CTX P772

CTX's latest screen is aimed at the office market, and the company has clearly concentrated its efforts on the ergonomics. First, there's the hefty stand - this monitor isn't going to be knocked over easily, even with the generous 180mm height adjustment at full stretch. There's also comprehensive backwards and forwards tilt and swivel, as well as rotation into portrait mode.

It's even VESA wall-mount compatible - unusual for a TFT of this size. Wall mounting is also made easier by the integrated power supply, so you won't need an external power brick. The rear panel contains the usual D-SUB and DVI-D inputs, both of which are non-captive.

Turning to image quality, we had no complaints during general office work, with a good level of contrast and clarity on both D-SUB and DVI inputs. It's not the brightest panel we've seen but, even in our sunny office, we were able to work without distraction thanks to an extremely low-reflection screen.

However, when comparing it to our hot favourite, the Iiyama ProLite E431S, there was a noticeable purple tinge to greys, and this became more evident in our technical tests. Even setting contrast and colour temperature manually, we were unable to get the panel to effectively distinguish from similar shades at the extremes of the spectrum. There was also notable banding on supposedly smooth colour gradations. While you're unlikely to notice this in general use, it's an issue when editing digital images or proofing important graphic documents.

More of an everyday issue is the slight pixel jitter over the D-SUB input; we found the auto-adjust needed to be run every time the panel was switched on. Making adjustments isn't something to look forward to either, thanks to CTX's eccentric menu system. A lot of button poking is required just to reach the most common options, and note the lack of a dedicated volume control for the built-in speakers.

The aforementioned Iiyama E431S TFT offers far better technical performance, but the P772 may win fans. While this panel doesn't stand up to close technical scrutiny, it's adequate for everyday office use, and there's a lot to be said for the P772's excellent ergonomics.

Author: Ross Burridge