With home entertainment and HTPC being the buzzwords today, it comes as no surprise that LCD monitors have taken over from bulky, age-old CRT monitors. TFT monitors are sleek, stylish and in today's times not very expensive either. The Benq T201WA is a great example of such a TFT monitor.

Anybody who wants to build an HTPC would definitely go in for a widescreen monitor. To date, 19-inch widescreen monitors have been ruling the markets thanks to their reasonable price and decent performance. Things are about to change now, with the T201WA entering markets. What we have here is a 20-inch monitor for just a little more than a 19-inch monitor. One inch might not seem like such a huge difference, but it increases the native resolution from 1440x900 to 1680 x 1050.

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The T201WA looks quite good in its sleek silver frame, with the menu buttons in the front over a grill which houses two speakers. We found the buttons to be quite tactile and the menu navigation to be very easy. However, the menu stays on screen for a long time, even after pressing the exit button. This can be very irritating, since it can stop the user from resuming his work immediately. On the back panel you find the power socket. a D-Sub port (sadly, no DVl) and on the side an input for headphones. Also you have the four sockets for wall-mounting and a Kensington lock at the back. The monitor stand snaps on easily, making it easy to attach. The monitor cannot swivel, but it can be tilted vertically.

We used Everest Ultimate to assess the color reproduction of the monitor. It was able to reproduce shades of red, green and blue flawlessly. It also reproduced color gradients smoothly. The T201WA boasts of some very good specifications. Its response time of 5 ms meant it could handle our gam.ing tests superbly. The T201WA might not be the best TFT monitor around, but for its price, we say it is a decent buy for any home user.