ViewSonic VP730

After nearly a year on our A List, the VP171s has reached the end of its life, but its replacement - the VP730 - offers a number of tweaks and improvements.

One feature we love is the height-adjustable stand. There's still no locking mechanism, but there's enough friction to keep it at whatever height you want. Vertical travel is a massive 135mm, while the stand allows the monitor to swivel through 270 degrees. The panel also rotates through 90 degrees into portrait mode, although the restricted viewing angles in this position make it only suitable for occasional use.

Image quality is still paramount, and the VP730 does well to match its predecessor. Horizontal viewing angles are generous enough for a couple of people to view at once, while our bandwidth tests, which show a variety of moire patterns designed to induce pixel jitter, produced a beautifully steady image.

The only complaint was that our greyscale saturation tests showed both light and dark shades of grey turning to white and black a little too readily. This means areas on the screen that are very dark or light will lack fine detail, but unless you're a graphics professional it won't be a significant gripe. On the plus side, the 8ms response time follows through to smooth performance across the board while gaming or viewing fast action films.

Like the VP171s, the VP730 has three inputs: one DVI and two D-SUB. You can choose which one to use via a simple push of a button, and it makes sharing one monitor between multiple PCs easy. The menu interface itself is intuitive, although in sRGB mode over DVI there aren't many options to change beyond colour temperature.

The most noteworthy aspect of the VP730 is its price: it's virtually unchanged from that of its must-have predecessor and yet offers worthwhile improvements. Other monitors, such as the Samsung 730BF, are tempting when they cost £30 less, but the ViewSonic is a superior overall package and thus replaces its predecessor on the A List.

Author: Dave Stevenson