BenQ VW2420H review

The only other criticism is that the image looked slightly cold, and no amount of tweaking of the colour temperature and other settings could completely eliminate this. There are plenty of controls, including individual red, green and blue channels and gamma, but the hue and saturation controls remained tantalisingly greyed-out. Preset colour modes include the ultra-dim Eco mode, Standard, Game, Movie, Photo and sRGB. You can cycle between these using one of the monitor’s buttons, which is handy as we found ourselves using the photo mode to view photos, and the standard mode – with its better contrast – for office work and email.

The Eco mode reduces brightness to 28 per cent, which is only usable in a dark room, but we were surprised that power consumption was still relatively high at 21W. In Standard mode, the VW2420H used 36W, which is what we’d expect a traditional LCD monitor with CCFL backlights to consume.

So while this monitor may not save any money on your electricity bill, it should still add a bit of class to your desk. It’s just 17mm thick at the edges, and a glossy bezel and stand. The gold circle on the base is a little odd, but we can live with it. We like the convenient rear-facing HDMI, DVI and VGA ports – there’s also a headphone output, but it would have been more useful if it were on the front.

We’re not fans of the external power supply – a trade-off of the thin design – and the two-year warranty is a year shorter than most monitors. Factor in the cold-looking colours and higher than expected power consumption and the £175 isn’t quite as tempting as we initially thought it would be. If the colours and power don’t bother you, it’s a fine choice, but it misses out on an award for these reasons.