Verdict: Bottom of the luxury panel pile

One thing is clear with the 20in monitors: in most cases, that extra inch seems to cost you a whole lot of style. While we were taken with the handsome futuristic looks of the 19in LG Flatron L1980Q, the L2013P is a bit of a munter.

The L1980Q looks as though it was designed by someone with a bit of flair, while the L2013P looks like it was simply engineered. If so, at least it works on an ergonomic level, with nearly 10cm of height adjustment, a whacking 350 degrees of swivel and 25 degrees of tilt.

Sadly, little else is up to scratch. As is the fashion these days, the LG offers several different modes - text, movie and photo - under the banner Light View, and even includes Day and Night variations to cope with different lighting conditions. However, they all seem oddly dim, and it's the User setting with the brightness pumped up that delivers the best results. Worse, with a DVI input, you can only adjust the brightness level - all other requests to adjust picture controls receive a stroppy 'Digital Video Input - No Access' message.

This is a shame, as the L2013P fared poorly in our technical tests. It showed visible grey patterns in the pixel tracking and timing tests - the only monitor in the Labs test to do so - and made a poor job of resolving the matrix patterns in our focus and detail tests.

White and grey level saturation was good, and colour handling was perfectly adequate, but we're still left with concerns over quality. If viewed in isolation, we might be prepared to accept the general desktop and photo editing performance, but after seeing the Sony, NEC and ViewSonic displays, images on the L2013P look fuzzy and indistinct.

On the other hand, DVD and game performance was respectable. 'Bad Boys 2' looked suitably cinematic, with natural colours that weren't too strident, and a reasonable level of detail. Doom 3 was also very playable; although the panel lacked the vibrant contrast and strong definition of the Sony, ViewSonic and NEC monitors, it was still an immersive experience. This might lead us to recommend it to rich gamers but for one thing: it's similarly priced to the superior NEC, and only £30 less expensive than the best of the 20in TFTs - the ViewSonic VP201b.

• 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

• 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
• Scan 3XS X58 Core i7 - Desktop PCs