The Benq G2200W isn’t going to win any prizes for its looks. Clad in matte black plastic with a fussy curve around the power button, it’s outshone by nearly every other monitor on test. The unimpressive first impression isn’t helped by the tilt-only stand and lack of speakers, USB ports or included DVI cable and the result is generally unimpressive.

It’s not all bad news – the G2200W’s price makes it one of the cheapest LCDs here, and as a monitor for office use its quality is more than good enough. For home use, though, nothing blew us away. Dark scenes in movies and games were hard to make out and we noted significant backlight bleeding at the top and bottom of the screen. Our technical images and Displaymate tests confirmed that dark shades bottomed out and light shades blew out too soon, making the G2200W a poor choice for keen photographers. The colour ramp was uniform, meaning gradients will be step-free.

The out-of-the-box colour presets were disappointing, but opting for manual control yielded only modest improvements. We managed to reach a reasonable colour balance and white point by lowering the green level and raising the blue, but the result was still some way short of the the finer models on test. Neither the Dynamic contrast nor Benq’s Senseye features were particularly useful, although the latter allows you to switch the G2200W to sRGB mode.

Given its price, the BenQ isn’t overly disappointing: viewed on its own as a monitor that will be used for office tasks and web browsing it has few problems. View it against nearly any of the other panels on test this month though, and its lacklustre performance becomes apparent.