Verdict: In a different league in terms of performance, and a different universe for price.

You're almost certainly already in shock, having seen the price at the top of this review. Yes, this 24in monitor really does cost over £1,400. However, before you skip to the next product, consider this: the Eizo ColorEdge has the best image quality of any TFT in this test, although Eizo charges a silly amount of money for the privilege.

The ColorEdge completely trounced all comers in our synthetic DisplayMate tests. Awesome contrast was visible at both ends of the brightness range, revealing much finer levels of grey and white than any other TFT this month. Blacks were completely black, while whites remained white, without much adjustment required. This TFT has the best dynamic range of any screen on test this month by a very wide margin, thanks to its 16-bit greyscale processing.

The ColorEdge did a sterling job with moving images too, despite offering a relatively standard 6ms response time. Its performance was impressive across the board in our real-life tests. The shadowy areas in Prey showed far more detail than any other TFT except Dell's 2407WFP-HC, and Need for Speed: Carbon's garish colours looked the most vibrant. There was the slightest hint of sluggishness in the most frantic racing, but there are worse TFTs in this Labs test.

Movies presented no problems though. The ColorEdge provided the most faithful reproduction of our Blu-ray movie, with every subtle colour gorgeously rendered. 'The Return of the King' DVD sequence was similarly impressive, with all the nuances of the predominately brown battle scene clearly visible. Photos looked absolutely stunning, with a much broader tonal range than other TFTs. This is hardly surprising, considering that the target market of the ColorEdge are photo editors and graphics artists, not gamers.

As befits its high-end orientation, the ColorEdge sports twin DVI connections, although these are DVI-I rather than DVI-D, so you can use a D-SUB graphics card with an adaptor. A two-port USB hub is available on the rear.

Unless you spend all day editing digital photos, you're highly unlikely to buy this monitor when you could pick up four Iiyama B2403WS panels, or three Dell 2407WFP-HCs, for the same money. Nevertheless, if you want to see what good TFT image quality looks like, feast your eyes on the sumptuous Eizo ColorEdge CG241W. It even has a chunky five-year warranty. If only it were cheaper - a lot cheaper.

• Gaming Headsets - 26th September 2008
• Dream PCs - 24th September 2008
• Headphones - 12th September 2008
• Media PC components - 22nd August 2008
• PSUs - 14th July 2008
• Multi-GPU graphics - 20th June 2008
• CPU water cooling - 17th June 2008

• Creative Zen X-Fi with Wireless LAN 16GB - Peripherals
• DFI Lanparty DK P45-T2RS PLUS - Motherboards
• Hyundai W240D-PVA - TFT monitors
• Intel X25-M Mainstream SATA SSD - Hard disks / storage
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky - Games
• LanCool Metal-Boned K10 - Cases
• Asus Maximus II Formula - Motherboards