Chimei CMV 221D

It turns out you can get a decent 22" monitor for under $600, down the cheap and cheerful route.

Chimei is the aggregate of a few budget brands you may have heard of before – CMV and Polyview. In the past, they have made cheap TFTs with questionable build quality, but usually okay performance. Occasionally they churn out a cracker, and the world goes ‘hmmmm’.

Such is the case with the CMV 221D – worryingly cheap build quality with a disturbingly poor base, but a quality panel that is hard to ignore at its given price point. The impact is such that word has it Dell has inked a deal with Chimei to incorporate the panel into its own product line up.

The panel is TN, meaning six-bit and sadly not HDCP compatible. Menu buttons are placed annoyingly on the side, and the menu very difficult to navigate as a result. Inputs are limited to VGA and DVI which is fine for a monitor of this size, but on the same line we expected at least a height adjust – tilt is all you get, and a small degree at that.

Fortunately, for the price the performance is admirable, with the 5ms response time showing noticeable but minimal ghosting throughout the motion tests. In our DisplayMate tests the CMV 221D showed a tendency to become dark too quickly in the colour and greyscale ramps, losing definition. Yet despite this it still managed to differentiate all the way down to the second shade of grey on the 256 shade greyscale gradient. The whites weren’t so impressive, things blowing out at the 247 mark, and showing a slight green discolouration on the greyscale.

You certainly will not find anything else of this image quality for this price – in fact that’s entirely the reasoning for the score we’ve given it. If you want to get into large widescreen performance for entry level dollars, there is no better, or indeed no other choice.

Still, we wouldn’t mind a heck of a lot better build quality – we’ll see what Dell has to offer in a couple of months.