A great way to extend your desktop once you're out of DVI ports

We fired up DisplayMate to test the picture quality, and the results were good. The black level is deep, gradients are smooth, and with its 3000:1 dynamic contrast we could distinguish the final few shades at both ends of the scale. The 300cd/m2 brightnes...

Acer has come to the party with an affordable well performing flat display that features an internal power supply, better than average 20ms pixel response time, crisp colour and good greyscale results.

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Decent image quality and a price that's hard to believe

The out-of-the-box colour presets were disappointing, but opting for manual control yielded only modest improvements. We managed to reach a reasonable colour balance and white point by lowering the green level and raising the blue, but the result was stil...

A vibrant gaming LCD, but it becomes jarring in everyday use

Darker scenes in movies don't fare so well, though, with shadows becoming murky and people looking like they're permanently blushing. The desert sand in one of our test photos appeared orange, and our greyscale gradient ramps showed purple and green tinge...

Superb image quality and design at a good price

You can reduce this by lowering the brightness in the OSD, and the 2493HM makes use of a set of touch-sensitive buttons on the front. The colour tone is slightly warmer than the Dell, with a tiny tinge of magenta in our tinting test, making for vibrant mo...

A decent enough LCD with a good stand, but it's not cheap

We managed to find the 6500K colour temperature eventually and were pleased with the bright, sharp picture. Our gradient ramps were free of stepping �€" albeit a little orangey in red areas �€" and the contrast tests were passed without notable problem. C

Features galore, but the glossy screen is disappointing for Dell

The myriad picture modes, which encompass games and video, each with several sub-modes, made it tricky to get the picture as we wanted it, with some modes doing well in some scenarios but looking unbearable in others. However, all tests exhibited a magent...

Fine for schools, but its protective surface and price limit its appeal

It's an issue that limits its appeal. A quick survey of the PC Authority team revealed not one person who has ever damaged an LCD panel in the home or office. But even if a protective covering sounds reassuring, the image quality is unlikely to be. It sta...

Stunning living-room style, great image quality and a price thatwon't break the bank

Not that it needed much adjusting out of the box: the stunning backlight was crisp and even, and colours were neutral too. It even has some preset colour modes worth looking at, not the usual once-tried-forever-forgotten settings we see on most monitors

Poor image quality and no DVI port make this one to avoid

Acer's ecolor Management settings offer a range of presets, but we still needed to make some tweaks out of the box. Contrast needed to be reduced and colours tweaked in order to get the best out of it. Even then the image retained a bluish tinge and the s...