AG Neovo E-W22 review

Protective monitors are ideal for public places such as schools or libraries - they have a thick layer of glass over the fragile panel that can withstand knocks, scratches and idiots. AG Neovo hopes this model will attract home users as well.

The E-W22 isn't a bad monitor. In the right room lighting - specifically, rather dim - the image quality can be perfectly good, with a decent white level and a good enough response time to keep up with movies and games. But turn on any sort of ambient illumination, and the glass gives everything an unfortunate purple hue, including the reflection of your own face that you'll see permanently looming from the screen.

Whether due to the glass or the panel itself, our gradient ramp tests showed significant banding, indicating poor colour blending, and the contrast on our white test screen was poor, with light shades of grey blending into the background too easily. This made our movie tests a bit of a chore; Pixar's Cars lacked its usual vivid colours, and some scenes in Lord of the Rings had murky shadows and washed out skies. The Windows desktop wasn't too bad, though, and for basic document editing and web browsing it would be fine.

There's a DVI port with HDCP compliance, so you can show movies from a Blu-ray equipped PC or standalone player, and a VGA port for older video sources, and you also get a fairly strong pair of 2W speakers built in. But with a price tag nudging £300, these features aren't enough to rescue the AG Neovo's value rating. Top quality 22 inch screens can now be had for well under £250, often with great styling and lots of extras. The E-22W doesn't even have a fully adjustable stand.

The protective glass is a great idea, but with limited appeal, so unless your screen is constantly faced with a stream of hyperactive (or just clumsy) assailants, you don't need to be spending this much money. If you've got £300 to spare, you could stretch to a 24 inch model instead.