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In our tests the Iiyama did display most of the traditional TN weaknesses, but none excessively. While it couldn't quite distinguish between the lightest and darkest shades in our grey-scale test and contrast shift is a bit of a problem once you deviate from the ideal viewing angle, there was very little sign of colour shift.

There was only minimal backlight bleed along the screen's bottom edge, and only a hint of banding on colour gradients. A slight red contamination across dark tones was easily remedied by manually adjusting colour balance, and text is clear and sharp all the way down to 6.8 points (nine pixels).

If you don't mind losing some detail in the brightest and darkest parts of the image, the E2607WS makes for a pleasant movie and gaming experience. As is so often the case, Dynamic Contrast (in this case ACR) is a bit of a gimmick, just making the screen darker overall. Sure, blacks become a little deeper, but you lose the vibrancy of bright tones and whites become a tad grey. Anyway, thanks to the intelligent shortcut buttons, you can turn it on or off easily, and the Movie preset doesn't turn it on by default either. The only other complaint is dithering in films, but once again this is common for TN panels and easy enough thing to ignore, especially at a distance. Just keep in mind that like any display using this type of panel, work requiring colour accuracy is a no-go.

The biggest annoyance is once again the lack of 1:1 pixel mapping. Although this ProLite does have aspect ratio controls, the only useful one is a 4:3 mode which can only be activated when feeding the screen a 4:3 or 5:4 source. So again, 720 or 1,080 content from non-PC sources will be stretched, making this monitor unsuitable for use with a majority of AV equipment and consoles.

Finally, ending the assessment on a positive note, the five watt speakers are actually better than I was expecting. This by no means makes them good, thanks largely to a complete lack of bass, but they do an adequate job of voices and treble and manage impressively audible volumes without distortion. Though they won't match even a decent set of headphones, at least you can watch a film with someone or play a game without making your ears bleed.

All told, the E2607WS is a solid effort. It offers slightly better image quality than the Hanns.G HG281DJ and offers an extra digital input, but it's not as large, lacks a little adjustability, has no audio output and is obviously smaller than the Hanns.G. It's also slightly more expensive and with cheap 24 inch monitors, like the Samsung SyncMaster 245B and Iiyama's own Prolite B2403WS offering similar image quality for slightly less money, it's left in a slightly precarious situation.

Verdict
There's nothing much wrong with the E2607WS. It offers good value for money, is reasonable to look at the has decent enough image quality, but there are enough competitive alternatives that are worth looking at first.

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