Testing

There really is not a whole lot to do when testing a display, but we have setup a system that we test all new displays with. We test on movie and video playback, gaming, viewing angle, brightness / contrast, and color reproduction.

Brightness and contrast is something that you always want to look at when you are purchasing a monitor. The basic rule of thumb is you don't want the display to be to dull, to bright is ok because you can always turn that down. The brightness and contrast were both set at 80 and that was really good, I did some fine tuning to get everything where I wanted it to be, but you won't have to worry about this display being to dull. The display is also very sharp, in the sharpness test none of the corners were blurry.

Color reproduction was just great, as I said ASUS's Color Shine makes colors on the screen more vibrant, the gradient test just look amazing on the PG221. I always do the all black test to see if any backlighting shows on the display. In the black test I noticed a lot of light coming from the bottom of the display, but during gameplay and general usage I don't notice it at all.

Watching movies and TV on the PG221 is great, this screen reminds me more of the LCD TV than a monitor. Color Shine really makes it difference when watching movies and TV, both look so much better on the PG221 than any other monitor we have tested.

To give you an idea of all of the cool features the PG221 has and to show you some gaming on the display I made this video, enjoy.

As you can see from the video I played Xbox 360 on the display and it looked amazing! Also playing PC games on the display was great, better than any other display I have ever used! The Power Bass System really works well, especially on console games. I would say it is up to par with a mid-range 2.1 desktop speaker system.

Finally we have the viewing angle, since this display is a multi-purpose display (console and PC gaming) the viewing angle is important. The viewing angle is very good horizontally as well as vertically.