The Dell SP2208WFP offers a winning combination of high performance and low price. This 22-inch wide-screen LCD excelled in labs testing, while also delivering outstanding results with DVDs and games. It supplies a useful feature set, serving up standard VGA and DVI video connections as well as HDMI. There's also a webcam above the display for easy video conferencing and two USB ports conveniently located along the side and another two tucked underneath. Priced at AU$529, it's hard to make an argument against the Dell SP2208WFP — only its glossy screen coating, perhaps. In a brightly lit room, you might find it picks up too much glare and reflections if employed as a straight productivity display. But for dorm use and other scenarios where it'll perform double duty as a productivity and an entertainment display, we highly recommend the Dell SP2208WFP.

Design
The Dell SP2208WFP boasts a clean and simple design. A 20mm silver bezel frames the display, which widens to a full 25mm along the top where the 2.0-megapixel webcam resides. A glossy black belt runs along the sides, which matches the black rectangular base. If given the choice, we would opt for a matte black bezel, as it provides better contrast against the display itself while also receding into the background during movie watching.

In the lower-right corner you'll find five buttons for powering on the display and navigating the onscreen menu. A blue LED lets you know which video connection you're using: 1 for VGA, 2 for DVI, and 3 for HDMI. The onscreen menu lets you adjust the colour, brightness, and the position of the image. Out of the box and connected via DVI, we found the image had a slight pink tint to it, which was easily corrected. There are also colour presets for multimedia and gaming along with red and blue presets, plus a user-defined preset. The gaming preset resulted in balanced colour levels for F.E.A.R., but the multimedia preset was not useful. It created an oversaturated picture with too much red. The normal or blue preset were better options for DVD viewing. You're also given the ability to change the screen ratio between 4:3 and 16:9, or have it fill the display.

The stand provides a very stable base that is not prone to wobble, and we like the look of it more than Dell's standard Flying V base found on its UltraSharp line. It doesn't offer height adjustment, however, or the ability to swivel the display into portrait mode. The only physical adjustment you can make is tilting it forward and backward. And it may be more of a useful feature to a reviewer who is setting up and taking down LCDs more than the typical consumer, but the stand simply snaps into the back of the display — no tools required — for a blissfully easy setup. A rectangular cutout in the arm of the stand helps you hide video and power cables.

Features
In addition to the standard VGA and DVI video connections, the Dell SP2208WFP also boasts an HDMI port, giving you the ability to connect the display to any graphics card and a wide range of consumer electronics. It offers HDCP support for displaying high-definition copyright-protected content. As with any 22-inch display, the native resolution of 1,680x1,050 means you won't be able to display 1080p video without scaling.

There's also audio and power jacks for Dell's optional speaker bar that attaches to the bottom of the display. Rounding out the features are four USB 2.0 ports and a 2.0-megapixel webcam with dual microphones.

Performance
The Dell SP2208WFP turned in unparalleled performance on our DisplayMate benchmarks. Along with the Samsung 2232GW, it separated itself from the pack. The SP2208WFP's aggregate score of 90 on our DisplayMate suite of tests is the highest such score we've seen to date. It scored highly throughout, with top scores on greyscale and colour tests, and uniformity and sharpness tests.

It scored well on our contrast ratio and brightness tests, although there were some displays that were brighter. Still, Windows apps looked crisp, with text legible down to a font size of seven. Though the default image setting was passable, we switched to the user-defined custom mode to lower the red level. The viewing angle was more than acceptable, but when you move off the axis vertically the screen darkens and colours shift quickly. With our eyes just above the top of the display and looking down at the center of the image, the image quality begins to suffer. Visitors to your desk will need to pull up a chair to share the display; those standing will see a poor image.

Movies and games looked fantastic, with rich, vivid colours and smooth movement. The glossy screen coating helped smooth edges, and the 2ms response time (grey to grey) meant there was no ghosting. We did find that the Multimedia colour preset was not the right choice for movie watching, tending too much toward red. Using The Royal Tenenbaums as our test disc, Ben Stiller's red Adidas track suit looked practically radioactive. The Normal colour preset presented a much more balanced picture.