Asus ML249H

Asus ML249H review

At PC Format, we remember the days when two-stone, hearing-aid beige TFT monitors stood resplendent atop our desks, brazenly spewing out heat and gamma-like prototypes from Aperture Science's monitor division. We might have played through the golden age of PC gaming on these screens, but the glory days of screens themselves might well be right now. For under three hundred of your (possibly) ill-gotten gains you can buy a 24-inch PC display with the kind of native resolutions and contrast ratios that would have had people burning them at the stake for witchcraft just a decade ago. Some of them are even 3D, so you can watch films and play games while earning yourself a splitting headache. Just as importantly, said witchcraft has been packed into a slender package smaller than this reviewer's GCSE graphic design folder. The problem with glory days though is that when standards are so high, it's easy to miss out on the very best. Asus' ML249H monitor isn't particularly aiming to be the very best, but it certainly wants to beat the rest. It isn't a 3D screen, so refresh rates max out at 75Hz and when you watch Avatar there'll be none of that distracting 'It's like I'm there!' nonsense and you'll see it for the bloated, generic game intro FMV it is.