226w display comes includes a simple black plastic stand that seems rather light and flimsy but held the monitor just fine through my testing and lots of movement and adjustment. There is a standard black power cable as well as some Viewsonic driver software and documentation.
You'll notice that Viewsonic only includes a standard analog VGA cable from connection from the monitor to the PC or other source. While some users won't be able to tell the difference between the analog VGA and digital DVI inputs, some will and that might be a strike one on Viewsonic.
Next Page - Exterior and Connections
LCD monitor design is pretty straight forward -- get the monitor as slim as possible and keep the bezel around the actual display as thin as possible. Let's see how the Viewsonic VA2226w lives up:
The very recognizable Viewsonic birds remain on the display in the top left hand corner of the exterior bezel, which I am glad to see is quite small and has a good finish to it. The Viewsonic labeling and buttons are pretty small as well and don't stand out against the design of the front of the display. As I said on the previous page, the only thing I don't really like is the stand the monitor uses simply because it feels a bit "cheaper" than the display itself.
The display itself is a 22" LCD with a 21.6" visible area. The Viewsonic rated contrast ratio is 1000:1 while the brightness is somewhat mild at 300 cd/m2. The response time is quoted at 5ms which is a notable number, though we know that display manufacturers have different ways of calculating those values. The native resolution is a 1680x1050 which is a 16:10 ratio.
Turning the monitor to its side we can see the profile is presents; at only 2.5" think (not taking the stand into consideration) the VA2226w can be put just about anywhere. The stand does require a bit more room on your desk obviously, but compared to some other LCD screens and just about any CRT monitor the Viewsonic 22" display should clear up some room on your desk.
Without the stand installed, we can turn the monitor on its back to see the bottom where the menu buttons are located. The two areas of holes along the bottom might appear to be speakers but are in fact just there for air circulation and cooling on the display.
The buttons on the VA2226w are pretty small, which is good for aesthetics but bad for actually using. I really didn't have an issue with the buttons but some people might find themselves hitting more than one at a time. The center button is the power button that glows orange while in standby mode and green when turned on with an active signal.
Looking at the back of the display reveals nothing spectacular -- the connections are well hidden.
Here we see the power connection on the left and video inputs on the right. The arcs in the center are used for some basic cable management.
As I mentioned on the previous page, the monitor supports both DVI and VGA inputs, though Viewsonic only includes a VGA cable. If you have your own DVI cable or want to buy one the monitor has no problems using it.
The basic cable management provided by the Viewsonic VA2226w 22" display is simple but very easy and effective. The cables are effectively hidden behind the display and the stand to be run anywhere they need to go.
The OSD on the Viewsonic VA2226w 22" display is pretty cut and dry, but let's take a look.
The main menu shows the basic controls you expect to see on any modern LCD monitor including contrast and brightness and color adjustments.
Basic contrast adjustments...
The input select menu allows you to choose between the DVI and VGA inputs, effectively allowing you to connect it to two sources if you wish.
The color adjustment offers both a few standard options of color temperature and also allows for custom user settings.
The information display shows what the current LCD status is including the resolution, horizontal and vertical frequency and even model and serial numbers.
In the manual image adjustment menu you have the options to tweak the horizontal and vertical positions as well as the horizontal size and sharpness values.
In the setup menu you can set options that affect the language, on-screen display positioning and time out as well as whether the monitor displays the current resolution during input adjustments.
Here is what the resolution notice looks like: if you are NOT running at the displays native resolution of 1680x1050 it will let you know and recommend a shift. If this gets annoying and you know what you're doing, setting it to off in the OSD is pretty easy.
Viewsonic VA2226w 22 inch Widescreen LCD Monitor Review
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