Looking to upgrade your display? Bit-Tech has five of the best widescreen LCD monitors on test. Check out how they perform in our image analysis and real-world gameplay tests:

What's clear is that the Viewsonic 2012W isn't worth buying. At pound;329, it's only pound;11 cheaper than the pound;340 VX2025 model, which we have shown is clearly superior. We'd also suggest that although the BenQ is the cheapest overall (pound;317), it's still worth spending an extra pound;23 to get the Viewsonic VX2025. When you're spending over pound;300 on a monitor, it's not worth skimping just to save a few quid.

The Acer and NEC monitors are in a slightly different price league, priced pound;411 and pound;423 respectively - a full pound;70-80 more than the VX2025. We believe that the Acer is overpriced in this range - although it offers comparable features to the NEC, with the glossy coating, the NEC has a better raw specification in terms of response time and brightness.

So, the fight for which to buy basically comes down to the Viewsonic VX2025 and the NEC 20WGX, with the NEC some 25% more expensive. Which you want to buy will really come down to whether or not you want the glossy, overbright feel or whether you're happy to go without that. What does the glossy coating add?

We've said that it adds vibrancy and depth, but that it can increase reflectivity in normal lighting situations. If you're a gamer that likes to play in the dark, the reflectivity won't be an issue and you'll absolutely love the intense colour in gaming situations. There's also a minor added convenience of USB on the side of the monitor and the awesome menu system that makes it easy to tweak your monitor for different profiles. If you're looking for a monitor purely for desktop work, we'd also say that the NEC is definitely the one to go for, with the brightness and glossyness being fantastic for standard work.

However, we have to come out and say that the VX2025 is better for gaming, and so that's where we'd put our money. We found that it had the best black scaling of any monitor on test here, and Quake 4 was a tangibly better game for it. It doesn't have the glossy coating, meaning that you don't have to switch the lights off to play. It is, of course, pound;80 cheaper, which may sway some people.