I have to take all my gaming consoles out fo the living room and into the study, where my PC is. So I thought it would be nice to get a LCD monitor with component input for my old consoles, as well as HDMI for potential new consoles. After lots of research I picked the T220HD, because it also comes with digital tuner.
I am very happy with the choice because it is exactly what I thought it would be. it's very versatile and display everything well, and I am especially impressed with the digital tuner which picks up all the network OTA HD broadcast using a cheap indoor HDTV antenna, when my PCI tuner card (Avermedia A180) could pick up 2 or 3 using the same antenna in the same position. It's not perfect, however.
What's to like:
- Component input allows connecting older devices without HDMI.
- 2 HDMI ports
- Input source button cycles through only ports that are plugged in.
- Digital TV tuner is excellent.
- Build in speaker/headphone jack/audio out port. Speakers are not great, but having them means you don't need extra adaptors to capture the audio from HDMI/component devices.
- Remote control. OSD navigation is so much easier and more intuitive with it. And this is really useful when turning the unit on/off, making this a true LCD TV.
- Has 16:9 aspect ratio option so that pictures don't have to be stretched to full screen.
- Unit is very light, only 13 lb.
- Picture is bright and clear, no dead pixel for me.
- Screen is matte, not glossy.
What's really annoying to me:
- Unit is light because base is mostly plastic, not very rigid.
- touch sensitive power on/off button. Everything else is tactile and on the side of the monitor, except for power. turning the unit on/off using this button usually requires several presses. Might that be that big of an issue if the unit is not so light and stand so flimsy, I have to grab the whole bottom edge when I try to turn it on this way. Good thing there's the remote.
- My unit has quite a bit of backlight bleed at the center of top and bottom edge. Hard to see when using DVI input, but when viewing HDTV, with the black bars on top and bottom to get the correct 16:9 aspect ratio, the bleeding is obvious.
What are the missing features which I don't care much about:
- the stand is basic, no height adjustment, no portrait mode
- no PIP
- can't be mounted to the wall
- Cannot customize the individual RGB color tone when in DVI mode. Can only select between one of the 3 presets (warm, normal, cool).
Other nitpicks:
- monitor frame has piano finish (glossy), including the inner side which reflects what's on screen. Kind of annoying , and maybe makes backlight bleeding seem worse than it really is.
- most of the connection ports are on the back of the unit facing back. While this makes the ports easier to see than a lot of other models that has the ports on the bottom facing down, it also makes insertion of wires, especially the component video ones, harder becasue you are pushing/applying force perpendicular to the LCD panel. You don't want to put your other hand on the LCD screen, but if you don't, then you really can't get a good push.
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