7 April 2008 12:00 GMT / By Stuart Miles

Whether you're using a monitor for your desktop PC or because you want to improve your laptop screen's real estate when you're at your desk, you need to make sure you get a good monitor. Can the BenQ E2000WA perform? We get working at a desk to find out.

20-inches in size, the monitor sports a black frame with a silver strip at the bottom. The BenQ monitor won't stand out from the crowd when it comes to the style rating and features a single on/off power button that sits under the screen and a series of menu buttons that sit to the right, clearly visible at all times.

The monitor comes with a stand, although this can't be height adjusted, and can be walled mounted via the standardised VESA bracket.

Sporting a maximum resolution of 1680 x 1050 with colour support for 24-bit (16.7 million colours) the monitor gives you plenty of space for your desktop and good colour representation.

Response time is a rather standard 5ms meaning this is good for office work, but not really suited for gaming.

A reasonable, but not great, viewing angle means the E2000WA is good for the desk worker but not for those hoping to share their work at a reception desk or display stand. The contrast ratio is, for this type of monitor, the almost industry standard 1000:1 and brightness comes in at 300cd/m2.

Featuring a technology BenQ has called Senseye the monitor has four preset modes - Standard, Dynamic, Movie, Photo - that promise to provide instant optimised settings for different usage scenarios, and in practice you can tell the difference and it’s handy if you need to switch quickly between photo editing and document editing without having to change the software preferences and setup in your operating system.

The E2000WA supports VGA but not DVI and those looking for the DVI connection will have to look out for sister model, the E2000W, which is identical in features but adds the DVI connector.

Completing the setup the E2000WA features two 1W speakers, although we wouldn't recommend using these over your regular PC speakers.

Verdict

The BenQ E2000WA is a standard run-of-the-mill monitor that gets the job done but without any fanfare. Because of this, it's likely to pale into the background against other monitors from other manufacturers in the market.

With such fierce pricing in this sector there are better, cheaper models out there from the likes of Samsung and LG.

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The good

High resolution supported, four preset modes for different working environments

The bad

Average spec, no height adjustment

Quick verdict

With such fierce pricing in this sector there are better, cheaper models out there from the likes of Samsung and LG

Score

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