Verdict: A good screen,but stupidly overpriced and outgunned by the competition

How things change. Back in October , we were all in praise of the Dell UltraSharp 2007WFP, thanks to its fine performance and aggressive price point, but now, in such august company as the NEC 20WGX2 and the Philips 200WP, we're less impressed. It isn't that the Dell has become worse - in terms of clarity, it's up there with the very best - but the competition is just too good.

It's a smartly designed monitor, with a simple style and a solid but manoeuvrable stand that enables you to adjust the screen to a comfortable height. The buttons are obvious and the menu system is fairly intuitive. No money has been wasted on rubbish speakers, and the unit has a fine range of inputs at the back, including DVI, D-SUB, S-Video and composite video connections, plus two USB ports on the back and another two on the right-hand side of the frame. You can switch display modes between desktop, multimedia and gaming, and there's a Picture in Picture option if you want to view two sources at the same time.

Performance is certainly good, but is it the stuff of greatness? No. The Dell's biggest selling point is clarity, but its grip of the extremes of the tonal range isn't as tight as that of the NEC, Belinea or Philips monitors, and we noticed some banding in the colour and greyscale ramp tests. It can't match the aforementioned screens for brightness either, so the Dell lacked welly in our real-world tests.

When it comes to DVD playback, Harry's trials looked more dynamic on the NEC and Philips screens, while the Belinea had more natural colour balance. Photo tests were similarly affected.

In games, the Dell fared better. Perhaps Prey looked soft compared with the NEC's bold presentation, but there was little difference in terms of detail or colour, and the handling of movement is wonderfully precise. The only thing that lets down the Dell is a lack of intensity in the brightest highlights - an issue that we also noticed on the sun-drenched streets of Need for Speed: Most Wanted.

As you probably know, the price of this monitor yo-yos all the time, and it's still worth a look if you can get it for a song but, at Dell's current retail price, we can't give it our approval.

• Cases - 21st November 2008
• Motherboards - 24th October 2008
• Gaming Headsets - 26th September 2008
• Dream PCs - 24th September 2008
• Headphones - 12th September 2008
• Media PC components - 22nd August 2008
• PSUs - 14th July 2008

• OCZ Core Series 30GB - Hard disks / storage
• Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB - Hard disks / storage
• Asus EAH4870 TOP - Graphics cards
• Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro - Sound cards
• Multiwinia - Games
• Zotac GeForce GTX 260² - Graphics cards
• Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2 - Graphics cards