Eizo FlexScan L578

Verdict: While the L578 is a good performer, its price tag is nearly as unattractive as the design

Beauty might lie in the eye of the beholder, but let's face it: the Eizo FlexScan L578 turns heads for all the wrong reasons. While TFT displays get slimmer and sleeker with every passing season, the L578 has all the grace of Elvis in his Las Vegas years. It's too wide, too silver, and too festooned in patterns and meshes. If out-of-the-box impressions matter, then my own was the desire to stick it straight back in.

To be fair to Eizo, there's some rationale behind the design. For one thing, the blocky casing provides room for a pair of built-in speakers that - despite a weedy 2W power rating - won't have you wincing from the moment the Windows startup sound kicks in. Headphones or good speakers will still create a better sound, but the SRS WOW audio system, as used in many LCD TVs, works hard to produce pseudo-surround effects and a deeper low end than you'd expect.

However, the gruesome design allows for a stand that's one of the most adjustable we've come across. It allows for so many variations in height and tilt angle that you can view the monitor while you're kneeling on the floor, standing on the desk or positioned anywhere more sensible in between.

While there are some other neat touches, such as the two USB 2 ports sunk into the left-hand side of the panel, the main effect of the ugly design is to draw attention away from a great 17in 1,280 x 1,024 panel. This is where Eizo has, quite rightly, spent most of its R&D budget. We treat response times with caution, but the basic black to white, then back to black again response time is a respectable 16ms. Eizo has also incorporated an overdrive circuit to boost the mid-tone response - which has more impact on rapidly moving colour images - to 12ms. This should, in theory, make the L578 a very tempting proposition for gamers, especially as its tech specs compare very favourably with our Elite-listed 17in TFT, the Sharp LL-172G-B. The L578 has a 1,000:1 contrast ratio, compared with the Sharp's 450:1, and a 250cd/m2 brightness rating, which is somewhat lower than the Sharp's 350cd/m2.

All this technology could make the L578 tricky to set up, but this isn't the case. Connection through the non-captive DVI port is painless, and if you need to use an analogue connection, the Auto button does a great job of getting size, position, and the various timing settings right. While there are comprehensive adjustments if you must do things the hard way, the L578 has effective preset modes for pictures and movies, plus a colour-managed sRGB setting for photographers and designers. What's more, the screen even incorporates its own brightness sensor, which will automatically adjust brightness settings according to the ambient lighting in the room.

The one curiosity is a Smoothing control, which blurs the pixels to reduce any graininess. As this comes at the cost of a loss of definition, this is probably best left turned down. Without smoothing, definition is a real high point for the L578. If you spend any time doing close-up work on digital photographs then it has all the clarity you need. The colours might not always be as vibrant as some but they're probably more accurate, and this is usually more important when using Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro.

This theme continues when it comes to DVD playback. The dark shadows and jungle hues in the opening scenes of 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' show off the panel's strengths to full effect, without any loss of detail or subtle tone. The panel proved equally adept with the brighter palette of 'Spider-Man 2', and no matter how fast Spidey moved, streaking and blurring were two menaces that never threatened New York city.

If there's any game where resolving shadow detail is vital then it has to be Doom 3, but the L578 coped with the terrors skulking in the dark more efficiently than your lily-livered correspondent did, and the fast response time kept the unwanted horrors of ghosting at bay. The warmer tones of World of Warcraft didn't cause the panel any problems either, and if you like the game's odd 'glow' effect, the L578 certainly makes the most of it.

CONCLUSION

The bad news for Eizo is that competition is very tight in the 17in TFT market, and while the L578 is a good performer, its price tag is nearly as unattractive as the design. Gamers and power users want high specs and fast response times, but there are limits to what they'll pay for them, and most people just won't need the built-in speakers. I've grown to like the L578, despite its looks, but with the Sharp LL-172G-B around for nearly £200 less, I still wouldn't want to take one home.