Who's the fastest of them all?

Just this morning, BenQ announced the "world's fastest 20-inch wide-screen" LCD monitor, the FP202W. (For those of you not paying attention to the hype within the monitor industry, by fastest, BenQ is referring to the LCD monitor's response time of 8 milliseconds (ms). If this is still gibberish to you, read our response time explainer.) I wasn't overly impressed with this announcement. At first, I swore I'd read another press release last week about a similarly fast Samsung monitor. I was right: the SyncMaster 214T also has a response time of 8ms. Alas, the 214T isn't wide-screen, so the BenQ won by default.

It retained its crown for a few seconds until we saw ViewSonic's press release announcing the wide-screen VX2022, a 20-inch LCD with a response time of (gasp!) 3ms.

So, sorry, BenQ, you do not make the world's fastest 20-inch wide-screen. ViewSonic does. At least until next week when another manufacturer will undoubtedly unveil another faster-than-fast LCD monitor. And, because we love to buy into the hype, we'll let you know about that announcement, too.