And with that, our test of professional display solutions comes to a close. Unsurprisingly, the bottom line is that choosing the best monitor depends entirely on your application - as is always the case. We award two Editor's Choice awards to the NEC and LaCie monitors.

The LaCie 321 is ideal for photo editing, and it's our first choice for that area. For CAD/CAM, you're better falling back on the Dell 2405FPW. For the same price, our tests show clearly that the designer will benefit from this panel's phenomenal resolution, noticeably brightly rendered colors and better ergonomics.

If you're looking for a calibrator, our heart goes out to the Gretag-Macbeth for its fluidity and its user interface more than for the hardware, which is still identical to that of the Blue-Eye 2. If you're opting for the LaCie 321, it is probably wise to get a LaCie Blue-Eye 2 at the same time so as to profit from better integration. One regret is the absence of support for the Linux OS.

The Gretag Macbeth has joined our own laboratory equipment; it will be a complement to the LaCie Blue-Eye and so we'll be offering you a range value for each screen on test at THG. We will upgrade our test procedure as a result.

The Big Misses

Obviously, not all professional LCD manufacturers were included in the tests.

We regret the absence of Eizo and ViewSonic; we've contacted them, and their screens should reach us shortly. We'll do an update as soon as possible.

The other obvious vendor missing is Apple, and getting their LCD display was more of an issue. A first pass through their European representatives (France and Germany namely) showed strong resistance to see their monitor reviewed by your favorite website, unless of course we test the sample on a G5 computer and preferably on only that. But we persisted and we are now promised a 23" Cinema display in the next few weeks, and we'll publish an update as soon as we can.