Verdict: A decent performer, but too expensive compared with this month's company.

Less than a year ago, a 24in TFT for less than £500 would have seemed like an utter bargain. However, pricing quickly drops in the monitor world, and ViewSonic's VX2435wm appears to have been left behind compared with some of this month's contenders.

The VX2435wm isn't an outdated panel though. Its 8ms response may be the slowest this month, but it looks to the future by opting for HDMI instead of DVI for its digital input. This will make the panel more readily compatible with HDMI-enabled consoles and HD video players.

However, ViewSonic, being a sensible company, supplies a DVI-HDMI cable, so you can use its digital connection with your PC out of the box, as most graphics cards don't have an HDMI output. Otherwise, there's the venerable D-SUB as well, and a comprehensive set of multimedia inputs including composite, S-Video and component. The VX2435 also has vaguely reasonable built-in audio and two 3W speakers. Both mini-jack and two RCA audio connections are provided for input, although no USB hub is integrated.

Like its 22in sibling, the VX2435wm excelled in the static DisplayMate tests. Once we'd taken the trouble to adjust the brightness and contrast, the image exhibited good angles of vision, with excellent contrast between shades of grey at both ends of the brightness range. The ViewSonic couldn't quite match this month's Eizo for dynamic breadth, but it came close.

The dust-filled battle scenes from our 'The Return of the King' chapter were a little hazy, however, with the darkest regions insufficiently black. The VX2435wm coped a little better with our Blu-ray movie, showing better contrast between darker blacks, bright regions and richer colours. Even in this test, however, the image was marred by slight overexposure.

This suited Prey though; dark areas were more visible without obviously ruining overall colour richness. The VX2435wm exhibited some sluggishness in Need for Speed: Carbon, although the colour and contrast was pretty good. The 8ms response was clearly showing its downside here.

Unfortunately, with Samsung and Iiyama now offering 24in TFTs for well under £400, the VX2435wm seems a tad expensive. Although its image quality is generally quite reasonable, it isn't particularly good value for money, and neither is it the best choice for gaming.

• PSUs - 14th July 2008
• Multi-GPU graphics - 20th June 2008
• CPU water cooling - 17th June 2008
• Hard disks - 20th March 2008
• Audio hardware - 29th February 2008
• Graphics cards - 24th January 2008
• CPUs - 21st December 2007

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