LG Flatron W2053TQ

The LG Flatron W2053TQ can be found priced from $150 to $180. The monitor includes a couple of useful eco-friendly options, and it has decent movie and game performance. Its matte screen also allows dark details to be seen more easily than the HP 2009m's glossy and reflective screen. The two are virtually matched evenly in performance. However, the HP is slightly less expensive and has a more intuitive onscreen display. As such, we'd recommend the HP to those who are on a budget, while the LG is the best choice for those who are concerned about energy consumption.

Design and features
The LG Flatron W2053TQ has a fingerprint-attracting, glossy black bezel, surrounding a 20-inch nonreflective, matte screen. The bezel measures 0.75 inch wide on the right and left sides. The display's full width is 19 inches, slightly longer than the HP 2009m's 19.75-inch length. The LG's panel is 2.75 inches deep from bezel to back, and the bottom of the panel sits nearly 2.5 inches above the desktop. The back of the monitor continues the glossy motif and includes an arc-shaped vent.

The glossy oval-shaped footstand measures 9.5 inches wide by 7.25 inches deep. It wobbles a bit when knocked from the sides, but not as violently as the HP 2009m does. The LG Flatron W2053TQ includes about a 15-degree back tilt as its sole ergonomic option--no panel swiveling, pivoting, or screen height adjustment. Connection options, which are limited to DVI and VGA, are easy to access, since the monitor's low profile neck is a good 2 inches away from them.

The bottom of the bezel measures 2.25 inches in length, not including a 0.5-inch long, transparent "lip" that hangs off of it. On the right side of the lip is a wavelike groove that reflects light from the power button's red LED. The power button sits above the groove on the bezel. To the left of the power button is the touch-sensitive OSD array. The array included six buttons: Smart, Fun, Menu, Engine/Down, Source/Up, and Autoset. Pressing Smart brings up an eco-friendly menu with on/off controls for the ambient light sensor, an autobright setting that lowers the monitor's brightness when displaying a bright screen, and a one- or two-hour monitor shutoff timer option. Under the Fun option is a 4:3 in wide mode for displaying the screen in a 4:3 aspect ratio. Also under Fun is a photo effect option that lets you set the screen to take on three photo effects: Gaussian Blur, Sepia, and Monochrome. The Engine/Down button offers four presets: Movie, Internet, User-defined, and Normal.

The Menu includes controls for brightness, contrast, and color temperature, including sRGB, which you use to adjust the custom color by changing the red, green, and blue values individually. Also included is a sharpness control that allows you to select from 10 levels. Adjusting it below level 4 caused Web sites to look rather blurry, but at higher levels, pages looked crisp and clear. We didn't notice a difference in quality when we adjusted sharpness during movies, but we recommend a setting of at least 5 for games.

Each OSD button is invisible, but touching any of the button names causes red LED lights to illuminate over the names. Touching the appropriate lights returns a different menu; however, we still found ourselves constantly touching the names, expecting a menu to appear. To change the brightness, we followed a clunky menu hierarchy. You press Menu to bring up main menu, and press Autoset to select brightness/contrast. The brightness and contrast gauges are aligned vertically, but you can't cycle through them using the up and down arrows; instead, you must use the Autoset buttons to do so and then use the up and down arrows to change the value. We found this navigation unintuitive and clunky.

Manufacturer's specifications:
Resolution: 1,600x900 pixels
Pixel-response rate: 2ms
Contrast ratio: 50,000:1 (Dynamic)
Brightness: 300cd/m2
Connectivity: DVI, VGA
HDCP compliant? Yes
Included video cables? DVI
Backlight type: CCFL
Panel type: TN
Aspect ratio: 16:9

Performance
We tested the LG Flatron W2053TQ with its DVI connection. The display posted a composite score of 87 on CNET Labs' DisplayMate-based performance tests, matching the 20-inch HP2009m's 87. Both monitors handled text well; however, we found that the HP performed better in the 9,500K color temperature than the 6,500K temp. White text on black looked fine at 9,500K temperature, but it had a distracting yellowish hue in the 6,500K temp. Conversely, text on the LG looked better at 6,500K, while in 9,500K, the screen was too bluish. In our color ramping tests, which check for color banding, the HP performed slightly better than the LG, but neither had a stellar showing, suggesting that both monitors could have color banding issues in certain apps.