LG L204WT

Author's product rating:   

Picture quality	Excellent
Colour sensitivity	Excellent
Design	Satisfactory
Ease of use	Easy
Value For Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Colours, contrast ratio, widescreen, value
Disadvantages:	Non - adjustable stand

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I've had this monitor now for just shy of 1 year, and it has been fantastic for every second.
Firstly, widescreen is an absolute must. You really don't know what you're missing if you haven't ever used a widescreen monitor. The space available and the immersion you get from movies and games is brilliant. TV made the switch long ago, and it's about time it becomes standard for monitors too.

PHYSICAL LOOKS :

Mine is in Silver, but you can also get it in black. There's a DVI and VGA port on the back and the DVI cable is included in the box. The buttons are on the back of the monitor but right at the side, so you can reach around and press them. There are icons on the right bezel to indicate the position of the buttons at the back. This can be a bit fiddly and you end up pressing the wrong button quite a bit (well i do anyway :) )
The stand is almost compeltely static. You can tilt the monitor up or down but thats it. No height adjustment and no swivel. These are the features they've seemingly cut back on to keep it at an excellent price.

BASIC DISPLAY :

The monitor's colour is superb and does a fine job at showing gradients of all brightness levels. The excellent contrast ratio means the blacks are very dark and the backlight bleed is very minimal.
There are a lot of options for changing the brightness/contrast/gamma/ACE levels and you'll want to tweak with these a bit to find the level that you prefer, as the stock factory settings are defaulted to 100% brightness. The monitor comes with inbuilt profiles (movie/text/normal) and then also "User". This allows you to save a certain combination of settings and switch to it and back to the default profiles if you desire.

GAMES:

I use this monitor for a lot of gaming, all different genres, and it's a joy in all of them. The 5ms response time means there's no noticeable ghosting. The native resolution of 1680x1050 doesn't require a particularly powerful graphics card, anything in the last 2 years should allow you to play games on high settings (i use a x1800XT).
It's fantastic to play games in widescreen, with so much more immersion and with the colour perfection and deepness in blacks this monitor has, it means your games look the best they ever have.
One thing you should be prepared for though is that not all games support widescreen. There are resources out there to help you overcome this such as www.widescreengamingforum.com , but if you still cant find a solution, then you're stuck with the image being stretched (a 5:4 image stretched to 16:10 , such as 1280x1024). This is the largest drawback of having a widescreen at the moment, but 90% of games that don't support a 16:10 resolution out the box can be hacked/tweaked to do so. Check out the master games list on that site to see if your current favourite games are compatible. (All "Source" engine games are, most EA games aren't).
When they do support it, its great to have the extra screen space, especially for a game such as World Of Warcraft (think of the extra space for addons!!)

XBOX360:

The monitor can display the 720p HD resolution so selecting this on your xbox produces a brilliant image (through VGA). The 720p is a 16:9 resolution though, so this is SLIGHTLY stretched to fit your 16:10 display. I haven't noticed the difference at all myself as the stretching is so slight. Many petitions have been made to Microsoft for 16:10 resolutions to be added to the 360's display settings, so fingers crossed for something in a future dashboard update!

MOVIES:

Watching films on this screen is where it will really shine through the first time you use it. Having the image fill the entire screen (with slight black bars - remember 16:10) brings them to life if you're used to watching them with huge black bars across half the screen on a 5:4 lcd. As i've said before, the colours are fantastic and the blacks are deep, so movies look as they should, and the response time again adds to the smoothness of the image.

SOOO.....

Overall this monitor, for the price especially, is a fantastic buy and there really is no reason not to get one if you're getting a new monitor. If you have the cash, i'd recommend going for a 24" as they can then display the 1080p HD, but consider the price difference; ~£170 for this and ~£420+ for a 24", i think this is a great buy and the size is what would be considered almost perfect for eye strain/posture levels.

+ Brilliant response time
+ Brilliant contrast ratio (impressive blacks)
+ Widescreen is a MUST
+ Extra space on games is fantastic
+ Impressive when hooked up to a 360
+ Fantastic Value.

- Rigid design leaves no room for adjustment.
- Vents on the top get very hot after extended use (12hours+)

Buy it.