The LED screens that Apple now uses in its Cinema displays, and in the all-in-one iMac, provide excellent image quality. We know many graphic designers and photographers who happily do all their design and editing work on an iMac. Unfortunately, the standalone Cinema displays are extremely expensive – starting at almost £650 for the 24in model and rising to a thumping £1,200 for the 30in model – and some designers are put off by the glossy screen.

It’s not surprising, then, that many creative users will want to look for less expensive alternatives. There are many attractive flat-screen monitors available these days, and even some of the budget models are impressive, such as LG’s stylish 23in E2350, which comes in at well under £200. In fact, most of the monitors we tested came in at £300 or less, with only more sophisticated models from Eizo and NEC pushing the price beyond that level.

When choosing a monitor, professional designers and photographers will want to pay close attention to the ‘colour gamut’ provided by their monitor. The colour gamut refers to the range of colours that the monitor can reproduce. If your work involves editing detailed, high-resolution photos then you obviously want a display that can reproduce all the colour information stored in that photo as accurately as possible.

We used special colour calibration and testing software to measure the colour gamut provided by each monitor and it soon became apparent that this is one area where you really get what you pay for, as it was the more expensive Eizo and NEC displays that produced the best results in our tests. The less expensive models from LG, Samsung, Viewsonic and HannsG would still be adequate for basic design work, such as page layouts, marketing brochures and simple photo-editing, but some of these models put their emphasis elsewhere.

The Samsung and LG monitors have clearly got their eyes on the home entertainment market, with their slimline designs, HDMI interfaces and additional audio capabilities, while HannsG focuses on sheer value for money by providing an impressively large 27.5in screen for under £300.

In the end there was a clear dividing line between the displays aimed at home users and those intended for everyday design work in an office environment, so read on to find out which monitor will be the best for your needs.

Buying Advice

All these monitors provide high-quality LCD displays with bright, colourful images that – from a subjective point of view – are very pleasing to the eye. However, it’s the objectively measured colour gamut of each monitor that determines the accuracy of colour reproduction for design and photographic work. And, as the graphs of our colour gamut test results show, these monitors fall into two clear groups.

First, there’s the HannsG, LG, Samsung and ViewSonic monitors that all cost £300 or less and display very similar colour gamuts. These monitors would be perfectly adequate for many design tasks, such as magazine layouts, designing sales materials, and even some quite detailed photo-editing work. However, they do tend to put their emphasis on other areas. The LG E2350 has the narrowest colour gamut in the group, but its slim, stylish design, bright display and highly competitive price will be extremely tempting to home users. The equally stylish Samsung XL2370 is another good choice for home users, although additional features such as its digital audio output bump the price up a bit.

The HannsG HZ281 is something of an oddity, boasting a large, bright 27.5in display at one of the lowest prices we’ve ever seen. There’s a slight trade-off in terms of contrast ratio and brightness, but if you really need a screen that big you’ll be hard pushed to find anything cheaper. The final member of this foursome, the ViewSonic VP2365wb, has a very bright IPS panel that provides a good viewing angle, and at just £250 makes an excellent general-purpose office monitor.

However, it’s the Eizo SX2262W and NEC P221W that stand out for designers, thanks to their significantly wider colour gamuts. These two monitors share similar 22in VA panels that provide almost identical colour gamuts, making them equally suitable for design work that requires accurate colour reproduction.

Yet, there are some major differences between the two. The NEC P221W has a lower resolution – 1,680 x 1,050, compared to Eizo’s 1,920 x 1,200 – so if the ability to watch high-definition video is important in your work then you’ll clearly opt for Eizo. However, affordability was a key factor for this particular review and the NEC P221W costs £375, while Eizo’s £610 price tag makes it almost as expensive as Apple’s 24in Cinema Display.

So, for designers and photographers on a budget, the NEC P221W provides the best all-round combination of image quality, colour reproduction and affordability.