V7 D24W33

It's hard to see how V7 manages to load the D24W33 with so many features and yet undercut the competition on price. Don't let the monitor's inelegant name--a cacophony of letters and numbers--turn you off: This $385 (as of May 19, 2008) model packs a slew of inputs and abilities typical of more-expensive displays.

Carrying a native resolution of 1920 by 1200 pixels, the D24W33 has both HDMI and VGA inputs. For DVI connection, V7 includes an HDMI-to-DVI cable with the monitor (the cable is a nice find; Hewlett-Packard didn't include one with its HDMI and VGA model, the HP w2207h). The D24W33 comes with a headphone jack, and built-in front-facing speakers provide a good range of sound for the price. In addition, you can make the volume fairly loud without causing any distortion; still, a separate speaker system would provide richer, fuller sound.

A 1-inch thick bezel borders the top, left side, and right side of the display; the bottom is much thicker, to house the speakers. The D24W33 can pivot, swivel, and tilt, and you can adjust its height, too. The on-screen display menus are easy to navigate, but they lack advanced adjustments such as individual color controls.

In the PC World Test Center's evaluation, our judges deemed the monitor's image quality unimpressive, with colors that fall flat.

The display comes with a quick-start guide and a CD with a paltry 13-page manual. The CD also holds Portrait Display's Pivot software for adjusting the image when you tilt the monitor--but oddly, it lacks monitor drivers (you must download those from V7's Web site).

If you want a monitor that delivers vivid colors for use with digital photos, gaming, or watching movies, the V7 D24W33 will disappoint. On the other hand, for general Internet, word processing, and business applications, few 24-inch displays offer better value than this one.