Verdict: Hits the sweet spot in terms of price and performance

Despite strong offerings from Asus, NEC and Philips, it's an old friend that carries off this category's prize. The reason? The Belinea 10 20 35W offers a genuinely excellent level of performance for one of the lowest price tags in this category and, in our eyes, this makes it a bargain that's impossible to beat.

The styling isn't as eye-catching as that of the NEC, nor is the Belinea as big, black and imperious as the Asus screen, but we've grown to like its subtle two-tone design. Plus, ergonomically speaking, the height and position of the screen make sense. Admittedly, the frame could be lighter if Belinea jettisoned the speakers, and frankly, nobody would miss them. While they're far from the worst on test, they sound like units lifted from a cheap 1980s boombox. Interestingly, we managed to switch them to mute during testing, and then struggled to find out how to un-mute them in the OSD menus. Otherwise, the four-button system is intuitive to use, and there's an effective range of adjustments.

The Belinea isn't big on fancy features or unusual AV sockets - £275 only buys you DVI and D-SUB inputs - and it seems strange to integrate a USB hub in the unit, and then bury the connections around the back. Nor are there any exotic image modes to play with; brightness, colour temperature and contrast are pretty much your lot. However, we might argue that you don't need these things when the panel is so good.

The Belinea can capture both the darkest greys and the lightest greys at the same contrast setting, and, while it doesn't reach the extremes of brightness offered by the NEC 20WGX2, it certainly goes high enough. Banding in the colour and greyscale ramp tests was minimal, and the panel did a good job of reproducing the full colour gamut. We had some minor issues with black colour purity - light bleeds in from the edge of the screen, although the effect isn't noticeable in real-world use - but otherwise the test results were very good.

During everyday desktop use, we were again reminded why we liked this screen to begin with. The picture is sharp, whites are strong and white, and the image is always lively. In the photo tests, the Belinea produced warmer flesh tones and more natural colours than the NEC, albeit at the cost of a little definition. Subtle tonal shifts in the background that some monitors missed entirely were also clearly visible. The Belinea's vertical viewing angles aren't quite as good as those of the Asus or NEC, but the horizontal angles can certainly bear the comparison.

In DVD playback, we were again impressed by the fine colour balance. The NEC beats it for clarity, but we were pleased with the way that the Belinea handled movement. It was a similar story in our HD playback tests. In 'Amazing Caves', the image was almost indistinguishable from that of the NEC. If there was a distinction, it was in the added richness of the shadows on the latter display but, in terms of colour balance and detail, the Belinea holds up well. The trailer for '300', meanwhile, looked stunning, with the stylised, grainy comic-book imagery almost leaping out of the screen.

Nor would gamers be unhappy with the Belinea's results. The Belinea handled everything Prey threw at it, from the darkest shadow to the brightest light, and the monitor's added shadow detail compensated for the slight dampening of the slick sheen of the NEC. In Need for Speed: Most Wanted, the Belinea was neck-and-neck with the NEC, thanks to sleek, blur-free movement and a surprising amount of detail in the overblown highlights. Interestingly, in all of these tests, the panel's performance was highly reminiscent of the Philips Brilliance 200WP7ES, with only a whisker separating the two.

Had the NEC, the Philips and the Belinea been more similarly priced, deciding on our winner would have been difficult. However, given the more wallet-friendly price tag of the Belinea, we're happy to name it the victor in this Labs test. If we had the money, the NEC would be the monitor that we'd take home but, on an average salary, the Belinea makes the most sense.

• 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