22 Inch Acer LCD Monitors

Acer makes LCDs of many sizes up to 27” diagonal with many different characteristics. As surprising as it may be, the monitor’s response time is no longer significant factor (except for stereoscopic, 3D vision), that’s not what separates monitors into different categories. More relevant are specs such as power consumption, contrast ratio, resolution and input signal type.

22 Inch Acer LCD monitors come from three different categories: X, B and V series.

The Acer X223W Dbd is wide (as indicated in the model name, the ”W” at the end) with 16:10 aspect ratio and 1680 x 1050 resolution. Contrast ratio is 50,000:1 and response time is 5ms. It has both analog VGA (D-sub) and DVI (with HDCP) inputs, but lacks integrated speakers. Power consumption is 20.7Watts (below 0.5Watts is sleep and off modes), Energy Star TCO’03 compliant.

Acer B223W GJbmdr is also a 16:10 aspect ratio monitor with the 1680 x 1050 resolution. Its contrast ratio and response time are identical to the previous model (50,000:1 and 5ms). It has VGA, DVI and stereo audio inputs (for the integrated 2 x 1Watt speakers). Interestingly enough power consumption is also the same (20.7Watts), even with the two additional 1Watt speakers.

The Acer B223W B bmzdr LCD monitor comes with unexpected surprises. Although specs are similar: 16:10 aspect ratio, 1680 x 1050 resolution, 5ms response time, 10,000:1 contrast ratio, VGA and DVI inputs (also stereo audio), and it respects the same Energy Star TCO’03 standards, power consumption skyrocketed to 65Watts. It has an integrated USB hub, but this is no excuse for the additional 45Watt power consumption.

Acer V223W EJbd has exactly the same specs as the B223W Gjbmdr with the exception of integrated speakers which can be missing according to Acer‘s confusing description: “No speakers or Two 1.0W speakers”.

Acer V223W Bbd is almost identical to B223W B bmzdr, but power consumption is 45Watts due to the two-lamp design.

These are the specs given on the official Acer website (US), so what can we conclude about 22 Inch Acer LCD Monitors?

The first thing that seems very important is the power consumption, that should be around 20Watts for 22” Acer LCD monitors. The models that consume 45Watts and 65Watts are clearly much worse than the others, because they don’t really offer anything extra for the additional watts, so the only logical conclusion is that they must be cheaper or at least much older than the ones that consume only 20Watts (with the same features).

Another thing worth mentioning is the strange behavior of the backlighting system. I can’t explain why two LCD panels have different contrast ratios (50k:1 and 10k:1), while the rest of their specifications  are identical.

About the integrated speakers and USB hub … there isn’t much to say. Usually an active USB 2.0 HUB  requires 2.5Watts for each port, so the two-port HUB should add 5Watts to the maximum power consumption of the monitor, while the speakers should add only 2Watts.

Watch tweets on: