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The FP202W is also first rate when it comes to watching video and to put it through its paces I sat back and viewed a variety of high definition content, all of which looked stunning. However, the 1,680 x 1,050 resolution means that the FP202W doesn’t have quite enough lines to watch 1080 HD video, which is a bit of a shame.

Connection wise, you get a single DVI-D port and an analogue D-SUB port at the rear, along with a standard kettle plug power socket. Unfortunately the DVI port isn’t labelled as being HDCP compliant, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it isn’t. I’m waiting for confirmation of this from BenQ on this one. On the plus side, BenQ has been thoughtful enough to include both DVI and D-SUB cables in the box.

When it comes to price things get a bit tricky – you see this monitor is so new that I can’t find a single retailer selling it yet. So the only price I have is the RRP at £452 including VAT, which seems a little steep when you consider that you can buy a Dell 2005FPW 20in widescreen LCD monitor for only £356 right now. Of course the Dell uses a 16ms panel, but it does have height adjustment, panning, tilting and pivoting functions. So the question you need to ask yourself is whether that 8ms response time is worth an extra £100.

To be fair though, I would expect to see the FP202W at a street price of around £400 when online retailers start to stock it, and if you take the Dell out of the equation, this pricing is pretty average for the breed. Also I haven’t seen the Dell in the flesh, but if it’s anywhere near as good as the Dell 2405FPW 24in model I doubt I’d be disappointed.

Verdict

The FP202W is an impressive screen for gamers, while maintaining 8-bit colour support for image editing and other colour sensitive work. Unfortunately, if you can live without having such a low response rate, there are cheaper and better featured 20in widescreen monitors available.

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