Product Reviews

BenQ's 24in widescreen FP241WZ wouldn't look out of place in an office, with its plain, businesslike silver surround and black stand. However, hiding behind this bland exterior is an exciting range of inputs that suit the FP241WZ to most PC and entertainment uses.

Along with DVI and D-sub inputs, it also has HDMI, component, composite and S-video connectors and a three-port USB2 hub. The HDMI and DVI ports are HDCP compliant, so when film studios start to produce restricted material, you won't have any trouble playing it on this display. The array of connections makes it compatible with most devices found in living rooms today, including Sky HD boxes, Blu-ray and HD DVD players, and the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles.

The FP241WZ has a 16:10 aspect ratio with a native resolution of 1,920x1,200 pixels, rather than the standard 1080p aspect ratio of 16:9 with a native resolution of 1,920x1,080. You can either stretch HD video slightly to fit, which isn't very noticeable, or watch it at the correct resolution with thin

HD movie clips looked excellent on the FP241WZ. Detail was sharp and well defined, even in the darkest areas of the screen. We tested the monitor using both the preset Movie mode and the standard settings. Colours were richer in Movie mode and had more impact. Games played at the full resolution looked great.

This may be because the monitor arrives with all its settings optimised to play games and watch movies. As a result, when it displays still images, such as the Windows desktop, there's a noticeable flicker and text appears to have a halo, making words difficult to read. The manual doesn't make it immediately obvious how to fix this, but eventually we found that we needed to change the display mode to Standard and turn off BenQ's PerfectMotion feature. Thankfully, dedicated buttons on the side of the display let you toggle these settings so you can quickly change between work and play. If you want to do both at once, the picture-in-picture settings allow you to watch a movie while you work.

The FP241WZ produces a crisp Windows desktop over both DVI and D-sub connections. Our greyscale transition test is particularly hard for monitors, but it posed no difficulty for the FP241WZ. The gradient was smooth, with almost no banding. The screen can pivot on to its side, and has a 45 swivel from side to side, while the telescopic stand raises the display to a height of 130mm.

This is a good, flexible display, but if you primarily need a PC monitor, the FP241WZ is just too expensive when you can buy a decent 22in widescreen display for £200.