Sharp LL-172G

With a black bezel and a matte-finish silver stand, Sharp's eye-catching LL-172G attracts attention even before you plug it in. Its design strengths don't stop at looks, though. The display's thin, well-labeled control buttons lie under the bottom of the bezel, separated by finger wells, making them easy to locate and letting you stay focused on the screen. Sharp placed the LL-172G's headphone jack on the front, instead of on the back, so plugging in your headphones is easy. The visible locking mechanism on the height adjustment control helps you adjust the monitor's height precisely.

The LL-172G's text display quality ranks among the best we've seen recently. Its fine performance on our Microsoft Word and Excel screens resulted in a Very Good rating for text. It did have trouble rendering flesh tones on our group photo test screen, but vivid colors in the test screen of a fruit tart helped elevate the LL-172G's graphics score to a middle-of-the-pack Good rating.

The LL-172G's price of $420 at testing time was surprisingly low for a monitor with such pleasing screen quality and clever design. As a result, the LL-172G earned a Best Buy on our March Top 10 chart.

Upshot: Efficient design and ergonomics not often seen in a modestly priced monitor make the Sharp LL-172G a smart buy--a Best Buy, in fact.

Laura Blackwell