LG Flatron L245WP

The 24in TFT has been through its teething phase, and now we regularly see accomplished models with all the bells and whistles. LG's L245WP is reasonably stylish with its blend of matte bodywork and gloss stand, all in black to fit either the living room or the study.

In appearance, it's similar to the BenQ FP241W, and the stand is every bit as adjustable: 100mm upwards with a locking key to hold it in place, almost 360-degree swivelling, 90-degree pivot to portrait mode and the usual tilt hinge. The base is huge, so you needn't worry about stability, and the controls are neatly positioned beneath the front-left bezel for easy access.

But you shouldn't need to adjust much when you hook it up to your video source thanks to an HDMI port on the back. Sky HD boxes, PlayStation 3 and any early-adopted HD players will plug straight in, and for PC users LG bundles a DVI-HDMI cable so you won't need to shell out for the adapters. There's even a choice of Video or PC mode, which tweaks the display to match the slightly different screen sizes and resolutions of each.

We're pleased to say that image quality is generally good. Gradients were smooth in both our colour and greyscale ramps, and a large amount of detail showed up in darker areas of our test videos. We had no complaints with the black or white levels, but we couldn't help noticing a slight reddish tinge when we used the 6,500K setting. Switching to User mode and lowering the red level a little helped.

We also noticed a very slight amount of blurring in fast-moving scenes, which we didn't expect from a monitor with an 8ms response time. Plus, the overall image lacked the sharpness of the A-Listed BenQ, possibly due to the anti-glare film on the surface of the screen.

But these are minor complaints, and the LG L245WP costs significantly less than our A-Listed model. It's adjustable, good-looking and offers the cutting-edge connections that today's devices need. Just keep the BenQ in mind when you go price hunting.

Author: David Bayon