Important things to look for:
- Contrast ratio, the higher the better
- Dead-pixel policy. Many brands/stores will only allow a return if you have 8 or more dead pixels. While dead or 'stuck' (permanently red, green or blue) pixel ratios have dropped considerably over the last few years, there is still a real chance that you'll end up with one or more bad ones. I personally have a single red pixel right in the middle of my screen, which was not covered for a return/repair/exchange. While unfortunate, it still beats using my CRT without question... But know what you're getting in for! A slightly higher price with a no-questions-asked return policy is much preferable over saving a few pennies and ending up with a permanent distraction right in the middle of your brand new screen.
- Low response time. The lower the response time, the crisper your video will look, with less blurred movement. Unless you only run office applications, go no higher than 16ms, tops. Especially if you play fast-paced FPS's and the likes, 8ms would be even better.
- As Grey Alien mentioned as well, pretty much all LCD screens with built-in speakers that I've seen have absolutely attrocious sound quality. More than likely you'll choose to keep using your current speakers, so unless you know for a fact the LCD speakers sound good, assume you won't be using them. Some come with optional speaker bars that you can attach to the screen (Dell, for example) which will sound better, but any cheap sub-woofer system will still beat it to shreds.
- DVI input is a big plus, since it too gives an improved image quality. The catch is that there is both DVI analog and DVI digital. DVI digital gives the best quality. This scenario also depends on what kind of connectors you have on your video adapter, it needs to be compatible as well.
Many monitors also list a high brightness (450cd/m2, or higher) as a feature, but this can be argueable. I had to turn the brightness on my LCD to the lowest possible settings AND adjust the gamma settings of my video drivers to an even lower setting to make it easy on the eyes. The default settings were un-godly bright. (An LCD monitor is significantly brighter than the average laptop screen, since it has a more powerful backlight -- low power usage is not as much of a concern for desktops as it is for laptops)
- Dead pixel policy, in case you forgot. Caveat emptor (Buyer beware).
The older generation LCD's were not very good, the current crop beats CRT's hands down. I'm sure that many of the nay-sayers haven't actually used one recently. I don't really care about the 'space-saving' over a CRT -- the thing that mattered most to me was that the whole vertial refresh flicker went out of the window. To me, everything below 100Hz on a CRT was pretty much unusable for more than half an hour due to eyestrain. Even with 100Hz on a trinitron CRT my eyes feel tired before long. While LCD's have a lower refreshrate (typical 75Hz) than CRT's, since there is absolutely no flicker it is much easier on the eyes.
Of course, some people are more surceptible to low refreshrates than others. I'm amazed how many of my co-workers can't even 'see' the flicker at 60Hz, when even 85Hz drives me nuts.
- Contrast ratio, the higher the better
- Dead-pixel policy. Many brands/stores will only allow a return if you have 8 or more dead pixels. While dead or 'stuck' (permanently red, green or blue) pixel ratios have dropped considerably over the last few years, there is still a real chance that you'll end up with one or more bad ones. I personally have a single red pixel right in the middle of my screen, which was not covered for a return/repair/exchange. While unfortunate, it still beats using my CRT without question... But know what you're getting in for! A slightly higher price with a no-questions-asked return policy is much preferable over saving a few pennies and ending up with a permanent distraction right in the middle of your brand new screen.
- Low response time. The lower the response time, the crisper your video will look, with less blurred movement. Unless you only run office applications, go no higher than 16ms, tops. Especially if you play fast-paced FPS's and the likes, 8ms would be even better.
- As Grey Alien mentioned as well, pretty much all LCD screens with built-in speakers that I've seen have absolutely attrocious sound quality. More than likely you'll choose to keep using your current speakers, so unless you know for a fact the LCD speakers sound good, assume you won't be using them. Some come with optional speaker bars that you can attach to the screen (Dell, for example) which will sound better, but any cheap sub-woofer system will still beat it to shreds.
- DVI input is a big plus, since it too gives an improved image quality. The catch is that there is both DVI analog and DVI digital. DVI digital gives the best quality. This scenario also depends on what kind of connectors you have on your video adapter, it needs to be compatible as well.
Many monitors also list a high brightness (450cd/m2, or higher) as a feature, but this can be argueable. I had to turn the brightness on my LCD to the lowest possible settings AND adjust the gamma settings of my video drivers to an even lower setting to make it easy on the eyes. The default settings were un-godly bright. (An LCD monitor is significantly brighter than the average laptop screen, since it has a more powerful backlight -- low power usage is not as much of a concern for desktops as it is for laptops)
- Dead pixel policy, in case you forgot. Caveat emptor (Buyer beware).
The older generation LCD's were not very good, the current crop beats CRT's hands down. I'm sure that many of the nay-sayers haven't actually used one recently. I don't really care about the 'space-saving' over a CRT -- the thing that mattered most to me was that the whole vertial refresh flicker went out of the window. To me, everything below 100Hz on a CRT was pretty much unusable for more than half an hour due to eyestrain. Even with 100Hz on a trinitron CRT my eyes feel tired before long. While LCD's have a lower refreshrate (typical 75Hz) than CRT's, since there is absolutely no flicker it is much easier on the eyes.
Of course, some people are more surceptible to low refreshrates than others. I'm amazed how many of my co-workers can't even 'see' the flicker at 60Hz, when even 85Hz drives me nuts.