Not long ago you needed deep pockets to afford an IPS (In-Plane Switching) monitor, but the arrival of e-IPS technology has changed all that. The 21.5-inch Asus VS229H-P ($160 list) is the most affordable IPS monitor to hit PC Labs, and it lives up to the IPS legacy of rich colors and wide viewing angles. You don't get much in the way of features with this model, and it's not as energy efficient as its TN-based counterparts, but you'd be hard pressed to find a better deal on an IPS monitor.

A word about IPS technology: Earlier IPS iterations, including S-IPS and SA-IPS, are known for their superior color, grayscale, and viewing angle performance. They are generally used on high-end, high-priced professional displays and are expensive to produce. The newer e-IPS panels are significantly cheaper to manufacture but they can't match the performance of their pricier siblings. However, they do offer more robust colors and wider viewing angles than TN (Twisted Nematic) panels, which are popular for their low manufacturing costs and fast pixel response times.

Design and Features
A matte black cabinet with a textured back panel and shiny black bezels houses the VS229H-P's  21.5-inch panel, which has a resolution of 1920 x 1080 and a 16:9 aspect ratio. A large Asus logo is stamped into the back panel and there's a smaller silver logo on the lower bezel, sandwiched between an IPS HDMI badge and six function button labels. The button themselves are mounted beneath the bezel on the lower edge of the cabinet. The back panel is home to DVI, VGA, and HDMI ports (one each). The VS229H-P does not have any speakers but there is a headphone jack for listening to HDMI audio.

The cabinet is connected to a round base by a thin 2.3-inch mounting arm that, despite its small stature, does a good job of supporting the panel. You can tilt the screen 5-degrees forward and 20-degrees backward but height, swivel, and pivot adjustments are not available.

As with the high-end Asus PA246Q ($499 list, 4 stars), the VS229H-P comes with Asus's Splendid Technology and Quick Fit features. The former provides six picture presets (Standard, Theater, Game, Night view, sRGB, Scenery) that are optimized for specific applications, and the latter provides a template for photos and paper sizes to help you get the best fit for photos and other projects before printing. Both features have dedicated functions buttons. Picture settings include Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Color Temperature, and Skin Tone. There's also Smart View option that is supposed to prevent color shifting when the panel is tilted or when viewing from an angle, but it really isn't necessary with this panel as viewing angle performance is quite good. In fact, I found that blacks were lighter with Smart View enabled, so if you may want to leave this option disabled.

Additional settings include Sharpness and Aspect ratio control, Dynamic contrast ratio, Input select, and ECO mode. The ECO mode has only two settings; On and Off. With ECO is disabled the monitor used 33-watts of power, but that dropped to 25-watts when I enabled ECO mode, which made the picture dimmer. Even at 25-watts the VS229H's IPS panel can't match the energy efficiency of TN panels such as the one used on the Lenovo LS2421P Wide ($219.99 direct, 4 stars), which used just 16 watts of power.

Performance
As with most IPS panels, the VS229H-P delivers awesome color quality. Swatches from the DisplayMate Color Scales test were sharp and clearly defined without appearing oversaturated. Skin tones were spot-on and blacks were nice and dark. Grayscale performance was quite good for a monitor in this price range, with only a touch of compression at the extreme ends of the scale. Off angle viewing was as advertised; colors looked the same from the side as they did from dead center, and the screen remained bright when viewed from either side.

The panel's 5-millisecond (gray-to-gray) pixel response did a relatively good job of displaying fast motion sequences from Need for Speed: Carbon while connected to my PS3. There was a trace of motion blur here and there, but if you're not actively looking for it chances are it'll go unnoticed. Likewise, scenes from the BBC production of Planet Earth on Blu-ray looked fabulous. Highlight and shadow detail was sharp and the picture was clean and played smoothly.

The Asus VS229H-P is an excellent value for a 21.5-inch budget monitor. For $160 you get the rich, robust color quality that only an IPS panel can deliver, as well as wide viewing angles and solid grayscale performance. Granted, it can't reproduce shades of grays as accurately as the NEC MultiSync EA232WMi ($299 list, 4.5 stars), and it doesn't offer as many features either, but it's about half the price, which is why it is our Editors' Choice for budget monitors.

COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the Asus VS229H-P with several other monitors side by side.

More monitor reviews:
•   BenQ EL2870U
•   BenQ EW3270U
•   Dell P3418HW
•   BenQ EW277HDR
•   LG 34UC89G-B
•  more