Verdict: The style is beige and boring, but its performance is more than adequate for the price

There are no prizes for guessing which is the cheapest display on test - whether you call it minimalist or simply plain, the X760A looks every inch the bargain-basement monitor. On the plus side, the unit looks clean and feels quite robust. On the negative side, the tilt mechanism is horribly stiff, while the colour would be more at home in a corporate call centre than your study or bedroom.

One factor that keeps the look so simple is the absence of buttons on the sizable sculpted frame; the controls are situated on the right-hand side behind the bezel. Usually, this is a disaster, but CTX has made the buttons so enormous and clicky that it's hard to miss them, and the sensible OSD menu system, using two buttons to cycle through options and one to select, is relatively intuitive. The menu only allows for basic adjustments, but luckily that's all this screen really needs.

You see, first impressions weren't all that promising, particularly as this is one of only two monitors on test without a DVI connection. If CTX was desperate to cut costs, it would have been smarter to leave out the concealed speakers which, being weedy and painfully brash, are better left both unseen and unheard.

However, despite the analogue D-SUB connection, the image quality is surprisingly good. In desktop use, the clarity is acceptable, and colours are richer and more vibrant than the 300cd/m2 luminance rating and 700:1 contrast ratio would suggest. The screen struggled to resolve the darkest and lightest tones in the white-level and black-level saturation tests, but photo reproduction wasn't too disgraceful. Perhaps the more subtle colour shifts were missing in the HD video tests, but detail was crisp, and in 'Harry Potter' we saw deeper tones than you might expect from a non-gloss screen.

Even in games we were pleasantly surprised. The CTX coped well with the metallic tones and energy beams of Prey, although shadow detail wasn't exactly forthcoming, and the overbright HDR in Need for Speed: Most Wanted came thick and fast, with no signs of blurring. There's no getting over the unit's minimal features and boring looks, but if you must have a monitor this cheap, this one does its job quite well. sa

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