Cornerstone c1030

This 21-inch monitor offers a price that's hard to beat.

WHAT'S HOT: The price is hard to beat: At $549, you could almost buy two c1030s in place of some pricier models on our chart. The screen produced very good contrast with text.

WHAT'S NOT: This monitor had by far the lowest overall scores for graphics and text quality of the monitors we reviewed this month--scoring last in all five of our graphics tests and two of our six text tests. Colors were washed out, and text appeared slightly blurry compared with the text displayed by other monitors in this month's review.

WHAT ELSE: The brightness is set very high in the monitor's factory presets (the conditions under which we test all monitors). Color saturation improved when we knocked the brightness down, but colors were still pale compared with the competitors. The control knob is hidden under the lower lip of the monitor's bezel, but once we located it, we found the controls easy to use.

BEST USE: The c1030 provides big screen real estate for a small price. But fuzzy fonts make it inappropriate for intensive work with fine text, as on large spreadsheets. And its faded colors rule out graphics-related tasks.

SUMMARY

Cornerstone c1030

21-inch tube, 20-inch viewable area, .26mm diagonal dot-pitch tube, up to 89-Hz refresh rate at tested resolution of 1280 by 1024, Plug and Play ready, TCO'95 compliant, 3-year warranty, 24-hour weekday toll-free support.

$549
800/562-2552
www.monitorsdirect.com