Belinea 10 20 35W

On paper, Belinea’s 10 20 35W is quite remarkable.

It has features such as built-in speakers and a four-port USB hub. It uses an MVA panel with the second best contrast ratio in the group, at 800:1, and a response time of only 8ms, which is sure to appeal to gamers.

With an RRP of only £367 it’s also the least expensive in this group test by £100 and costs more than £200 less than LG’s M203WX.

The 10 20 35W is surrounded by a familiar-looking thin black bezel atop a narrow silver strip housing a pair of speakers and five small metallic control buttons. These are placed in the middle, making them equally well placed for right- or left-handed users.

Unfortunately, the buttons themselves nestle up against the bezel in a way that makes them awkward to press.

Menu navigation is also achieved by using the ‘Menu’ and ‘Auto’ buttons, which is a little confusing despite the on-screen instructions. A panel to the rear helps to keep cables tidy, but it can be a little fiddly getting your fingers in there to attach them.

Although its build quality is perfectly adequate, close scrutiny reveals it lacks, perhaps unsurprisingly, some of the expensive feel of its more costly competitors, but at this price it would be unfair to complain.

The monitor stand is also quite basic, offering only a tilt adjustment – but then, so does Apple’s 20in Cinema Display at around £180 more.

In our tests, the 10 20 35W held its own with good, though not outstanding, performance in all tests, with results falling around or slightly below the middle of the group.

This is the sensible but unexciting choice: you may not find it the most desirable but unless you have quite exacting image quality requirements you’ll find it hard to justify the huge extra expense of choosing anything else.

This is part of a group test looking at widescreen TFTs. For all products in the test, see:
Apple 20in Cinema Display
Belinea 10 20 35W
Dell Ultrasharp 2005FPW
HP f2105
LG M203WX
Philips Brilliance 200W6
TFT Technology
Should you go widescreen?

HP f2105

A big screen with a home theatre feel to it and the image quality to match  31 Jan 2006

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