Product Reviews

What would persuade you to buy one 22in LCD screen over another? Contrast ratio? Price? Brightness? Viewsonic is hoping that the inclusion of an iPod dock, media card reader and USB hub might just do the trick.

Although USB hubs on monitors are commonplace, the ViewDock is the first we've seen with an iPod dock. It makes a great deal of sense. If you're an iPod user, your dock hogs a USB port on your Mac or powered hub, and the dock itself takes up space on your desk. By using the one on the stand of this display, you can free up both. The iPod charges while in the dock, and because the ViewDock connects to your Mac over USB, it can sync as well.

The ViewDock also has a pair of stereo speakers and a sub-woofer so you can use it to listen to your iPod. However, the speakers are pretty poor, so you would be better off listening to iTunes on your Mac. The speakers do come in handy, though, for watching photo slideshows and video from your iPod on the ViewDock.

As well as the iPod dock and USB ports, there's a host of other connectors: headphone jack, audio line-in, audio line-out, DVI-D, VGA and composite video input. Your Mac connects to either the VGA or DVI port, leaving the phono video input for a games console

ADVERTISEMENT

or camcorder.

The media card reader supports the eight most common formats and works like any other USB card reader, launching iPhoto when you insert a memory card.

The 22in panel itself is impressive. The 16:10 aspect ratio affords a native resolution of 1680 x 1050 pixels with a refresh rate of 60Hz. The response time is 5ms and the contrast ratio is 700:1.

In use, the ViewSonic is a strange beast. The dock and display are essentially two separate units held together by the stand. As such, they have independent power supplies, meaning you need two free power outlets. However, the dock, media card reader and hub work flawlessly.

Once we set the monitor up, image quality was excellent, but getting there was infuriating. The on-screen display is operated using tiny, fiddly buttons on the front of the lower bezel, and working through the menu options is far from intuitive. However, there are plenty of options, ranging from presets such as Text, Cinema and Portrait through to the ability to set red, green and blue values manually. Despite a note on the CD with Mac compatibility information and instructions in the printed user guide referring to Mac software, there's no sign of any on the CD. This is hardly a problem, though, as you can do everything you need to using either the Displays System Preferences pane or the on-screen display.

The Viewsonic ViewDock VX2245 isn't for everyone. It's hardly the sexiest or slimmest LCD display around, and the need for two power outlets may put you off. And if you need your blacks to be as black as can be, you may decide to go for a display with a higher contrast ratio. For most of us, however, it offers excellent performance and great features at a price that puts it lower than many 20in displays, and puts Apple's 20in Cinema Display to shame.