While the price of LCD screens drop to comparable pricing levels with CRTs and sales are on the rise, technologically they are held back because at the end of the day the picture delivered by an LCD limits its application compared to a CRT.

Stylish and bursting with features, Polyview deserves to take the 17in LCD market by the horns and turn it upside down as it did with the CMV1515 (June 2003). Another display to boast the 16ms pixel response time, the fast rise and fall rate of the pixels in this display make it ideal for gaming, even when playing first person shooters or watching video.

ViewSonic's VX924 panel has one of the lowest quoted response time yet, at 4ms.

Offering a 16ms rise- and fall-timed TFT, Mitsubishi has developed a real winner here. The low redraw rate allows for performance that almost mirrors that of CRT, while maintaining the weight and size advantages of TFT screens.

There is something totally decadent about playing your favourite PC game on a 30-inch LCD monitor with stereo sound from two banks of speakers - one on each side.

Shuttle has made a name for themselves with stylish and innovative barebones PCs, and now comes along this excellent addition to any XPC you own. Scratch that - this TFT would look good with any PC you own.

A beautifully designed LCD, but at a big premium.

The Athlon64 has only been out a short while, and although it's an excellent processor, from all accounts it's not selling as well as it should be.

If you're space conscious or limited when it comes to your PC set up then no doubt you've already looked at the TFT display option at some point. We've got three new TFT offerings from three companies in the Labs this month, which should give you a good idea of the state of play of the TFT market at the moment.

When it came time to tally up the scores for all of the 15in monitors, the BenQ FP591 was either at or near the top of every category.

This is the first display in a fresh new line of TFT monitors to come from Mitsubishi this year, and from this early glimpse things are looking good. The unit we received was a very early pre-production model -- it had missing panels, the occasional loose wire and a completely different colour scheme (the TFT pictured is the final shipping version), but as a look to where Mitsubishi is headed it was perfect for our needs.

A high-quality panel, but it lacks the finishing touches to make it a winner.

Out with the inches, in with the speed. PCA puts nine of the best LCDs through their paces.

The price puts it out of reach for some, but the incredible colours and adjustable stand will appeal to professionals.

Just over four months on from our massive hard drive roundup (October 2002, page 74), and Serial ATA (SATA) hard disks have finally arrived. Phew.

Scoring stronger than both the more costly 17inch Panasonic and Hitachi, the Mitsubishi DV172B just misses out on a recommendation.

Amazingly good value for what you get: a fully-featured, dual-core, ergonomic notebook.

It was a little hard to compare some monitors as they were more for the high-end market where others were aimed at the consumer/budget market. Such was the case with the Viewsonic VP171B, a high-end professional graphics model. The VP171B featured 280cd/m² brightness coupled with an incredible 600:1 contrast ratio.

Early last year we predicted that 2003 would be the year of the TFT, and we were proven right. TFT prices tumbled to affordable levels, and for the first time TFTs were arriving that had comparable quality to CRTs.

Almost identical to the FP591, 15in model (previous page), the BenQ FP791 is everything the little model is, although we actually found it to be slightly more.