AG NEOVO X-20AV review

AG Neovo's range of LCD monitors is one of the most distinctive on the market, and the 20" X-20AV certainly makes an impact on any desk.

Its aluminium base tilts back to aim the screen at the user, and the screen itself has a glass front, which gives it an air of luxury. It also means that reflections from lights and windows are far more of a problem than with most LCD screens - if you sit with your back to a window, you'll find it a real pain.

The back of the display includes S-video and composite inputs as well as the usual D-sub and DVI computer inputs. Add a digital TV tuner for £50 and you've got a seriously posh LCD TV. You'll need to add speakers as well, though - although the X-20AV has an audio input and AG Neovo's SRS Wow audio processing, you have to feed the signal back out to your own speakers.

Plugging the display into a PC was an alarming experience: the picture quality was really quite bad, with a serious lack of sharpness and washed-out colours. Tuning the image improved matters, but the side-mounted controls made it a fiddly task, and the best image we could achieve was still below average. The sharpness control doesn't quite manage an acceptable middle ground between a fuzzy picture and a strange, exaggerated contrast. We encountered a similar problem with Iiyama's E511S, which leads us to suspect that the same panel has been used. However, the AG Neovo's colour accuracy on its best settings is poor compared to that of the Iiyama (and most other LCDs we've seen), with the X-20AV skewing colours and showing clear evidence of banding.

This screen makes a great first impression, but you can get a much better 20" LCD for a lot less cash.

Author: Ben Pitt