LG Electronics L172WT 17

LG's HDTV-ready LCD gives you three ways to view more than one video feed. Picture-in-picture and picture-by-picture are common in this class of monitor, but picture-on-picture is rarely offered. With PBP, both images are cropped and shown side by side. With POP, one small and one large image window show at the usual proportions. A TV tuner is built in, and a remote control is included. SRS WOW sound makes music sound far better than the usual monitor speakers do.

Vivid, lifelike colors on our test screens earned the LG Electronics Flatron L172WT a graphics quality score of Very Good, although we did notice low contrast levels on our grayscale test, as well as a slight shimmer when we watched a DVD--Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl--at full screen. The image was more acceptable at the smaller sizes of the PIP, PBP, and POP windows. This monitor's text quality won the Flatron an Outstanding score (the slight shimmer in light-colored areas was not a significant detraction).