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In the box you’ll find both an analogue D-SUB cable and a DVI cable, along with a power lead. Unusually in today’s world of electronic distribution, you’ll also find a paper manual to supplement the version on the supplied driver CD.

Image quality was generally excellent, although this particular model didn’t perform quite as well as the one we reviewed last year. That said, the only issue we could find was very slight colour banding in the 256 intensity greyscale test on DisplayMate. The 2080UX+ also seemed to have trouble staying locked on to an analogue signal, and we found in necessary to use the auto adjust feature every couple of hours to rectify this. Although, we really would expect anyone who buys a screen like this to be using DVI, where this wouldn’t be an issue. The previous model we looked at suffered from neither of these problems, so if you are going to buy a 2080UX+ examine it carefully at point of purchase and make sure you have a good one.

Moving away from DisplayMate, the picture produced by the NEC was stunning, and we thoroughly enjoyed using it as a primary display for a few weeks. Whether picture editing or just working in Windows, the image was crisp and clear. Video playback was also impressive as was the image produced when playing games. For those that want a low response time, the NEC also won’t disappoint with 16ms capability.

When we reviewed the MultiSync 2080UX+ the first time, it was held back by a very inflated price. Thankfully the price has dropped considerably, but then so has the price of every other screen. As such the NEC is still the second most expensive monitor on test, and at £945.86 it’s almost £164 more expensive than the Samsung SyncMaster 213T, and a massive £277 more expensive than the Iiyama.

With such high pricing, the NEC simply can’t compete with a display like the Samsung which exhibits superior image quality at significantly lower cost.

Verdict

The MultiSync 2080UX+ is a good TFT screen. The design may not be the most aesthetically pleasing, but it’s functional and does everything you need it to do. Unfortunately NEC has priced itself out of the market, and you can get more for less elsewhere.

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