Verdict: The cheapest TFT by a wide margin

You're not alone if you've ever been tempted to save a few quid by buying a keenly priced AOC monitor. The company's TFTs are popular among many of the enthusiast-oriented retailers, so we decided to throw the AOC LM-720A in at the deep end this month. After all, it costs over £50 less than the next cheapest monitor, a saving well worth investigating.

Not that we had huge hopes for this monitor, as it uses a panel with a 25ms response time rather than the 16ms that's the de facto standard among its rivals. That said, 25ms was considered quick just a year ago, so we were keen to put the LM-720A to the test with a few games. First signs weren't too promising, but that had more to do with all the detail we couldn't see in the shadows. As there's no gamma control in the rather basic OSD either we had to go through the annoyance of going into the graphics card's driver properties.

Fortunately, lag isn't a huge problem. True, we noticed the lag after playing games on the 16ms screens, but it's bearable. The same can't be said of its DVD playback, which is by far the worst here. Not only did it struggle to keep up with fast-moving action, but artefacts were so noticeable that we could hardly bear to watch.

Despite the fact it uses an analog rather than digital connection, the image is nice and sharp and photos look good. Its only real day-to-day problem is the mediocre viewing angles, which can make the screen look unevenly lit.

But let's not get too picky - this screen still offers plenty of advantages over a 19in CRT, and it's not that much more expensive either. And, to be fair, we expect most people who bought the LM-720A would be quite happy with its performance - in fact, four of the office PCs used by Custom PC's staff have this TFT attached, and we still play far too many games for our own health. The trouble will come when you go to a mate's house and he's using an Iiyama ProLite E431S ...

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• PSUs - 14th July 2008

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