BenQ’s latest small screen monitor may only be a Full HD Display but it looks stunning on the outside with a striking frameless design pushing the top and side edges out to the edge of the monitor, leaving just the bottom edge with any plastic casing showing.

The 23.8-inch monitor has an IPS LED-backlight screen that displays a standard 1920 x 1080 pixels (Full HD). For most people, 24″ screens at Full HD will be perfect, unless you’re looking for pinpoint accuracy for art or design, and the picture quality is certainly good here.

As a gaming monitor, the GW2480 disappoints slightly, with a higher than average 5ms (GTG) response time and rather weedy 1W stereo speakers, so it’s not really aimed at the gaming audience.

As this is a budget monitor, the specs don’t really excite, with a 1000:1 contrast ratio and just an average 250 cd/m2 brightness making this anything other than a standout monitor as far as the numbers go, but the Brightness Intelligence Technology does seem to help it out a little. BenQ screens are usually exceptional generally, in spite of specs, though, and this is no exception as far as clarity is concerned.

Buttons are easy to get to and well designed to sit right under the frame, with clearly marked signs above them on the front. The power button is, thankfully, slightly raised and bigger than the others so there’s little chance of turning the monitor off by mistake when you go for a menu option.

On the the connection front the GW2480 is pretty standard fare, providing a single D-Sub, HDMI and DisplayPort port facing downwards along the bottom edge at the back.

These are easy to get to though not as ideal as those monitors which allow them to face back to the wall. It could, however, be useful for space saving.

While the GW2480 is undoubtedly a well made monitor with a nice screen and a lovely frameless design, there’s the feeling that it could have been a little better with slightly higher specs for this point in time. While there’s no point having an upgrade to the resolution on a monitor this size, I’d have hoped that the contrast and brightness could be pushed a little further for the money. Ultimately, it’s a nice office or home monitor that has the usual BenQ quality but it’s slightly underwhelming.