There were a few reasons I was looking to change my monitor. The first was that, at just under five years old, my old (19" CRT) monitor was starting to show signs of strain and I wanted it replaced before the poor thing died on me. Secondly, I'm considering building myself a new PC (or buying one) at the end of the year and in order to spread the cost out a little, I wanted to buy a new monitor now.

I had a few criteria in mind. I was looking for something at least 22", preferably widescreen, a good contrast ratio and a quick refresh time (8ms or under) which was necessary for watching DVDs, using my TV card and playing the odd action game.

The buttons for changing the settings are easy to access and the menu sy6stem is fairly self-explanatory making display tweaking easy to do. Adjusting the vertical tilt angle of the monitor required a little elbow grease, but not so much as I was worried about damaging my new toy. I had the monitor set up pretty much to the way I wanted within 5 minutes of opening the box.

The display was clear, bright and HUGE! There was so much desktop workspace to use, I had to start changing the way I used some programs. Word processing and internet surfing changed, for starters. In the past I had previously ran these programs maximised, to fill the entire screen, now it doesn't make sense. Writing something in Microsoft Word, in 'print layout' mode means that approximately two thirds of the screen is wasted grey space. I can now open two documents and have them sitting side-by-side and view both at once, should I have the need. [Note: having just upgraded to Office 2007, it appears that you can generate documents in Word side by side, making full use of the monitor.]

Some applications do benefit from having the extra real estate onscreen. Email programs, especially those where you have the inbox and preview pane separated vertically, can now display much more information in full screen mode (full details of each email plus all of the email itself). Graphics tools and mapping programs (Microsoft Autoroute, maps.live.com, Google Earth) can display an awful lot more because of the widescreen nature of the monitor and the high resolution.

The Moving Image
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As I previously mentioned, my current graphics card is currently right at the top end of its display resolution, so fast moving, 3D games are scaled down to something a little less demanding, but as with the DVD display, the monitor still manages to keep up with the action splendidly (though I am now torn between buying a beefier graphics card now or waiting until I do actually build the new one later this year).

I was about to say that I don't usually get excited with computer gadgetry, but that's a barefaced lie. However, as it's used as a combined television and computer monitor and it was only £187 (from eBuyer.com at the start of July 2007), I have been over the moon with how good the L226WTQ-SF has performed. The fact it's about 11 inches shallower than my old 19" CRT means I've also got a lot more desk space to play with, too.

If you've got a couple of hundred quid in your pocket and you're considering a replacement monitor, then the L226WTQ-SF is superb. The specs are pretty much standard fayre (except for the contrast ratio), but it's a good looking monitor with an excellent image, mine had no dead pixels and a capability of matching live television, DVDs and games as well as the normal computery stuff and all for under £200.