Need a recommendation on a monitor

Looking to upgrade my 550 TI next week. Been wanting to for awhile, as I'm still doing VGA. I've settled on the Sapphire 7870 GHZ edition as my indoctrination into the 1080p world, but I'm undecided on a monitor. Intially, I was sure I was going to go with an Asus 24 inch that had a customer choice award from Newegg under its belt. But at the time I was also considering going with a Sapphire FleX, and running a tri-monitor setup with my 2 VGA monitors, but I've decided, hey, 2 monitors is enough, why not just get a big 27 inch to game on. Only thing is, its coming a bit over what I initially wanted to spend, but yes I'm well aware of the "you get what you pay for concept".

Tentatively, I'm looking at this Asus one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236103

or

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236091

The 2nd one doesn't have an LED backlight, but other than that it appears to be the same to me. Do I really need a backlight? Professor Wikipedia has a bunch of blah blah blah. I'd like someone to give it to me straight in plain, simple English if possible.

I was also looking at this Planar monitor, TigerDirect has what looks like a pretty nice deal on it, and TigerDirect has decent reviews, but Newegg has the same model (a little more pricey) and they seem to have a lot of reviews with people complaining about dead pixels and troubles with Planar going through the RMA process. I don't know how common dead pixels are, as I've never had one that I'm aware of and I've had several LCD monitors, in laptops, and desktops. Mostly Dell branded (which I'm sure is really made by some other company who just slaps the Dell name on it)

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?EdpNo=6610232&sku=P610-2702

If anyone has any of these specific models, I'd be interested to hear about it, or any other monitor recommendations ($300 is my limit however, as its already more than I was intending to spend) 1920x1080 resolution, and 60hz is fine, as I cannot afford, nor am I convinced that 120hz is necessary as I think the better quality mostly comes from the resolution not the refresh rate.
 
Solution
All monitors need backlight otherwise you will not be able to see anything on the LCD screen. The LCD pixels themselves do not glow, therefore they need a light source behind them so that you can see what is on the screen. There are two types of backlight - CCFL (cold compact florescent light) and LED.

LED backlight uses less electricity and monitors built with them can be thinner. This is because LED backlight isn't directly behind the LCD panel (CCFL is), but are around the edges of the LCD monitor. This could result in some backlight bleeding around the edges though. For a 24" monitor the difference between CCFL and LED could be as much as 25w difference in power consumption.

LED backlight is not actually white even though it is...
All monitors need backlight otherwise you will not be able to see anything on the LCD screen. The LCD pixels themselves do not glow, therefore they need a light source behind them so that you can see what is on the screen. There are two types of backlight - CCFL (cold compact florescent light) and LED.

LED backlight uses less electricity and monitors built with them can be thinner. This is because LED backlight isn't directly behind the LCD panel (CCFL is), but are around the edges of the LCD monitor. This could result in some backlight bleeding around the edges though. For a 24" monitor the difference between CCFL and LED could be as much as 25w difference in power consumption.

LED backlight is not actually white even though it is sometimes referred to a WLED (W = white). In reality blue LEDs with a yellow phosphorous coating is used to imitate white. The vast majority of time the WLED backlight does look white, but some people have stated their LED LCD monitor produces slightly bluish whites.

A 1920x1080 resolution monitor has 2,073,600 pixels. While most people get perfectly working LCD monitors some people can get monitors with dead pixels simply because there are so many of them to begin with. Also each pixel is made up of 3 sub-pixels for the primary colors (Red, Green, Blue) which makes up the rainbows of colors. That's over 6 million sub-pixels. With that many parts eventually someone is going to get stuck with a defective LCD monitor. It's also possible to get a "bad batch" of LCD panels where the number of dead or stuck pixels/sub-pixels is greater than normal.
 
Solution
Thanks for the info jag.

Well, if it has that many pixels, I guess I'd never know if I had a dead one, maybe a cluster of them altogether? Who knows.

The bad batches might explain why Newegg has a few with bad reviews and TigerDirect doesn't. I'm not super picky about the brand name, although if I were basing my choice on it alone, hands down it would be Asus, I've got a few days to make my final decision, I'll see what kind of input I get from others in the meantime.

I have dual 19 inches now 1280x1024 (both Dell branded- and I've had them for years). I definitely want something bigger with a high resolution. Guy in a thread in the CPU forums wanted to know how well Battlefieldplay4free worked on my system, I downloaded it and tried it out, and have been hooked since. I want to see all them teeny little sonzauknowwhats hiding behind rocks in the distance so I can cap em with my SCAR-L. :lol:
 
A single dead or stuck pixel can be noticeable. The closer to the center of the screen, the more noticeable it will be. Most people do not get monitors with dead or stuck pixels, but a few people do.

Asus generally makes good quality, but relatively inexpensive monitors. Of the two I would probably just go for the ASUS VE278Q since it uses less power and generates less heat. I would read the 1 and 2 star reviews just to find out what people actually do not like about those monitors to make a decision.

Planar is a good company, but I wouldn't recommend their inexpensive monitors since they kinda look cheap. I like Planar monitors, but only their $700+ monitors which they basically no longer produce except the $2,000 PX2491W.
 
Well, I didn't get as much feedback as I had hoped for on different choices, but you gave me a lot of information I'm sure at least part of will come up when I take my A+ cert. I went with the LED backlit Asus. The thing is like a dream.

Only complaint I have about it is for $300, it should have come with an HDMI cable, it came with a VGA and DVI cable. I'm running it in HDMI, needed the DVI port on the 7870 for my 19 inch VGA Dell. Great setup.
 

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