TFT Monitors

If you still haven't thrown out that old CRT monitor then now's the time; TFT displays have never been so good. They're becoming cheaper and more stylish all the time, screen-blur is no longer an issue and performance is improving across the board.

At bottom end of the price scale, 17in TFTs are the sweet spot. While 19in 4:3 screens have their fans, we'd still argue that, without any increase in resolution from the 1,280 x 1,024 of a standard 17in, you're paying more for a display with inferior definition. With 17in displays available for just over £100, they're ideal for your cost-conscious system. Meanwhile, at the mid-range and upper end of the market, the 19in TFT is also under fire from a new breed of widescreen monitor. With 20in or more of cinematic goodness, these widescreen displays with their 16:10 aspect ratio give your games a larger canvas to play out, and are more suited to movie playback than the old 4:3 screens. You don't need to compromise on brightness, colour or contrast, and fierce competition means that prices are dropping. While your mates splash out big-time on a new games console and matching HDTV, you can put one of these babies together with your PC, and show them what high-resolution gaming really means.

With monitors ranging from bargain-basement 17in panels to lavish widescreen stunners, there's something for everyone here. So whether you're putting together a brand-new system or just looking to upgrade your old monitor, the smart thing to do is read on.

There is a scientific way to test monitors, using specialist software, colour meters and luminance tests, but we feel the best way to review displays is through plenty of real-world use; until we've seen how well a monitor copes with the most demanding applications, games and movies, we won't feel happy recommending it. We also use a technical test program, DisplayMate (www.displaymate.com). It's helpful to know that screen X has trouble separating dark colours from black, that screen Y has a limited colour palette or that screen Z can't cope with lighter near-white tints, which is why we make individual comments in reviews and provide an overall technical score.

However, we won't present you with an unreadable table of individual scores, because we think you'd rather know how each TFT performs while you play games, watch movies or browse the Web. And because we have an eye on the future, we've also tested this year's batch with high-definition footage. On a 22in TFT, standard definition just seems a little bit, well, standard these days.

All of the tests were carried out after using DisplayMate's basic contrast and brightness setup screens in order to optimise performance. Colour settings and specialist modes were set to the most appropriate options - games for games, theatre, movie or multimedia for films - or left at the default, although we experimented to find out which options worked best. Each test was performed at the native resolution with the colour depth set to 32-bit.

DVD MOVIES

We chose this year's test DVD - 'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire' - for two sequences that challenge any screen on which they're played. The first of these, the dragon trial, is a feast of high-speed movement and textural detail, rapidly showing up any signs of smearing, and giving us a chance to see how the screen copes both with subdued tones and brighter colours. The second segment, the underwater trial in Hogwarts lake, requires the monitor to take a mass of murky, low-contrast imagery and make the most of any subtle textures and submerged architectural detail it can find.

HD FOOTAGE

To give the displays a high-definition workout, we used two samples. The first is a 720p trailer for the IMAX presentation 'MacGillivray Freeman's Journey Into Amazing Caves'. This not only incorporates a mass of fine detail, it also asks the TFTs to handle tricky areas of light and shadow. Our second choice is a little more exciting: the HD trailer for '300', next year's film adaptation of Frank Miller's 'Spartans v Persians' comic-book epic. With its gritty, stylised imagery and heavily processed colour, it makes the screens fight hard for every point.

GAMES

Doom 3 engine games are still the sternest test of how well a display handles bright lights, textures and low-end contrast, and Prey is no exception. The repulsive industrial-organic imagery doesn't just give us nightmares, it also gives our panels a few scares too.

And to see how each screen copes at the other end of the spectrum, we also took them for a few laps in Need for Speed: Most Wanted, the sun-drenched racer with the most extreme blinding light effects around. If a TFT can handle this high-speed racer without any blur, then it will take any game you throw at it.

EVERYDAY

As we aren't professional photographers, perfect colour fidelity isn't our prime concern. However, we want a monitor that can handle everyday tasks, and we also want to ensure that when you present your latest digital camera shots, they look sharp, well exposed and full of colour (admittedly easier with shots of the Amalfi Coast than with snaps from Skegness). We checked for sharp text display and a bright, comfortable desktop, and worked through a variety of five megapixel digital photos to check whether our displays could deal with skin tones, architectural detail, atmospheric skies and different landscapes. We also compared viewing angles across the group; this is particularly important with the widescreen displays, which may be used as the main display in a small-room media PC setup.

Finally, we used Wilfried Welti's handy Pixel Performance Analysis utility to provide some technical data on how resistant the displays are to smearing. All of these factors were combined into a final everyday score.