LED or LCD?

LED means that the LCD monitor is using LED backlight instead of florescent backlight.

All current consumer LED LCD monitors are edge lit which means lower power consumption and thinner monitors. Regular LCDs with the traditional florescent backlight has a full array of lights directly behind the LCD panel.

Basically LED does absolutely nothing for picture quality. Its not going to offer more accurate or saturated colors.

You will get thin and lower power consumption. Neither affects gaming performance or photography.

In fact if you are going for photography I recommend the Dell U2311 with that budget.
It doesn't have LED backlights but the color displaying mechanism is fundamentally different. It uses an e-IPS LCD panel rather than a cheap TN panel which most monitors offer these days. Its not the best but it is a lot better than TN while being quite affordable.

It would have better colors and viewing angles than any cheap TN panel with LED backlight from Samsung, LG, and whatever.

+1

I just bought the Dell2311 and its awesome. Search around for some coupon codes, and pick one up for 250$. You will get much better picture and color reproduction than you will from a TN panel - and its plenty fast for games from my experience. Bad Company 2 looks awesome on it. It may have a little ghosting, but I don't notice it - and it has very fast input lag for a IPS panel.

Check TFTCentral for review ~ its the best I've found.