I recently purchased a new display for use with my laptop as an external monitor. After doing quite a bit of research online, I opted for Dell’s newly released SX2210 monitor. To get right to the point, Dell’s SX2210 is the best monitor I have owned to date, not to mention much cheaper ($219) and prettier than the rest (previously owned an Apple 20″ Cinema Display and a Dell Ultrasharp 22″ monitor). The 21.5″ high definition monitor sports HDMI, DVI, and VGA connections on the back, which are great for hooking up an HDMI equipped XBOX 360 or PS3 and having two computers hooked up (one on DVI and the other on VGA).
As you can see from the picture above, the monitor includes audio in/out and USB ports (two more USB ports are included on the back of the monitor itself). The design of the monitor is very appealing, featuring a white “piano” finish on the back and an aluminum base.
The monitor has a MAX resolution of 1920×1080, which is a lot of real estate space for a 21.5″ monitor, since most typical 22″ monitors support up to 1680×1050 resolution. A word of caution though, if you plan on using this monitor for gaming, then you better have a good enough video card to support gaming at a high-def resolution. I tried playing Call of Duty 4 on my 15″ Macbook Pro and ran into some video problems. I now have this monitor hooked up to a Dell XPS gaming computer with dual Nvidia 9800GT 512MB video cards installed and gaming with this monitor is now absolutely AMAZING. The colors that come out of this monitor are quite vibrant.
Features
A neat thing about this monitor is that it comes with a built-in webcam, which supports facial recognition for logging into your computer (haven’t tried out this feature yet). I don’t use the webcam much but I tested it and the image quality is better than the image you would get from the built-in webcam on a Macbook for example. Even though I don’t use the webcam that much, the built-in dual mics have been really useful for making VOIP calls using Skype.
Concerns
This monitor is not height-adjustable, which can be a nuisance at times, but I’ve learned to live with it. As you can see from the first image, the monitor sports a glossy display. I’m actually not a fan of glossy displays. They can be quite a nuisance in the wrong lighting conditions, especially when you have light coming in through a window behind you. However, if you compensate by moving your monitor around or simply don’t find reflections on your monitor all that annoying, then you’ll be just fine.
If you have any questions please comment and I’ll make sure to respond promptly.
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