Apple 20-inch Cinema review

As you would expect from Apple, its displays are as stylish as they are multimedia-centric and come in a range of different sizes. Apple has given its 20-inch Cinema display a minor update with the brightness lifted from 250 nits to 300 nits and the contrast ratio rising from 400:1 to 700:1, but externally it looks exactly the same as it did, which is very good indeed.

Unfortunately, the price has also remained very steep at £529 (inc. VAT), although Apple probably considers this a bargain as the 23-inch Cinema costs £750, while the 30-inch is a scary £1,500.

As for the Cinema itself, well it's the very embodiment of minimalism. The stand is an elegant piece of curved aluminium which matches the aluminium bezel, while the tilt adjustment is as smooth and light as you could desire. On the right end of the screen are the brightness up/down and power buttons.

Connecting the Cinema to your laptop is an unusual experience as the cables are captive and include one Firewire connector and a USB plug. Hook these up to your laptop and you can use the two Firewire 400 ports and two USB 2.0 ports that are located on the rear of the lower bezel.

The only video input is a digital DVI connection, which is fine when you're talking about a £200 display; however, we are a touch wary of spending this much money on a big screen for watching movies when there is no HDMI connector, which is what you'll need if you want to watch movies in hi-def mode.

The power supply is a small external block that is finished in gloss white, with a kettle-type connection for your mains cord, while the Cinema socket is similar in size to a Firewire port. There's no OSD and no contrast adjustment and, while this worked well on the first version of the Cinema, we found the picture on the revised model could look pale and washed out.

Overall, this is an expensive monitor that isn't as flexible as we'd like.