Philips 200W6

Regular readers of PC Pro will remember Philips' 200W6 won the Labs Winner award in our recent group test of 20in panels. And even in this company, it proved almost as hard to beat.

No other monitor here can match the Philips on price, and with generally impressive image quality as displayed in our tests the 200W6 was a clear winner. The DVD test was where the Philips showed its best performance, with superb skin tones and a good level of brightness. For group viewing, off-axis colours are a bit pale on dark scenes, but hold their warmth superbly in colourful scenes.

The integrated speakers don't provide a great deal of bass, but they'll handle most audio with no problems as the volume is reasonably high. A headphone socket is surprisingly rare in this group, while video can be connected via DVI-D or VGA - cables for both are included in the box. There's also a single USB port located at the bottom of the left side.

If you need to adjust the panel, it can be raised, swivelled or tilted, and there's a cable-tidy slot to keep your desk clutter-free. In the OSD, the Original Color setting gave us as near to a perfect picture as we could get - better and brighter than sRGB - but if you prefer to tinker there are also two temperature settings and a user-configurable option.

The 200W6 produced pleasantly vivid colours in Far Cry, although we saw a little smearing when turning side to side. Even with a 16ms response time, it scored poorly in our response-time test. In actual gameplay, this didn't prove any more of a distraction than on other models, but those who simply can't stand any ghosting should look at the Acer.

The 200W6 remains a reasonably good choice if you want to edit images, but professionals should choose the Eizo. This is because whites are bright but have a slight blue cast and this also shows up in the coldness of grey tones. But the general black level is good (contrast is rated at 600:1) compared to similarly priced models on test, and we saw no bright patches at the edges of the screen, even in a dark room.

Another surprise is the three-year on-site warranty, which makes the 200W6 even better value. Add the SmartManage software and the Philips starts looking attractive to businesses too.

If image quality is your only concern, the Acer and Apple are both better 20in panels, but their prices take them out of the running. As such, the Philips remains on the A List.