CTX Technology F773

In a field of products brimming with good image quality, CTX Technology's F773 excels. One of the few 17-inch LCDs we've seen that offers character-smoothing technology, the F773 displayed crisp, pleasing text, tying for second on our text tests. It also handled the white-on-black lettering of our Web page screen with aplomb. The F773 outperformed all other recent 17-inchers on our photo test screen of a brightly-colored fruit tart, producing appetizingly accurate reds, yellows, and blues.

A solid, four-pronged stand stabilizes the F773, but that doesn't mean the monitor is stuck where you set it. You can use the carrying handle to move the 11-pound F773 from desk to desk without worrying that it will suddenly plummet to the floor. Nevertheless, we wish that it had a swivel adjustment for sharing work and a height adjustment for optimizing viewing comfort.

The screen adjustment buttons are marked with cryptic symbols only--no words. The task-based presets ("graphic," "text," "cinema," etc.) are useful, but advanced controls would have been nice. On the other hand, with default screen quality like this, perhaps you won't have to spend much time in the menus.

Upshot: We can't fault the CTX Technology F773's top-notch screen quality; but for the price, we'd expect to get swivel and height adjustments.

Laura Blackwell