A false economy made manifest in plastic and TFT LCD - we hereby give you Acer's AL2416Ws.

Part of the blame for this ill-conceived monitor lies with the utterly ridiculous import duty that currently applies to any display with a DVI port that dares to breach the UK's borders.

It explains why Acer has shipped a 24-inch widescreen PC monitor with just a single unprepossessing VGA video connection.

But it's absolutely no excuse for the offensively drab tilt-only chassis, hewn from brittle plastic and about as confidence-inspiring as a catflap in a tornado. Pull the trigger on this monitor to the tune of nearly £600 and we suspect the disappointment upon unsheathing will be palpable.

Of course, we'd forgive all that in a flash in return for top-notch image quality. But despite the use of A-PVA technology, the AL2416Ws suffers from poor contrast, bleeding black tones and fairly horrific input lag. Avoid. Jeremy Laird