ViewSonic G220fb: An Awesome 21" CRT Monitor from 2003 for Retro Gaming

[smooth jazz music] [keyboard clacking] [drive buzzes] [computer beeps] - Greetings, and this time on LGR, it's another trip back to the mid-2000s by way of old computer equipment. This is the 21-inch ViewSonic G220fb, the highest-end display in ViewSonic's Graphics Series of CRT monitors at the time. That time ranging from late 2002 when it first hit the market until early 2006 when it finally left store shelves. And depending on the point in its lifespan you bought it, its original price was r

oughly $500-600. Actually on the more affordable side for CRT monitors of this size and spec. And this is from a fascinating period in computer display tech where the industry was rapidly transitioning away from cathode ray tubes, phasing them out in favor of significantly thinner LCDs. But they were both on the market simultaneously and the choice wasn't always a no-brainer, with larger LCDs hovering around the same $500-600 price point as the G220fb for the handful of years it was manufactured

. And those panels generally maxed out at 19 inches in size with a 1280x1024 resolution and had the usual caveats like a 500:1 contrast ratio, 16-millisecond response times, 85-hertz max refresh rates, and iffy resolution scaling. So if that kind of capability just wouldn't do, then a CRT like this remained mighty tempting, for a few years. Whether your needs came from graphic design, CAD work, enjoying multimedia, or playing PC games, the G220fb would've been a prime contender for your next mon

itor back then. For one thing, it's bigger than many LCD monitors were, with a 21-inch CRT and a 20-inch viewable area on screen. And it boasts an impressive 2048x1536 maximum resolution on Windows PCs. This is with a refresh rate of 68 hertz as well, and on lower resolutions, that can go all the way up to 180 hertz, according to the documentation. Allowing three times the number of frames per second compared to the usual 60. It's also pretty sharp with a .25-millimeter diagonal dot pitch, leadi

ng to crispy text and well-defined graphical details. And all this in a package that won't immediately break your back, weighing only 27 kilograms, or just about 60 pounds, relatively lightweight for a 21-inch CRT, around 25% less than some of its competitors. Now, you do only get a standard 15-pin VGA connection. No DVI, BNC, or anything more exotic like 13W3. This still provides more than an acceptable image, in my view, enhanced even further by ViewSonic's trademark ARAG screen treatment prov

iding an anti-reflective, anti-glare coating. And of course, this is a flat screen CRT, the trendiest of early 2000s trends in cathode ray tube tech. So there's little to no curvature around the edges, and instead the phosphors are more rigidly spread across a squared-off slab of glass. Now, ViewSonic marketing referred to this as being one of their PerfectFlat tubes, but that seems to have caused a bit of confusion at the time. I saw a number of old forum posts refer to this as being a derivati

ve of Mitsubishi Diamondtron, especially the NF, or Naturally Flat, variety. But those, to my knowledge, used an aperture grille inside, similar to Sony Trinitron tubes, which this G220fb definitely doesn't have. Contemporary reviews mention it having an Invar shadow mask instead, and yeah, that matches up with what I'm seeing. I'm guessing there may have been some confusion back then between the G220 and P220 displays, which ViewSonic sold side by side for a number of years. Now, both are brand

ed as being PerfectFlat displays, but the G, or Graphics Series, used a shadow mask, and the P, or Professional Series, had an aperture grille. They're each housed in the same beige or black plastic too, so they look basically the same, but yeah, up close the aperture grille and shadow mask displays look quite different. Neither are intrinsically better or worse overall. Personally I go back and forth between using each type quite often here on LGR. But with the similar model names and design, i

t's no wonder folks got mixed up online sometimes. Speaking of which, I'm getting all mixed up in technical details here. Where are my manners? I have to give a big thanks to LGR viewer Mitch for giving me this thing, in person! I recently attended Southeast Game Exchange in Greenville, South Carolina, and he was kind enough to bring the monitor and give it to me there so we wouldn't have to deal with shipping. Apparently it had been sitting unused at his workplace for a long time and he knew I'

d mentioned my search for a good 21-inch tube. And yeah, here we are! Thank you for your generosity, man. I appreciate it. And it's in great shape, other than the typical scuffs, dust, and grime from years of use and subsequent storage. Nothing a brief cleaning session couldn't fix, which resulted in one lovely-looking example of a ViewSonic G220 series. An ideal display for all sorts of VGA-driven systems, to be sure. But *ideally* ideal with a Windows XP PC from the mid-2000s. So with this all

cleaned up and connected to the LGR XP Dream PC, let's power it on and test it out with a variety of software, resolutions, and refresh rates and enjoy a relaxing afternoon of computer games on a big, beefy monitor. [mellow lo-fi music fades out] All right! Well, the lovely G220fb is looking lovely. All set up. I got it calibrated, much as I can anyway. We'll get to that in a second. And yeah, I wish I could get across or just truly convey how much of a presence this thing has in person. It is

truly magnificent. I mean, you saw that comparison earlier where I had it beside my usual ViewSonic, a 17-inch, which seems plenty big enough, and then you see this. [laughs] And, you know, zoomed in on a video just through YouTube watching this, it may not look any different at all, I don't know. It's all relative when you're watching a video. But yeah, I do have this here running at the maximum refresh rate. Again, you're only watching this at 60 FPS, but I swear, in person, this is the most b

uttery smooth-looking thing I think I've ever seen. I've never had a monitor that refreshes this high, in the vertical sense. So 180 hertz vertical is what the maximum is. It only seems to go up to 170 though, at least according to this Viewmeter. Even though in Windows, it is actually set to 180 hertz. I don't know if that's just a driver limitation or something like that holding me back, because yeah, it just shows up as the generic plug and play. I have found some drivers from ViewSonic from

back in the day that should work, but it's still coming up as undetected when I install it that way, so I don't know. I just haven't been able to find the exact G220fb driver. But anyway, it still seems to work as intended. It's just not 180, it's 170 according to the monitor. Anyway, yeah, most games tend to default to running between 60 and 75 hertz anyway, but yeah, there's ways around that. This looks fantastic, for the most part, and when it doesn't, there's plenty of options here on the on

-screen display. So contrast and brightness, horizontal size/position, vertical for the same. Also a zoom, which just zooms in and out the entire thing. Your standard pincushion and other balancing. Trapezoid. You know, your hook. Horizontal/vertical convergence, that's kind of interesting. So... I mean, I'm not gonna mess with it 'cause I have it in the right spot right now. But yeah, it's nice to have some additional things, like convergence, and purity as well. You can also mostly adjust the

redness around the edges. Horizontal/vertical moire pattern adjustment as well, just in case things get a little off. And of course, just degaussing on command is nice. Geometry is mostly okay. You have these little bits here and there that just sorta go in a little bit. I don't know, it's not 100% flat, squared off as it should be. And then there's also just... It's hard to notice here. It's probably impossible to even see on video at all, but there is a bit of blurriness in certain areas where

it's just not even. And there's also the fact that some of the colors tend to distort a bit around the edges, not just in terms of purity, but also a bit of chromatic aberration. Not really visible on this test necessarily, but... Uh, let me see here. All right, so here you can see just a little bit of the purity issues, mostly in the red. Yeah, green and blue look perfectly fine. It's just this little bit right here. And no, it's not 'cause of these. These are fully shielded speakers. It's lik

e this before I even got it, so I'm assuming maybe something was just sitting here. Or who knows, these things get outta wack after a while. But yeah, even adjusting the purity on here, so... You can see there, maybe. I don't know, it... Yeah. Go down here, nyah... It never really fixes this one corner. So right about here is just about the best that I have been able to get it. But yeah, the other issue is the inconsistent sharpness, or really, the focus is slightly off. Either in the middle it

can get really sharp, but then the edges, you get that little bit of softness and some aberration going on, or you can flip it the other way around in the service menu, which you can see here, and adjust the focus, but then the center of the screen gets a little blurry and the outsides are really clear. So you kinda have to settle for a middle ground of slightly blurry all over the screen and then sharper in the middle, which is how I have it set 'cause a lot of things are gonna be in the middle

, for gaming, or the other way around, and then... Yeah, it's just not 100%. So yeah, there's a warmup period of about 30 minutes. It definitely improves after it's fully warmed up. And you know what, this is fully usable. Really, it's fine. But this is also mentioned in certain reviews back in the day as well. So folks were just saying this is not really an ideal option for professionals, especially if you're doing full-screen graphics work or just need to have very sharp imagery. You know, go

for the Professional Series of monitors, like the P220fb. Which, this is the Graphics Series, which... [laughs] You'd think maybe it's meant for graphic work, but apparently they mean like gaming graphics? I don't know. This was often recommended as like "the gaming option." Anyway, I just have sort of a middle ground set here for the desktop at 800x600. You go really, really, really high and then the blurriness becomes even more apparent because everything is much smaller. Oh man, I also meant

to say earlier in the video that there is a USB option for this. Check out around back here on the monitor. There's a little cutout where you can add a USB hub, I suppose. It seems to be related to something ViewSonic sold called the USB hub add-on. And yeah, apparently it was a USB hub compatible base which I can only assume sat underneath the monitor, I can't find any pictures, and then maybe it would plug into an extra USB add-on thing. I don't know, there were things you could add to this, w

hich I just don't see that too often on older CRTs. So I thought that was kind of interesting, but whatever. Let's just take a look at some games here, 'cause the games look amazing. And I'm gonna go up the ladder of resolutions. We'll start at 320x200 and we'll go all the way up to the highest supported 1536p resolution. So let's just start with something at 320x200. [beeper chirps] Yeah, good ol' "Crystal Caves." [crystal chuckle] And again, this... Aw man, it just looks so good at this size!

The color reproduction and everything on here is just phenomenal. And yeah, seeing this resolution so cleanly and crispily taken up to this size... [beeper chirps] Oh! It's just a treat. "Crystal Caves" has never looked so crystal. Yeah, I know this is just such a high-resolution large monitor that it makes sense to run high-resolution large stuff, but, eh... I'm almost more impressed by the lower res anytime that I get a larger display, because then it just looks so much better. Any kinda retro

just looks great on a nice, big display like this. And, you know, I have larger CRTs, Sony Trinitrons and whatnot, but they're TVs and you're sitting farther away and, you know, sitting here, it's like maybe 20 inches away that I'm sitting. And sitting up close with a desk like this, it's just a different experience and I enjoy the crap out of it. Okay, so let's move on up to 640x480, and for that I'm going to run Ubisoft's "POD" from 1997. Lemme get the refresh rate. It just changes depending

on the game, you know. So this one goes back down, all the way back down, to 75 hertz. - [Announcer] Five, four, three, two, one, go! [engines revving] [energetic techno music] - [Clint] Ah, once again, kinda lower res blown up this crispily and cleanly, these fantastic colors. I really hope it's coming across. I don't know, man. I also saw some complaints in older reviews of the... Need to put the volume down a bit. I think that might work. Yeah, there we go. Yeah, some complaints in older revi

ews saying the black levels weren't very good on here. I mean, yeah, it's a little bit more than, say, my Gateway VX700. It's a little bit more gray than that, just a little bit. But, you know, the VX700, that has a Trinitron aperture grill thing. That's actually what I showed earlier when I was doing a comparison between shadow mask/aperture grill. I don't know. This is on par with my other ViewSonic monitors, so I don't know. No real complaints. But yeah, I think it looks great. Especially in

the dark. [laughs] I've got some light going here and it's the middle of the dadgum day, so there's all kinds of light making things a little bit washed out, perhaps. But dude. Love this game! And just seeing it like this is phenomenal. I only ever played this, I think, on a 15-inch CRT as a kid. And then predominantly on 17-inch CRTs ever since, so going all the way up to 20- to 21-inches... [chuckles] It's just great. All right, let's take another step up the ladder to 800x600 resolution. Not

a huge bump up from 480p, but what is is the refresh rate that we have "Half-Life 2" running here, and that is the full 180 hertz, or 170, as it's reading it by the monitor. So, uh... Let's see which one I wanna load. Yeah. [laughs] So... Oh my goodness. The smoothness of this! It is really hard to just even describe. It feels more real than real. [laughs] And, like, I've played at... Oh gosh, you know, like really high-refresh rate OLEDs and LCDs and whatnot over the years. I've got a 120-hertz

display upstairs and I've played at 240. But somehow this... This even feels more smooth than that? I don't know, maybe it's just like the low persistence, or even the fact that there's just like a zero-millisecond response time in terms of, yeah, just the way the phosphors work. And like just the very nature of reality with CRTs. I don't know. It's smoother than smooth, is how this comes across. Especially running at, you know, 300 frames per second. Again, probably not really coming across on

video or whatever. Man, if I could upload this at like 200 frames per second, I would. Course, I would need a camera that recorded that fast. All right, let's crank things up a good ways in terms of resolution, going all the way up to the manufacture-recommended resolution for the monitor, 1600x1200. And not only that, but I'm pushing things even further in the Nvidia Control Panel here on "Midtown Madness." So no only do we have just really high resolution running, but... Okay. Wow. [laughs] W

e also have 8x multisample anti-aliasing forced through the Nvidia driver. So this... [laughs] It almost looks cartoonish. Just like line art, you know. I don't know, like a pre-rendered cutscene kind of artificiality to it. I don't know, man. This is, uh... Yeah, this would've been a mighty ridiculous flex in the late '90s, or even early 2000s. Oh, man. Yeah, seriously, going from... Or just remembering 640x480 gaming. At most, when this came out. In fact, I think we played it at 320x240, then

we got a 3D accelerator and it was like, oh, 640x480 or 800x600. So 1600x1200! And then there's just the fact that, you know, it's just such a huge monitor. Never saw it on anything like this back then. This is just... It's so cool. [laughs] That's all it is. It's just a treat, you know? Yeah. Childhood wish fulfillment. Or really, adolescent wish fulfillment, I guess, 'cause I was like 13 when I got this. But it doesn't look right. It almost looks like a... You know when you take an emulator, y

ou got like PS2 games, and then you crank it up, and it's like, ooh, wow, 4x scaling internal or whatever, and it looks ridiculous? 'Cause you still have these low-res textures and everything. The filters and stuff going on there. But yeah, everything in terms of the models, the resolution is just so stupidly crispy. And then, yeah, the anti-aliasing on top of that. It just looks like... Almost like paper cutouts or something like that. Ah, it's weird. It's neat though. Isn't this neat? I think

it is! Dude. What a cool monitor. Okay, so let's really pull out the big guns, so to speak. "Unreal Tournament 2004." And this right here, I have customized the INI file to max out the resolution to the full 2048x1536. At 1,300 FPS. Why not? [laughs] But yeah, no anti-aliasing here, but you truly do not need it. You know, to be honest, you don't even need it at 1600x1200. But yeah, look at this. 2048x1536! I only ever saw that kind of number on the back of higher-end video card boxes and stuff.

You know, like, "Oh, maybe, sure, somebody could run that, but I will never see it." - [Announcer] Play! - [Clint] Okay. Yeah! Again, it almost looks fake with how high-resolution it is. Like, this is... - [Aryss] In position! - [Clint] It's stupid. [laughs] And the text is so tiny. - [Announcer] First blood! - [Clint] Oh yeah, there we go. But yeah, in terms of... Aw man, just being able to see every single detail so brilliantly on here, it's unmatched. Like, this resolution is still really hig

h even now. - [Announcer] Killing spree! - [Clint] 1536 across. Or, you know, up and down. - [Announcer] Headshot! - [Clint] Yeah, dude. - [Announcer] Blue flag returned. [Clint chuckles] - [Clint] And the teeny-tiny crosshair! Oh, I don't know. This just cracks me up. Again, weird boyhood-dream-come-true type of thing, you know, just looking at video cards and stuff in the late '90s and end of the 2000s. Seeing these bonkers resolutions listed as supported. And then, you know, even seeing huge

monitors like this just on display. At places like Best Buy and CompUSA and Circuit City. I don't know, man, like even then, they may have had them set up at a pretty high resolution, but I have never seen 2048x1536 in person until literally today. [laughs] This is my first time experiencing it. Like, you can look at every single little detail in that sniper rifle and, like, it's so hard to even see any individual depictions of pixels or anything. It's just a... Aw, man. And you know, it's still

not... Well, if I have to admit, 100% ideal because of that blurriness situation and some of the slight purity issues with the redness. But, you know, when you're just playing like this, you don't notice that at all. It just looks so good. However... - [Announcer] Headshot! - [Clint] I would really like one that was in beige, of course, just to match so many of my other computers. But this one with the Windows XP PC, which is a big black case, it's fine, you know. But yeah, I've always wanted o

ne of the Sonys or the NEC ones, and in fact, I've gotten some of those over the years and they've never worked! This is the first 21-inch monitor that I've ever had that actually works. Yeah, I thought that was a Redeemer. I just picked it up on the ground. [laughs] Anyway. Yeah, the big ol' Sony Trinitron that I had at one point, it just made these horrible arcing noises and then something popped and fried. It was not in good shape, outside or inside, so that one ended up getting e-cycled. And

then I got this phenomenal huge 12-inch NEC, like a professional graphics monitor from 1992 or something, and it was basically new in box. I thought it would be a fantastic thing to cover and I recorded a full unboxing and all this stuff and setting it up, and then it just never worked. It doesn't work at all. I don't get any kinda power. - [Announcer] Headshot! - [Clint] All right! Well, that's pretty much it for this video, I think. Again, thank you to Mitch. This thing is truly a treat, and

I hope that I've been able to convey that a little bit here on LGR. It's definitely something you're gonna be seeing more of in the future. It's just nice to have a larger display to film when I'm demonstrating certain games and things. It's easier to film a much larger CRT than it is a smaller one. You know, you typically get less of a moire effect, and having a flat-screen CRT like this too also helps with that. Yeah, I hope that you enjoyed seeing this. Do check out some of my other videos I'

ve done on other retro monitors in the past. I'm sure I'm gonna be doing more in the future. Something about cathode ray tube things, it just amuses the crap outta me. It's one of those experiences you can't fully emulate through software alone on newer hardware, and it just completes the look of so many older machines that I'm constantly showing off here. So yeah, stick around for more videos if you'd like, or check out existing ones. And as always, thank you for watching!