FP93VW 19-inch LCD

Your first monitor purchase is often made on a rather tight budget, but if you’re still looking for high performance BenQ’s no frills budget display is an excellent choice. The flat-screen LCD surprised us with its clean, crisp resolution and bright full-bodied colour.

Budget monitors are often aimed at home buyers for general use and are packed with redundant features such as built-in speakers. BenQ has instead focused on image quality.

The general appearance of the FP93VW is very Mac. Having been built to partner a Mac mini, this is a deliberate design choice. The base has a Mac mini-sized moulding to hold the computer and the stand has a push-out plastic stopper that creates a hole at just the right height to tidy the cables coming out. It also works with any other PC or Mac set-up.

The native resolution is 1,440x900 pixels, which the FP93VW displays with acceptable sharpness, although the Contrast and Brightness slides lack refinement. The colour display is acceptable. Overall it was hard to fault the monitor on any aspect of the image quality when we considered the price tag. The grey-to-grey response time of 5ms is impressive, and this helps movies and games playback with plenty of oomph.

In the sub-£200 bracket the FP93VW is a star. The only other competition we can think of is Dell’s E228WFP, which is £50 dearer but offers a larger 22-inch screen.