Compaq's LCD Monitor: Great Display

How much are you willing to pay for a crisp, flicker-free image and a whole lot of extra desk space? If you don't mind parting with a few thousand dollars, the Compaq TFT8020 LCD monitor won't disappoint. With a fat $3399 suggested retail price, this skinny monitor offers both digital and analog inputs, a Universal Serial Bus hub option, a stylish case, and an 18-inch display optimized for 1280 by 1024 resolution. In our informal tests, this monitor shone. We were particularly impressed with its performance in displaying black text in dialog boxes and showing off color gradients.

The TFT8020 has an antiglare, antistatic panel; the unit measures 16.4 by 9.6 by 16.4 inches and weighs just 21 pounds with its base. A well-placed handle at the top makes the unit easy to move about. Compaq says it has a 300-to-1 contrast ratio and claims 160-degree vertical and horizontal viewing angles. Images on this unit--as with other LCD flat-panel monitors--don't look great when viewed at the extreme end of this range, however. (With the Compaq, gray tones turned to brown when we viewed images from the side.) You can also tilt the screen through 35 degrees and swivel it through 45 degrees.

Three buttons on the front panel let you easily navigate the on-screen menu, which offers a full complement of standard settings, including horizontal and vertical positions, brightness and contrast, color and phase, and more. The full array of controls is useful if you're running the monitor in analog mode. A front-mounted button allows you to switch from an analog input to a digital input--assuming you have a digital graphics board--where you will need only the controls for brightness and contrast.