AG Neovo AG Neovo S-17

WHAT'S HOT: AG Neovo's S-17 sports a wide black bezel with thick, clear lacquer that makes it look more like a modern high-end TV than a computer monitor.

The display generated realistic and lively colors on our test screens of photographs, with good detail in dark areas. In our color bar test, we were able to distinguish slight differences in color, down to the very dark shades. Likewise, we were impressed with the monitor's ability in our gray-scale test to display subtly different dark grays instead of the black smear we've seen on some lesser monitors. Text looked sharp on a variety of document types; the S-17 earned the highest text-quality score of any monitor we've tested recently.

WHAT'S NOT: If you prefer to tinker with your monitor's settings, or to use different settings for different tasks, you won't like the limited controls on the S-17. It has no special modes for viewing text or photos, and you can't save your own modes. The control button scheme is counterintuitive, requiring that you press up and down buttons when the menu selections run left to right. When changing the settings, you often have to jump back and forth between two pairs of buttons to navigate through the menus. Figuring out when to use which buttons requires a trip to the manual. And for the price, we'd expect to see some image adjustment software, or perhaps a USB hub.

The monitor isn't height-adjustable, nor can it pivot into portrait mode or swivel left and right. The hinge that tilts the screen is a little stiff. The base folds up so you can wall-mount the monitor, though the dial that unlocks the base to allow the fold was difficult to turn.

WHAT ELSE: Colors on photographs looked bright and realistic, but some members of our testing panel found them a little flat and preferred the more saturated colors of other LCDs, such as the HP L1702 (which we also tested this month). The S-17 has analog and digital inputs.

UPSHOT: Considering its scant adjustment features, the S-17 is expensive--but it's reasonably priced if terrific text quality is your most important requirement.

SUMMARY

AG Neovo S-17 17-inch screen, 1280 by 1024 native resolution, 17.2 by 7.9 by 16.8 inches, 16.5 pounds, TFT panel, analog and digital inputs. Three-year warranty (including backlight), 8-hour weekday toll-free tech support. $679 866/246-3686 www.neovo-usa.com