The new Viewsonic 22" widescreen LCD (VA2216w) just released in South Africa is going to be the easy choice for gamers, home/small office users and corporate professionals. With a 16:10 aspect ratio and a maximum resolution of 1680 x 1050 this unit allows two documents to be viewed side-by-side giving the user the ­freedom to work in multiple applications at the same time.

This monitor boasts a dynamic contrast ratio of 2000:1 (contrast ratio being the ratio of the luminance of the brightest colour (white) to that of the darkest colour (black) that the system is capable of producing).

If you have been on the lookout for a new monitor over the last few months, you might have noticed that manufacturers of LCDs were hammering on one specific specification, the response time. Last year LCDs came with 16ms response times and this particular model hits the shelves with an awesome response time of 5ms. If an LCD’s response time is too slow, the display’s pixels won’t be able to keep up with the information sent from the computer’s graphics card, and you’ll see ghosting and digital noise as a result. We tested this particular model with the PC games Dungeon Runners and The Witcher. In both these games the graphics were crystal-clear and the colours fantastic.

The widescreen experience made the fight scenes more intense as there was obviously more of the scenery to see and making the rotation of the view point an experience that needs to be seen. The smaller brother of the Viewsonic 22" is the 19" (VA1916w) LCD. Apart from the obvious size difference, the specifications mirror its sibling apart from the max resolution of 1440x900. On both these models screen adjustments are precisely made via an easy-to-use on-screen menu and user-friendly wizard software automates the setup process to deliver optimised screen performance. Using these monitors can only be explained in one way. An absolute pleasure. After using the 22" for a week, we plugged in our old conventional 17" monitor and realised that there was no going back. You’ve got to see this to believe.

Available from Computer Corporation on 08616-08616, the 19" costs R1899 and the 22" R2299.