When I was sat in the Uni Library (see the COMPAQ Evo review), and I thought I'd review the monitor that's sat inches in front of my bored and sad little face. It's a startling silver colour (imagine a silver ps2/ps3 if you would) on the front, with a dull black casing away from the front panel. The product name is at the top of the monitor just above the screen) with COMPAQ in red to the "viewers" left and "5500" in black to the right. Theres three buttons in the centre (menu, - and +) with an on/off switch to the right...all pretty bog standard really.

The size, 15" isn't really upto much, I'd feel much more "at home" (my house PC, not laptop is 19") with a larger screen but I guess it's acceptable if nothing else. The quality is possibly off todays standards of HD ready 1080i monitors, but it's again an acceptable standard. However the colouring seems blurred and dull, in comparision to most other monitors I've used.

It is easy to use as it's basically turn it on and wham-bam-thank you mam, with no difficult configurations to sort out, literally plug in and your ready to go.
The instructions and everything else are just what you expect of COMPAQ, clear, easy, simple but possibly not totally in depth enough for a beginner. Though their customer support is very good as it always has been.

The monitor sits very nicely ontop of the Evo with the matching colours and designs going well together, and just like the Evo, I'd advise you to keep top range games well away as the colours would drive you crazy. Also like the evo it seems like a very cheap officey type of thing, rather than a fully blown super monitor with flat screen 21" HD.