IBM T221 22.2" 3840x2400 LCD Monitor

by IBM

Product Details

• Item Weight: 40 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 40 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B00006HS5R
• Item model number: 9503DG3
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #187,233 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: February 2, 2002

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars IBM T221 - God's LCD, June 11, 2007

By 

Noel Bourke "Cros13" (Ireland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: IBM T221 22.2" 3840x2400 LCD Monitor (Personal Computers)

Ace of Spades has it all wrong.

This monitor is entirely unique.

Its resolution is double that of almost any LCD on the market.
4 1080 HD video streams tiled on screen with plenty of room to spare!
No other monitor on the market will fit even 2.
Its pixel density is higher than a 600dpi photo printer.

I just picked up one on ebay for a song but normally the resale value is circa 7000 - 8000 dollars.
These monitors are mainly used in defence (Satellite recon) and medical imaging sectors and are very sought after now that they are no longer made and no similar product exists.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The T-220 - Remarkable for specific uses, July 7, 2005

By 

Donald Otis - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: IBM T221 22.2" 3840x2400 LCD Monitor (Personal Computers)

I actually got to demonstrate the T-220 in a printing application at Xplor. The monitor is beyond a doubt the clearest I have ever seen. You can see the specifications at: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-4XWF7Y Notice that it has been replaced by the T-221, http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=MIGR-54982 .

The price has dropped from that original price, but is still hefty. You need this kind of monitor if you are involved in remote medical services (X-Ray reading, etc), preprint set up, or detailed CAD/CAM. If you are looking for a home device to surf E-Bay, this is not the device for you.

3.0 out of 5 stars Great monitor, if you really have a use for it, December 28, 2011

By 

Rick Koshi (Asheville, NC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: IBM T221 22.2" 3840x2400 LCD Monitor (Personal Computers)

I own one of these, having picked it up in 2003 for a project I was doing at the time. To the best of my knowledge, this monitor had the most pixels you could get on a single screen for any price. To the best of my knowledge, this is still true even today (late 2011). This is its biggest strength and, oddly, also its biggest weakness.

3840x2400. That's a LOT of pixels. 22.2" display. That's not a lot of area. So what you're getting here is a whole lot of pixels, crammed into an ordinary-sized monitor. If you have perfect eyes, you can fit a whole lot of data on the screen, and it will be beautifully sharp. You can make your browser window really tall and see way more of a page than ever before. You can make your browser window really wide and all the paragraphs will be one line long. You can fit six or eight pages of a document on the screen all at once. And you can fit a whole lot of windows on the screen, with barely any overlap. Unfortunately, this is a really uncomfortable way to read things. Everything is really small. So small, you probably can't read it without leaning really close and squinting.

In a nutshell, you CAN fit a lot of data on the screen at one time... but you don't want to.

As it happens, that's not what the monitor was designed for.

What it was designed for was to display images in beautifully high resolution. And it does this very very well. When you're displaying images, you mostly don't care to see individual pixels. Indeed, you specifically DON'T want to see individual pixels. Normal monitors show you (more-or-less) 100 pixels per inch. This doubles that, and you get (again, more-or-less) 200 pixels per inch. It's not the same as the 600 dpi you get out of a modern color printer, or even the 300 dpi you'd get out of an older color printer, but it's close enough for almost all purposes.

Of course, you have to ask yourself... Under what circumstances do you need that kind of clarity from your images? Chances are, if you're looking at pictures you've snapped on your digital camera, the camera shake inherent in not using a tripod introduces enough blurriness that you might as well be using a normal (and much cheaper) 100 ppi monitor. There's no practical difference. Of course, it's "nice" to know that you can display the full resolution that comes out of your camera without having it "reduced" to fit your screen, but realistically, unless you're a professional photographer with a tripod and excellent lighting, you'll probably never notice a difference.

So. From a purely practical standpoint, my experience is this: It's a really super-cool monitor demonstrating amazing technology. You've never seen anything like it. Plug this baby in and right away, you'll say "Wow!" And.... a week later you probably will have stopped using it. Because, you know... your eyes just aren't that good. And if you're going to resize everything back to a normal size, you've lost the whole point of the monitor.

And a few other niggling points: It has a fan. Yes, a monitor with a fan. Not a horribly loud fan, but still a fan. Also, it's heavy. Not as heavy as the old 19" CRTs that some of you may still remember, but still quite heavy for an LCD. If you want to mount it on a monitor arm (which I did), you'll need a very sturdy/expensive one. And finally, it can be a real pain to make it work at peak capacity. Yes, you can plug in a single DVI cable to a decent video card, and drive it at full resolution, 3840x2400. But it will be a really low refresh rate. Something like 12 (yes, 12) hertz. It's usable for text, but don't try videos, and forget about video games. To drive it higher (I believe the max is 48Hz, if you do everything perfectly right), you need to hook up two dual-link DVI-D cables and somehow convince your video card(s) to treat them as a single display. Many video cards will do this these days, but they can take some convincing and/or special drivers. I even got it to work on Linux, but again, it took special software. 48Hz might be OK for video, though I doubt it -- I'd expect some odd beating effects. Besides, what video would be any kind of useful (non-postage-stamp) resolution? I'm not really a gamer, so I don't know, but "maybe" you'd be willing to play games at this frame rate. But why bother? They'd probably look better on a 40-inch 1920x1024 hdtv anyway.

In a nutshell: If you have a very special purpose for which no other monitor will do, this might fit the bill for you. Don't plan on using it for your primary monitor, though, even if you do have a perfect use for it. It would drive you batty. Everything is just too small.

But it sure is cool.