Continuing our coverage of green computing devices, let’s take a look at the greenest monitors currently available. These monitors are energy efficient, and they eliminate most hazardous chemicals from their design. Some even incorporate recycled plastic into their casings. EPEAT is the most comprehensive green certification for monitors — the EPEAT certification incorporates Energy Star 4.0 requirements, and the European RoHS requirements.

Here’s a list of some of the greenest monitors currently available:

Lenovo’s ThinkVision L Series Monitors

Lenovo is a leader in building green monitors — 11 out of the 15 EPEAT Gold Certified monitors are manufactured by Lenovo.

Right now, I’m testing their  ThinkVision L197 Wide 19″ LCD monitor, which is Gold Certified, and according to my Kill-A-Watt meter, it’s drawing 13-14 watts as I write this post. By comparison my 22″ Acer monitor draws 23 watts, while performing the same task.

Lenovo says they were able to reduce the energy consumption of L197 and  L174 monitors by reducing the number of bulbs used in the system from four to two, while adding new brightness enhancement film. The L197 and the L174 consume 25% and 35% less electricity than any prior generation ThinkVision monitors.

The L197 also has 28% post-consumer recycled content in its plastic parts, as do the other ThinkVision monitors.

The EPEAT Gold-certified Lenovo monitors include ThinkVision L151, L171, L171P, L194 Wide, L190X, L220X Wide, L174 and L197 Wide.

Link: Lenovo ThinkVision L Series

The Lenovo monitors are available from Amazon.

Dell’s E207WFP Monitor

Last year Dell announced that it aspires to be the world’s greenest computing company, and last week they announced they are now a “carbon neutral” company. This claim seems bit premature, but Dell buys renewable energy directly from utilities to fulfill one-fifth of its energy needs. Dell also boasts a new record in recycling 102 million pounds of IT equipment from customers in 2007, a 20% increase over the previous year.

Dell has one Gold EPEAT certified monitor, the 19″ E207WFP. Like Lenovo’s ThinkVisions, this monitor has 28% post-consumer recycled content in its plastic parts. Lenovo’s monitors scored slight higher overall though, because there’s still some mercury in Dell’s monitor. But overall, its good green monitor from Dell, and we’d like to see more from them.

Dell’s E207WFP is available from Amazon.

LG’s Flatron W2252TE Monitor

LG recently announced that had released “world’s most energy-efficient monitor”, their Flatron W2252TE. The 22-inch widescreen LCD claims to offer a 45% power reduction on other models. However, it reportedly draws 22 watts, and as I mentioned about my 22″ Acer monitor draws 23 watts, so the reported numbers don’t seem to add up. LG also makes no green claims beyond the energy efficiency of the monitor, so it probably contains the usual hazardous substances.

It will be released in the UK this month — there’s no word on pricing yet.

News article: SmartPlanet