Product Reviews

It seems like only yesterday that 24 inch monitors came with four-figure price tags and garnered envious looks whenever they entered the building. Fast forward to today, and you may not believe the price, but we can assure you it's no misprint. This really is a two-foot monitor costing just £233, and it displays a massive 1920x1200 pixels.

If you're looking for cut corners, it won't take long to find them. The solitary input on the back is an analogue VGA port, rather than a digital DVI connector to feed unadulterated output from your PC. There's not even a 3.5mm audio jack, since the screen doesn't include speakers. The stand is also fixed; you can tilt it to meet your eyeline, but you can't

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raise or lower it.

So we know what we're getting: a vanilla product that just does the basic thing it's supposed to do with the minimum of fuss. But how well does it do it? Rather ordinarily, as it turns out. We have to admit the analogue signal wasn't noticeably inferior to DVI models, but in other areas it performs poorly. The backlight was uneven, with much of the brightness coming only in the centre of the screen, leaving the edges dark and dirty. And there was just no vibrancy to the colours, making games and movies an uninspiring experience. Thanks to a response time of 5ms, fast motion is handled without trouble, but this is not an entertainment monitor.

For everyday desktop use, we can see the appeal. Windows are sharp and text documents won't blind you with brightness, and the 1920x1200 resolution is certainly comfortable. If all you want is a cheap way to get a huge desktop, a no-frills analogue model like this may do the job.

But even at this relatively low price, the BenQ G2400WA falls in the same range as the best of the current 22 inch crop. And when you consider that the step up from 22 to 24 inches really isn't a giant one, we'd much rather shell out less money for a slightly smaller screen with great image quality and all the bells and whistles.