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LCD monitors are finally becoming a viable alternative to CRT monitors for home or office use. Driven by falling prices, more and more users are opting to use an LCD instead of a bulky CRT. And despite the rising prices of the LCD panels that manufacturers use to build monitors, we haven't seen any big price increases since the last time we looked at 15-inch LCD monitors, in our August 2001 print issue.

This time around, NEC Mitsubishi hits number one with its MultiSync LCD1550X, whose outstanding scores on our graphics and text tests elevated it to the top of the list. The other Best Buy award goes to Sharp's LL-T15V1, an attractively priced monitor that earned high scores for both text and graphics. The only downside of the Sharp was its lack of a digital input.

Several of the monitors on the chart have panels that you can pivot 90 degrees, resulting in a screen oriented more like a magazine than a TV. This position can be useful when you want to display entire pages of text in a word processor or edit images taken in portrait mode. All of these pivotable models come with software (usually Pivot Pro from Portrait Software) to rotate the screen image with a couple of mouse clicks, making the switch between portrait and landscape mode easy.

Some monitors also come with composite and S-Video inputs that you can use to directly connect a camcorder or DVD player. Two such displays are the Hitachi CML155XW V and the Solarism LM1503; although neither made the chart, you might consider them if you want a monitor that can show videos as well as work with a computer.

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