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To get a monitor with this resolution in our last displays group test (see Shopper 243) you had to spend at least £257, with the average cost being nearer £450. However, those monitors only measure 24in across, and the 27.5in HG281DP looks like a giant in comparison. It's like having a decent sized TV sitting just three feet away on your desktop.

This monitor has over 2.3 million pixels, around double

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what you'd get from a standard 26in or 32in TV. The huge desktop is very handy if you like to run multiple applications, or complex ones like a video editing package.

Input options are fairly basic with only VGA and HDMI provided. A DVI socket would have been handy too, so that you could connect a PC and a games console for example. Instead you'll have to fiddle around with a DVI-to-HDMI adaptor to get a digital connection from most PCs. There's a minijack audio-in for the 2.5W stereo speakers, or alternatively you can take audio from the HDMI input. Either way, the speakers aren't powerful enough to do justice to the huge images displayed.

Our initial impressions of image quality have been acceptable. It's very bright, but contrast and colour accuracy aren't good enough to recommend it for photo manipulation work. We imagine it will be most welcome on the desks of gamers, who will revel in its huge resolution at a low cost. We'll bring you a full review in Shopper 248.