BusinessWire: The NEC 22-inch MultiSync E222W is greener than your average LCD monitor. It isn’t totally green since it still uses a CCFL backlight that contains mercury. But the LCD monitor uses half the amount of mercury. Power consumption is down by 50 percent too. My guess is that by improving the optical film stack, light throughput has been enhanced. That allows the number of CCFL tubes to be reduced. In the case of the E222W by half. A LED backlight would have made the E222W a lot more green but that would have meant you’d have to part with more of your greenbacks.
Less power consumption is a good thing in my book but let’s hope the picture quality wasn’t compromised. The E222W features a 1680 x 1050 pixel format, a 1000:1 contrast ratio and a 5ms response time. You have two ways to connect: DVI and VGA. Price? US$269 in July.
Pocket-lint: Philips just launched its Brilliance LCD monitor. The 22-inch LCD monitor sports the company’s PowerSensor technology, which is marketing-speak for a proximity sensor that sense whether or not you’re sitting in front of the monitor. If the Brilliance monitor senses you’re not in front of it it will immediately dim its brightness resulting in a 50 percent power reduction. Come back, sit down and the monitor will come back to life. This feature is hardware driven so no need to tinker around with whatever settings in the operating system. All monitors (including TVs!) should have this feature. Price for the 22-inch is £170 or about US$280, which is quite expensive (normally you can get a 22-inch LCD monitor for less than US$200) but hopefully the smaller energy bill will offset it in the mid- to long-term. For commercial deployments Philips’ Brilliance monitor should be on the short list if you’re trying to cut energy costs.
The HP LE2201w 22-inch LCD monitor is pictured above. Nothing much to look at, but I like it that way: simple. There is also the 19-inch version: LE1901w. Both of these monitors are billed as “Eco-Friendly” by HP. But, before I get into the merits of how eco-friendly these monitors really are, let’s look at some basic specifications for the 22-incher:
LE2201w Technical Specifications
- Size/Display Technology: 22-inch TN TFT LCD
- Resolution: 1680×1050
- Contrast Ratio: 1000:1
- Response Time: 5ms
- Viewing Angles: 160/160
- Brightness: 250 cd/m2
- Connections: VGA (15-pin D-sub)
- Mount: VESA 100mm x 100mm
Now, let’s find out why these are called eco-friendly. First, these monitors consume less power. How? The optical film stack was improved to increase light transmittance. In other words, more light from the backlight can get through to you. There are two things you can do with better light transmittance. Use the same backlight to get more brightness. Or, and this is what HP did, you can reduce the brightness coming about of the backlight and maintain the same level of brightness that gets to you. The backlight is of the CCFL variety so there’s already a knock on its eco-friendly claim but the number of CCFL tubes has been reduced by half. The best option would have been a LED backlight, but that would also cost considerably more. So there is about half as much mercury in the LE2201w (and LE1901w) compared to other same-sized monitors. The backlight consumes the most power in a monitor and by reducing the light output the overall power consumption has been reduced by 40 percent.
The LE2201w consumes 30 watts when in operation and less than 2 watts in standby. The slightly smaller LE1901w consumes 23 watts when being used and less than 2 watts in standby. I would have liked to have seen standby power consumption closer to zero. These monitors are geared toward businesses and businesses will be happy with much lower electricity bills. Have a look at this calculation: 8 hours per day and 5 days per week equals to roughly 2000 hours per year. The LE191w provides about a 14 watt savings translating to 29,120 watt savings per year. Depending on how much energy costs in your area, the savings could be significant.
Alienware: Let’s get one fact out of the way before I begin: almost all 22-inch LCD monitors are in fact 21.5-inch. Okay, now let’s get down to business. Alienware’s OptX AW2210 is a 1080p 22-inch LCD monitor and that means the resolution is 1920×1080–not that great for gaming since most games that I know support 1920 x 1200, a bit more vertical pixels. I’m sure the newest games also support 1920×1080 but good luck finding support from older games.
Alienware decided to go with non-glossy anti-glare with the AW2210 and I think they made the right decision. I don’t like glare, but that’s just my preference… and Alienware’s. Brightness is an industry average of 300 cd/m2. Now dynamic contrast ratio is rated at 80,000:1, but don’t let that huge number fool you: it means almost nothing. Why? Because the backlight is made up of your typical CCFL tubes and the incredibly high contrast ratio is achieved by modulating the entire backlight not portions of it like you do with a LED backlight with local dimming. Sure dark scenes will look darker and bright scenes will look brighter. But don’t expect a sunset or a sunrise to look any better.
Response time is a super-fast 2ms gray-to-gray thanks to the TN panel technology. Gamers will like it but gamers will also realize that monitors like this one need 120Hz or better for fast-action to look even better. With nice wide viewing angle film the viewing angles are a respectable 170/160 degrees. Color gamut is 85 percent NTSC thanks to improved phosphors in the CCFL tubes. Connections are a plenty: two HDMI, one DVI, and a USB hub with 4 ports. It would have been nice to add a composite and VGA connections.
Like all monitors should be the AW2210 is height adjustable. I’m not sure if you can rotate it though: let me know if swivel equals rotate. Alienware did put in a final touch on the 22-incher: the OSD buttons use capacitive touch sensors. Is the AW2210 worth US$290 that Alienware is asking? I’m not sure. What do you think?
Notebook Italia (translated into English): The MSI X-Slim X600 is a 15.6-inch notebook PC sporting a 1366 x 768 resoluiton, 1.2GHz Intel Celeron or 1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Solo CPU, ATI’s Mobility Radeon HD 4330 GPU, HDMI out, and three USB ports. Price? €799 (about US$1100) and €949 (about US$1300).
Core 2 Solo? Sounds weak. I would expect a Core 2 Duo. At least! The 1366 x 768 resolution is decent if you want to watch 720p HD video. But then it’ll be scaled, which isn’t very good. Make sure not to scale it and watch it at 1280 x 720. Trust me, it’ll look much better. But if you don’t watch a lot of 720p HD (CBS Sports, Fox Sports, ESPN, etc.) and would rather work then just know that MSI gypped you 32 vertical pixels.
I hope MSI used some exotic materials (e.g. aluminum, magnesium, titanium, carbon fiber, etc.) because US$1300 for a 15.6-inch notebook PC is rather expensive, no matter how thin it is. With that kind of money and if all I’m concerned about is thin, I would rather get the new Apple MacBook Air with a proper 1.86GHz Core 2 Duo for just a bit more at $1499.
Overall, I do think MSI has done a fantastic job with the external design of the X-Slim series including the X600, but there are a few things that need to be fixed. CPU is weak: Core 2 Duo please. Second, the price is too high for what it is. And third, I really don’t like the off-centered keyboard on the X-Slim X600.