Wacom Intuos4

Pen tablets aren't just for commercial artists anymore. For proof, look no further than the just-released Wacom Intuos4 ($230 and up, street, depending on size), a worthy addition to the toolkits of professionals, casual artists, and photography enthusiasts alike. Used with Adobe Photoshop CS4 and Corel Painter 11, the Intuos4's impressive pressure sensitivity lets you lighten or darken areas of an image with precision. Putting the tablet to work with Photoshop's dodge, burn, blur, and sharpen tools gives you the kind of personal expression that's associated with a photographic darkroom. And if you're used to drawing with traditional art materials, such as chalk or watercolors, you'll find that the combination of Intuos4 and Painter comes remarkably close to that experience. Wacom is pretty much the only game in town when it comes to pen tablets, but the impressive Intuos4 proves that the lack of competition hasn't made the company lazy.
For this review, Wacom provided me with the medium version of the Intuos4. Think of this midsized, midpriced pen tablet as the Goldilocks model—not too large, not too expensive. The active area of the 10-by-14.6-inch (HW) pad, at 5.5 by 8.8 inches, is not as high but a bit wider than the 6-by-8-inch active area of the Intuos3 6x8. With the Intuos4, the company has switched from the active-area designations associated with its now-discontinued predecessor to the generic small, medium, large, and extra large.
A rubberlike finish along the bottom half of the pen helps you keep a firm grip. But it also attracts dust and lint, so when not in use, keep the pen in the supplied holder. The tablet has a sleek, all-black appearance, as opposed to the Intuos3's institutional slate-gray styling. The eight programmable ExpressKeys are sensibly grouped to one side, rather than being split between the left- and right-hand sides, as they were on the Intuos3.

Gateway FHD2400

The FHD2400 has nearly every video input you could want in a 24-inch display: component, composite, DVI, HDMI, S-Video and VGA. The only port lacking is the new, up-and-coming Display Port connection. The on-screen display menu is incredibly well designed and intuitive, and it has the full range of adjustment options. You can control primary colors or use one of the many presets. The ease of navigation through the submenus is refreshing as well.

It's not all about video with this monitor, either; for an extra $50, you can obtain a detachable sound bar that produces amazingly clear sound. The speakers even have great bass, and I couldn't detect any distortion when I cranked up the volume--a rare virtue in built-in monitor speakers.

This display features four USB ports, a headphone jack, and a standard native resolution of 1920 by 1200. It's fully adjustable by tilt, pivot, and height, and a unique swivel permits 360-degree rotation.

Gateway's FHD2400 didn't outperform the competition in image quality, but it found a comfortable spot in the middle of the pack, resulting in a score of Very Good. The display cost about $550 at the time of this review, making it a great choice for anyone in the market for a well-designed, strong-performing 24-inch monitor. You won't be disappointed with this display's range of inputs or its adjustment options.

AG Neovo H-W22

The H-W22 excelled at rendering Word documents and Excel spreadsheets with a consistent sharpness throughout. Whether the text background was white or black, jury members rated readability as very high overall. The monitor also produced pleasing graphics. Close-up pictures of fruit showed good texture, with natural-looking colors on blueberries and strawberries, and well-balanced saturation on reds, yellows, and blues.

A screening of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl showed the AG Neovo H-W22 to be a capable movie display. Blues and greens in scenes with water looked refreshing, and characters' skin tones were warm and natural, though at times a bit powdery, as if some faces had too much makeup on them. Light skin tones looked realistic, without the pinkish tones produced by some displays. The pirate Jack Sparrow's dark skin tones contrasted nicely with the soldiers' lighter skin tones. Uniforms in various reds and blues seemed well saturated, and the monitor revealed good background detail even in darker clothes and scenery.

The H-W22's design is very simple, with clean, uncomplicated lines. Its nicely integrated speakers avoid adding visual bulk to the thin-looking cabinet, but they sound tinny even at maximum loudness. Voices and dialogue often were so low that the characters were virtually inaudible.

Five simple, tactile buttons let you navigate the on-screen display (OSD) menu. Situating the power button in the middle of this otherwise useful group of buttons seems like a mistake, because it makes accidentally turning the monitor off when you're fiddling with the settings too easy.

With its simple lines, the H-W22 will fit nicely on the desk of anyone who prefers an understated monitor that offers consistently robust performance.

ViewSonic VG2230WM

Images of fruit slices looked sumptuous, thanks to the screen's brightness and natural-looking colors. Text on Web pages showed no signs of edge blur, so the VG2230wm should be good for people who spend hours reading Word documents or scanning long spreadsheets. Icons on these Office applications were well defined, and text (as on Web pages) was razor sharp.

ViewSonic's monitor lets you adjust its tilt, swivel, and height. The true swiveling base can rotate 360 degrees, and the height-adjustable stand extends the monitor across an unusually large range, making it ideal for a setup with multiple users. A small steel wire clip inserts on the side of the stand to secure the monitor to its minimum height; I would have preferred a built-in button to lock down the stand, so I wouldn't have to worry about losing the wire.

Integrated speakers are another of the monitor's extras. Not surprisingly, they seemed underpowered, producing muddled dialogue in our test DVD movies, though they handled the soundtrack and general background music better. The monitor's circular base is decorated with a raised wave pattern--a pattern that recurs on the sides of the black panel in the form of simple silver lines that slope at the bottom.

Four pill-size buttons and a small round button--aligned vertically on the right side of the monitor--provide access to the monitor's on-screen display (OSD) and its power, respectively. Unhelpfully labeled '1' and '2', the OSD buttons don't aid you in navigating the OSD menu, so you may want to fire up the CD manual if you plan to adjust to the monitor's settings significantly.

In displaying Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, the monitor tended to render scenes a bit the light side, infusing many backgrounds and foregrounds with a washed-out sheen. Colors in general were nicely saturated, though reds were on the pink side. Lighter skin tones also seemed too pink or too light, while the pirate Jack Sparrow's skin didn't have a dark enough tone.

Nonetheless, this monitor is a serious contender for a workplace or home setup. It's reasonably priced ($319 as of October 9, 2007), has a thoughtfully designed cabinet, and provides eye-pleasing performance.

NEC LCD225WNXM-BK

Whereas most built-in speakers sound flat or tinny, the speakers on this display possess a full range of sound, though they lack the deep bass that a separate speaker system would provide. Their main limitation is volume: They don't get superloud.

The on-screen display (OSD) menu is far from spectacular. You can make all the adjustments necessary--such as brightness and contrast--and you even get individual color controls, but the menu's text and graphics are very small and unintuitive. A bit of common sense and good engineering could fix the navigation shortcomings.

When we tested the 225WNXM at the PC World Test Center as part of a collection of 19 LCD monitors in the same category (models with 20- to 22-inch displays), it ranked sixth in performance. The monitor did a particularly good job of rendering text but was less successful with graphics. This set's screen is treated with an antiglare chemical coating. If you prefer a glossier look, you'll have to search elsewhere.

An HDMI option on this monitor would have been nice, and the OSD certainly has plenty of room for improvement, but other than that this is a great 22-inch display.

HP W2207H

HP incorporated its Brightview glare panel in the w2207h, instead of using the chemically treated antiglare coating that appears on some of the company's other monitors, such as the the HP LP3065 and the the HP LP1965. This makes for a cleaner-looking image, but introduces more reflectivity as well.

The display, which has a native resolution of 1680 by 1050 pixels, comes with two side USB ports, plus HDMI and VGA inputs. HP doesn't bundle an adapter to connect the monitor's HDMI or VGA ports to the DVI connection that most PCs now use, though such adapters are inexpensive and readily available online. ? ? ?

The display sits in a thin (about 1-inch) glossy black bezel with rounded edges. Unfortunately, you can easily smudge the glossy finish with fingerprints when adjusting the display. Though the w2207h doesn't have a headphone jack, it does include a set of built-in speakers. Like most speakers built in to monitors, the HP's are weak in bass, resulting in flat, tinny audio. For soft background music or basic sound effects for games, however, the speakers are adequate.

HP includes MyDisplay software to help you perform simple monitor calibrations, and you can automatically rotate the screen when you pivot it. Overall, if this monitor finds its way into your home or office, you'll most likely be happy with it. Just be prepared to buy a DVI adapter!

Samsung 245T

The monitor's connectivity options include four USB ports, plus HDMI, VGA, DVI, composite, component, and S-Video ports. The only input missing is a Display Port connection, a linking technology that has gained popularity recently.

Despite the 245T's $649 price tag, you don't get a built-in Webcam or speakers; but the display does have a picture-in-picture option--a great feature to have, in view of all the input choices.

In our PC World Test Center evaluations, the monitor performed well, earning a score of Very Good. Nevertheless, it finished slightly below Samsung's own SyncMaster 2493HM (which has built-in speakers) in overall performance. The 245T's extra video inputs and USB ports (four versus the 2493HM's two) are the main differences between the two monitors. But those extras raise the 245T's price to about $150 more than the 2493HM's.

The 245T is best suited for users who need many connectivity options--because, say, they want to use it for PC work and TV/movie viewing. But the 245T costs about $100 more than Gateway's FHD2400, which has just as many inputs and received the same image-quality score.