With physical adjustments including tilt, height, and swivel, ViewSonic's VP171b is comfortable to work with. Along with a pivoting screen--handy for scrutinizing full pages of letter-size text documents--the VP171b comes with Perfect Portrait, ViewSonic's version of Portrait Displays' PivotPro screen rotation software. Thanks to a thin bezel, the VP171b also works neatly in a dual-monitor setup.

In our display quality tests, the VP171b didn't stand out, producing results that were typical of a mid-range LCD monitor. We had trouble reading a line of soft grey type on our Microsoft Word test screen, and noted a pink screen cast, which may have contributed to the display's so-so graphics performance.

Despite ViewSonic's claims of an 8-millisecond response time--the fastest available--the VP171b only produced average results on our motion tests. It didn't look any better than many 17" monitors with slower vendor-specified response times (up to 25ms).

The menus are easy to navigate and full of advanced options; we wish, though, that ViewSonic would make bigger, easier-to-read screen adjustment buttons.