Asus MS236H review

It's not often a monitor can claim to look as desirable from behind as it does from the front, but the Asus MS236H almost looks like two different devices. It's both a sleek, black mirror of glossiness when viewed normally, and a retro piece of art when you feast your eyes on the Apple-white rear with its looping stand. It's gorgeous.

The stand clips on in seconds and, aided by a tiny triangle of plastic to act as a stopper, it can be gently rocked back or forward, stopping steady at the required angle. As stands go it's as minimal as can be, yet it works beautifully and takes up a mere 150mm or so of the depth of your desk. The body itself is extremely thin, with the trade-off being a small external power supply, hardly a major sticking point with looks like this. It comes with a choice of HDMI or VGA inputs - with an HDMI-DVI cable in the box - and there's a 3.5mm headphone output available if you're using HDMI.

The front is all-black with just a hint of the white rear framing the outside. The only features are an Asus logo beneath the left of the screen and a circular power button to the right, but a touch-sensitive control panel glows into life when pressed. It's a little unresponsive, which made early tweaks frustrating, but once you've got that process out of the way the vanishing controls help keep the clean look far better than a set of buttons would.

We did need to make some changes out of the box, though. Using the Standard preset, the black level was poor, lending even the moodiest colours a pale, washed out tone. Switching to Theatre mode solved that, with much deeper blacks and far better contrast throughout our tests - we'd leave it in that mode at all times for best results.

It's still a tad pale next to the best TN panels, but colours were generally accurate and gradients were smooth. Viewing angles are good and the 2ms response time made for a pleasant gaming experience. If we have a complaint it's that the backlight is a little patchy in places, which shows up on an all-white screen.

But a monitor like this is bought for its styling, and as long as the image quality is above average you're unlikely to be put off. The MS236H is as desirable as any desktop monitor we've seen, and the £167 price is only a small premium over a standard 23in 1080p monitor. If style matters most, you won't find much better.

Author: David Bayon