Doubling up as both an LCD screen for your PC and an LCD TV, Samsung's SyncMaster SM910MP instantly appears to be good value for money. And that's because it is. But it's also got a few tricks up its sleeve that are well worth further exploration.

Let's start with the TV side of things. The unit has an in-built TV tuner, which means you can attach your aerial to the back and happily use it as your television screen (the unit also has connections for component input and S-Video). A surprisingly good bundled remote control is a welcome bonus.

What's more, through a simple hit of a button, the screen can quickly flick between either of its modes. One minute it's a TV, the next it's serving as your PC's monitor. And further marks too for the excellent and useful screen-in-screen feature that allows you to have one function filling the full screen with the other in a smaller area. In effect, it lets you do two things at once. The on-screen menu system is a breeze to navigate, which makes setting up the television functions and tuning the relevant channels as straightforward as you could wish.

The quality of the display itself is excellent. We tried it across numerous functions - DVD playback, gaming, television watching and hour upon hour of tedious office work - and it handled each with aplomb. Gaming in particular it deserves credit for, thanks to its super-fast 8ms response time. Not even the slightest hint of ghosting crossed the screen. Furthermore, its colour display was vibrant throughout our tests, and we found the 1,280 x 1,024 resolution suited us fine. Aesthetically, the SyncMaster SM910MP is stylish and in spite of its features list, its footprint is relatively modest too.

Sadly, there are downsides. One is, as usual, the in-built speakers. These actually aren't bad by the standards of monitor speakers, but they're no substitute for even a bog standard standalone set. More worryingly, when interfacing with a PC it's analogue only, a criminal omission for an LCD display. We can only assume that, with all of the other connections present and correct, Samsung simply ran out of room.

So what we're left with is, at heart, an excellent and flexible viewing solution. Certainly the quality of what you get is in no doubt. Whether what you don't get is important to you is likely to be the potential deal breaker.

This is an excellent screen that works well as a standalone LCD TV or hooked up to your PC. But there's still room for improvement, particularly if you have a graphics card with digital output.