LG Flatron L1720B

We wouldn't be surprised if LG had poached an Apple designer or two to help with its latest batch of Flatrons, as the L1720B's stylish black-and-silver look is a cut above the competition. Just to emphasise its swish nature, there's even a backlit blue power button on show, with all the OSD's controls hidden away under the bezel lest they spoil its clean lines.

Fortunately, looks aren't the only good thing about this display. The 17in TFT panel boasts a 16ms response time, which means that fast-moving images won't suffer from lag. This was true of all the games we tried this panel with, and if you use 32-bit colour expect the likes of Unreal Tournament 2003 to look fantastic.

If you want a TFT for DVD viewing, you'll be more disappointed. Although the L1720B had no trouble with fast action, it suffered from the usual problem of artefacts. This isn't a panel for the colour purist either, as it fell far behind the Iiyama ProLite E431S (see below) in our DisplayMate tests. In particular, it struggled with colour and greyscale intensities, failing to distinguish between the brightest whites, greens, reds and blues.

Fortunately, these limitations aren't obvious in everyday use. Photos look good, with realistic colours, while the bright image means your eyes won't tire even after a long day in front of the monitor. It also offers excellent focus, with none of the jitter that used to plague TFTs when hooked up to analog inputs.

Indeed, the main problem with analog rather than digital inputs - and the reason we mourn the absence of a DVI input on this monitor - is the setup process. Thankfully, LG largely overcomes this by bundling Colorific, a utility that makes it much easier to set up contrast, brightness and colours.

Some might also mourn the omission of speakers, but LG is clearly concentrating on the basics with the Flatron. As such, we hoped for a competitive price, but unfortunately when we asked the online retailers for their projected prices the lowest quote was £289 from Simply, compared to £282 for the Iiyama E431S. Unless the street price drops to significantly below the Iiyama, there's little reason to choose the L1720B other than style.

Author: Tim Danton