Image quality and final thoughts
Other nifty, but seemingly pointless, features include an auto-4:3 image - black borders down both sides - that squashes the picture, and photo effects that provide certain tones such as sepia, monochrome, and Gaussian blur. Why would you want this? We're not quite sure. Best of all, that irritating sound can be turned off from this menu.
A separate menu lets you toggle between various modes that, LG reckons, are best-suited for that environment - Movie, Internet, user-defined, and Demo. The difference between the current mode and selected is shown on a side-by-side basis, which is helpful.
Once set to our preferences, static picture quality was reasonably good. Six lamps facilitate an evenly-lit picture with no localised lightspots, but looking at images results in perceivable banding. Whites are displayed cleanly but blacks tend to be wishy-washy and don't quite reach the levels produced by the very best in the business.
Text, too, doesn't appear to be quite as razor-sharp as on a £400 Dell 2408WFP's and quickly pulling a Notepad file to-and-fro highlights the merest whiff of smearing.
It's clear that the retail £255 budget was apportioned towards gimmicky features and screen real estate rather than on pure image quality.
The screen's forte, though, is in playing movies, in Movie mode, which results in a lustrous picture that's imbued with better-than-average colour quality (for this price-point) and no perceivable ghosting.
Fast-paced gaming also doesn't exhibit any obvious foibles that afflict ultra-cheap panels so the LG FLATRON W2452T is good in some respects yet lacks in others, most notably 2D excellence, and this observation holds true even with the keen pricing factored in.
Final thoughts
Budget 24in monitors now begin at around £220, scaling to some £600 for the very highest-specified models. LG's W2452T sits at the lower end of that pricing spectrum and does, at best, a pretty average job. In particular, we'd have preferred a height-adjustable stand and better black gradation, as well as, obviously, removing that noisome banding.In summary, priced at £255, including VAT, the LG FLATRON W2452T is a lovely-looking monitor that could do with a better panel implementation rather than pointless sounds and image features. If you need 24 inches of screen real estate and budget is key, Dell's E248WFP, priced at £250, would be a better bet, we feel.
HEXUS.certification
The LG FLATRON W2452T monitor passed all of our tests without failure, hence the HEXUS.certification. This is not a recommendation to buy, however.
LG FLATRON W2452T
