LG Flatron E2290V

Like its cousin the IPS226V, the E2290V is one of the stars of LG's new collection of monitors.

That means the Korean manufacturer has kitted it out with an unusual design and an ultra-thin frame. Let's see what's hiding in that wafer-thin 7.2 mm bezel ...

Hardware: appearances can be deceiving

And like the LG E2260V, the E2290V's design isn't going to leave anybody sitting on the fence. It has great looks, but the quality of the hardware doesn't match. On the basis of the latter, in fact, it's no better than an entry-level monitor. The E2290V has HDMI, DVI and VGA inputs and a headphone jack that you can use to pick up the audio signal carried by the HDMI cable. All of these inputs and outputs are grouped together at the bottom of the stand, rather than at the back of the monitor.

Responsiveness: not fast enough for gamers

Responsiveness
Light Background	Dark Background	Average

Contrary to the originally published spec (which LG has since corrected), the E2290V has a response time of 5 ms, not 2 ms. If that doesn't mean anything to you, the easiest way to explain it is to say that the change shifts the monitor from one for gamers to one that's more at home with office work. The manufacturer has promised that there will be a version with a 2 ms response time in the future, but it won't be available for a while.

As it is, though, it's not able to meet the exacting requirements of avid gamers: a TN panel with a 5 ms response time suffers from too much ghosting behind fast-moving objects, a defect that's particularly visible in FPS-style games.

The E2290V also has a slight input lag, though when we measured it, it fell below the threshold of human perception. It won't have a negative impact on any multiplayer games.

Colours are almost right

With its default settings, this monitor suffers from several colour problem, of which the incorrect gamma and high colour temperature stand out most of all. In other words, the E2290V does a bad job of dividing up luminance across different shades and has a strong blue tinge.

You can still improve things by choosing the sRGB colour temperature, which limits the problems, and causes the deltaE to fall from 5.3 to 3.2. Remember, this score describes the average discrepancy between the colours requested by the graphics card and those shown onscreen. The colours are said to be accurate when it falls below 3.0, so the E2990V isn't too far from perfect.

Anybody who needs to do even better will have to use a calibration profile, which can bring the deltaE down to below 2.0.

The contrast ratio is a long way from rivalling the best of the bunch: at 791:1, it's below the average for monitors (850:1).