Iiyama ProLite E2209HDS-B review

Iiyama’s 22in full HD E2209HDS-B monitor has a built-in Eco mode that you can use to save power and therefore money. It has three settings that reduce the backlight, the highest of which is designed to reduce power consumption by 18W.

In tests, the monitor used 37W of power in standard mode and 22W in the highest Eco mode, a reduction of 15W. This is impressive, but the screen is so dim at this setting that you can only use it in the dark.

It doesn’t help that the monitor’s picture is dark to begin with, and you need to tweak it to get a brighter picture. The menu system is complicated by the fact that if you choose dynamic contrast or certain colour modes, other settings such as brightness and contrast become unavailable. In fact, choosing the sRGB colour mode disabled all other image controls, but thankfully it offered the most natural balance of colours, contrast and brightness. There’s also a gamma control.

We failed to see any improvement in picture quality with dynamic contrast turned on – in fact, we didn’t see any difference at all, but at least that meant there were none of the sudden changes in luminosity that can occur with these modes. The image quality presets aren’t very subtle and either darkened the image too much, over-saturated the colours or washed them out. Adjusting the picture manually produced the best results, with a well-balanced picture and vibrant colours. This was true of all inputs, from our PC to a Blu-ray player connected to the monitor’s HDMI input.

The built-in 4W stereo speakers produce enough sound to fill a small room, but they lack bass. They’re fine for occasional use or for Windows, but we’d upgrade to a set of stereo or surround-sound speakers instead.

Adjusting the ProLite E2209HDS-B’s controls manually gave us a decent picture, but the competition is simply too hot for this display. BenQ’s G2220HD has better image quality at a lower price and is our Best Buy.