Asus MK241 monitor: Where magnificent meets meh

Asus, arguably the most innovative hardware maker of the last six months, has just sent us its 24-inch MK241 monitor. First impressions after getting one out of the box: pretty damn sexy -- the matte-black bezel, aluminium base and integrated rotating webcam all contrive to make it one of the nicest-looking screens we've seen in... ever.

It's actually a pretty mixed bag though. On the plus side it comes with three separate inputs: D-Sub, DVI and HDMI, so it'll accept a video signal from most things -- as long as those things aren't set-top boxes or non-HD games consoles. Then there's the aforementioned webcam, which rotates by about 30 degrees up or down and has a built-in array microphone to help your PC hear what you're saying. There are two mics at the front for capturing your vocals and a third at the rear, which we're guessing filters out ambient noise.

Then there's the bad stuff. The MK241 isn't very adjustable. There's no height adjustment, no swivelling, no pivoting -- all you get is the option to tilt the thing. We were also disappointed by the screen's built-in speakers. They're hidden away so as not to spoil the monitor's overall appearance, but this works against it, since the sound quality can only be classed as rubbish.

Picture quality? That's a mixed bag, too. The 1,920x1,200-pixel resolution affords users plenty of desktop real-estate, and it has a wide colour gamut -- 92 per cent of the NTSC colour space, according to Asus -- but the viewing angle is fairly poor and can result in the image being distorted depending on the angle of your eyes in relation to the screen. Then there's the excessive light bleed at the top and bottom of the screen, which causes those parts of the display to be less black than the middle.

In other words, the MK241 is pretty average. But at £220 it's decent value. If you're not bothered by the image quality and want a great-looking monitor, we'd still recommend it. Otherwise, open up the purse strings and get yourself a Dell Ultrasharp 2407FWP. -Rory Reid