Eizo Flexscan S2110W

There are few good reasons for a monitor to be expensive, but the new Eizo Flexscan S2110W has most of them covered.

It has the muscular, functional form of a machine engineered for performance, but combines this with enough style and panache to keep designers satisfied.

It's precisely these designers and graphics professionals, who will benefit most from what the S2110W has to offer.

As you switch it on, it smacks you in the face with a full 450cd/m2 of brightness at a contrast ratio of 1000:1 - a level of output more akin to that of LCD televisions.

Its widescreen format packs a high, 1,680 x 1,050 pixel resolution and 8ms response time across the whole colour range enables it to keep up with the fastest moving video.

We routinely calibrate monitors as part of our review process and the results show just how far from perfect LCD panels can be when it comes to reproducing accurate colour. However, the S2110W was spot on.

We selected a gamma of 2.2 from the menu and measured a practically perfect curve with all colours tracking accurately. Calibration was essentially unnecessary.

Six-channel colour adjustments, a huge selection of colour temperatures and gammas combine with 14bit colour processing to produce level a precision that reliably reproduces anything you chose to display in exactly the way you want it to.

Eizo's robust Arcswing holds the display firmly enough to require some effort to shift it. Raising the height involves pushing the monitor backwards and away from you.

Twisting the panel horizontally allows a very wide angle of tilt and we found the stand extremely flexible in its range of adjustment.

But the S2110W is not perfect. The control switches are a subtly embossed black-on-black affair, which renders them almost invisible.

Because they're touch-sensitive, attempting to navigate them by feel alone can result in multiple unwanted menu selections.

Gamers and typical business users would find better value for money elsewhere, but those with exacting colour quality requirements will find the Flexscan S2110W is capable of impressive feats of performance.