While we’ve seen a fair few gaming monitors boasting large resolutions and faster refresh rates recently, not everyone has the budget to spend hundreds on a monitor. If you’re looking for a smaller screen but want a good quality picture, the GW2270HM may be what you’re looking for.

Billed as a ‘professional’ monitor, the GW2270HM features a 22″ AMVA panel which provides some surprisingly good blacks and a nice viewing angle. 1080p may not be the flavour of the month but it’s certainly the sweet spot for this size screen.

Design

The budget build doesn’t allow for a stand that can deal with vertical adjustment, so you’ll have to either seat it in the right place or use a vesa mount compatible stand for the monitor. It does, however, tilt back and forward for the right angle. The plain black stand base has a lovely brushed effect which makes it look like a higher class product.

Buttons for controlling the menu options appear on the lower right side of the monitor, below small dots showing their position. It’s not my favourite place to put buttons, particularly if you have a desk with a recess for the monitor, but it does make the outline of the screen look more professional.

The buttons are easy to press and are context sensitive, so no pre-sets.

Ports are the standard 3 you’d expect to find; DVI, HDMI and the legacy VGA for video input, plus a line in and line out. They’re lined up under the monitor in a recess but are easy to get to, even from the front.

Performance and Screen

It’s all well and good saving money, but a monitor is only worth buying if the screen will do it justice. Thankfully the GW2270HM manages to provide some great Colour accuracy and viewing angles are pretty good, keeping colours from getting washed out when standing side on.

Only the contrast provides some disappointment in the brighter lit scenes on games with brightness being a main issue in that it doesn’t seem to be quite uniform across the screen.

Response Time is equally on the budget end of the spectrum with a 5ms GtG, it’s fine for regular gaming but maybe not for the professionals.

Overall Impressions

Let’s be clear, though, the GW2270HM isn’t built around gaming but it does provide a cheaper or smaller option for those wanting quality build and screen without either the cash or a powerful graphics card. What you are getting is a quality image with the addition of blue light shielding and all at a good price.