Despite the great hoohah over new display technologies and talk of the rise of LCD, the crt computer monitor is in good health. It may be bulky and dowdy looking in comparison with the LCD, but the latter has fallen foul of its own popularity by driving up the prices, leaving the crt computer monitor offering better value for money.

Hitachi's CM650ET 17in CRT is of the short-necked variety, which means it's slightly shorter from back to front than normal. Its cabinet depth of 373mm is considerably less than most standard CRTs - Iiyama's Vision Master Pro 410 (reviewed issue 57, p163) measures 420mm - and compares favourably with other shortnecks, although the fact that the power cables aren't recessed tempers this somewhat. Despite such pint-sized dimensions, you'll still be able to squeeze a USB hub unit, with one upstream and four down downstream ports, into the base of the monitor for an extra £45.

To look at, the CM650ET, like its name, is a pretty plain affair. At the bottom of the fascia, along with the power switch, you'll find five small buttons. These provide access to the CM650ET's on-screen display, which is both well thought out and straightforward in operation, and is also the first transparent OSD I've seen. This means you can see more of what you're doing while you wait for the OSD to disappear. In terms of features, the OSD has everything you'd expect of a modern monitor except colour-convergence controls.

Flat screens have been all the rage of late, with most manufacturers including some flavour of the technology in their product ranges. This particular model isn't designed as flat. In fact, its shadow-mask screen appears more bulbous than most, although its 16in viewable diagonal is pretty generous. The CM650ET is also a little inferior to its flat-screen cousins in terms of the achievements in resolution. The Vision Master Pro 410 can manage up to 1,600 x 1,200 at 75Hz, while the Hitachi can only reach 1,280 x 1,024 at a lowly 64Hz. You'd be hard pressed to warrant a requirement for either of these resolutions on a monitor this size, so testing was carried out at a more reasonable 1,024 x 768, which the CM650ET could handle at a comfortable vertical refresh rate of 85Hz.

As with most shadow-mask screens, the picture produced by the CM650ET was on the grainy side, particularly in large areas of white screen. This didn't seem to affect the unit's focus adversely, which although not that crisp to start off with is as good in the corners as it is in the centre of the screen, with only marginal deterioration in the bottom right corner. Colour reproduction was generally well balanced, but I felt it was on the dull side. Further investigation revealed that the monitor provided for evaluation had some problems with differentiating low-intensity and high-intensity colours, had a touch of streaking and poor power regulation. Another concern was the monitor's geometry, which I found to slightly bow along the bottom edge of the screen, as well as a perceptible s-shaped distortion on the left and right edges. Both problems couldn't be adjusted out.