Bought a disappointing 24inch monitor (uneven brightness), which replacement to choose?

[carrotcapacitor]

Hi,

first of all: there is a TLDR at the bottom.
After 8 years my old LG 227WT died on me a few weeks ago and therefore I needed a replacement. After a lot of research on the internet, I choose the ASUS VG245H for about 190€. Sadly, I got a panel with a dead pixel, but as it is on the bottom left corner, I don't really care that much.
The real problem is the panel itself. The brightness is very uneven with the bottom part (especially bottom left) being noticable brighter than the top part. It's not just the brightness, but the colours get distorted as well. It's very noticable in normal browsing, where the taskbar at the bottom is a completely different grey, than the menu bar at the top.
Here are two pictures I quickly took so that you can get a better idea about what I mean:




I checked at a retailer and the monitor on display showed roughly the same picture.

First question: Is this normal? I tried all the different viewing modes, different settings and so on, but nothing helped. To me, this looks unacceptably bad. It really strains my eyes sitting in front of this monitor for more than two hours. My old LG monitor never had this kind of problem.

Later I checked several other monitors at retailers, namely the LG 23MB35PM, the AOC G2460VQ6, the EIZO EV2450 (I was very surprised by this, maybe a bad panel?) and the HP 24 es. They all had the same problem: The bottom (and again especially the bottom left corner) was noticably brighter than the top of the monitor. [Does anyone knwo why it is the bottom left corner all the time? Do they use the same panels?]

So, here's the pickle: I'm not happy with this ASUS monitor, I want a different one.

TLDR I need an alternative to the ASUS VG245H which I don't like.

What it's used for:
Gaming, watching movies, internet surfing.

Must haves:
Must be available in Germany for about 200€, 300 is the absolute maximum, must have uniform colour/brightness (as uniform as one can get in this price category)and must be good for gaming

Nice to have:
Height adjustable, HDMI and DVI, and flicker free (I usually turn down the brightness a lot) would be nice

Don't care about:
I don't care if the monitor has more than 60HZ, 3D or a bigger resolution than 1920x1200. My next graphic card is going to be an AMD again, so I'd only profit from FreeSync. Also it doesn't matter if it's IPS or TN, as I don't have any preference in this regard.

So, suggestions are highly welcome.

Thanks!

 

[poochiepiano]

Any preferences on physical size? I am partial to the LG line of ultrawides. On my model, I had no backlight bleed, no IPS glow, accurate color reproduction, and even brightness. It's always a lottery as some have had worse luck. The 29" can get around $200-250. I had the 25" size, which many think is too small, but was good for me. Goes around $150-200 often.