Here I sit, looking about me for things to review...and then it hits me...the screen...right in front of me...I could review that...so here goes.

I'm a bit of a computer geek from way back...I've built many of my own PCs, I've always taken an interest in the latest and greatest technology and I love researching which product I'm about to buy. It seems, then, that my purchasing of the W2242S should have been carefully thought about before hand. In fact, it was anything but.

Having moved into my new home last year, we were frantically trying to "finish" the place...to have a place for everything, everything in its place, as they say. I'd managed to bully the other half into allowing me to bring my old tower PC with me, on the condition that we got a nice flat monitor and wireless keyboard and mouse. So I set out to buy these things from the high street - a very rare thing for me indeed, but I just wanted to get it sorted.

When I saw the LG W2242S for sale in currys I can honestly say my first impression wasn't "wow, I have to have that"...it was more "err, that'll do". I've got a couple of other LG screens around the place, so they're a brand I trust - and with a 22" screen for £130 I reasoned I couldn't go wrong. I picked up the box, paid and left - all within about five minutes.

A year later, it's fair to say that I didn't go wrong. The screen's served me very well. I'll do my best to recall as much detail as possible, but as it's been a while since my purchase, you'll have to forgive any omissions.

The packaging the screen came in was quite compact, but adequate to protect the screen. In the box was a little expanded polystyrene and a nice anti-static foam cover for the panel itself. The surprisingly small, round stand was detached, but this clicked on in a couple of seconds. Also in the box were the usual manuals, driver disk and cables.

On getting the screen out, my first impression was how much larger it was at home than it appeared in the store - it looked pretty vast and imposing on my desk - thankfully I quickly became used to this and it looks completely fine now. The surround is about an inch thick and is made of black gloss plastic. This actually resists dust and fingerprints a lot better than you might think - so the screen still looks new after a year's use. The screen itself has quite a matt appearance and feels smooth rather than glassy to the touch. The power button in the lower right hand corner glows bright blue when the screen is in use and orange if it's unable to detect a signal.

I plugged the screen in to my machine, it auto-adjusted itself (native resolution is 1680x1050) and I've had no cause to do any further fiddling since - it just works. There are, however, all the usual controls accessible through an on-screen-display if you ever need them. I checked once it was up and running and was unable to detect a single dead pixel in the panel.

I've used the screen for word processing, programming, web browsing and videos, as well as casual gaming - in all of these the screen has performed perfectly well - I've never thought about it from an overly technical standpoint - I've never tested rigorously to determine whether I can detect ghosting, I've never monkeyed around with contrast tests and the like - but in day to day use, the screen performs as well as any I've used.

After a long period of constant use, the screen can become a little warm, but never gets hot - and aside from the occasional click when changing resolutions or turning on and off, the screen makes no noise that I can hear.

Overall, it's extremely hard to fault the screen - I've never felt disappointed about a single aspect of the thing - and for a screen chosen more or less at random, I find that pretty impressive.

I've been looking at trying to get hold of a second one today so I can multitask a little easier, but it seems the screen's pretty hard to get hold of these days - if you should come across one at any point, however, I can heartily recommend it.