My monitor just died. Help me spend my tax return.

[Grev Drasen]

Or at least $200 of it. That's all I can really afford right now, but not having a monitor is kind of a major issue so I don't have the time to save up for something nice. My six year old HP CRT just crapped out on me in the middle of an intense game of Worms, so here I sit frantically looking for a replacement. Right now I'm hooked up to an ancient Gateway CRT that I found tucked away in a box.

Here are a few I've been looking at on Newegg:

Samsung 19" Widescreen (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16824001088)
Acer 19" Widescreen (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16824009100)
Hanns G 19" Widescreen (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16824254001)

Samsung 17" (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16824001084)
Acer 19" (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16824009083)
Hanns G 19" (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16824254009)

I don't know much about LCD, so what's the deal with Widescreen? Good or bad for gaming, specifically WoW?

[Morgan Evanar]

Widescreen support is iffy for some titles, but WoW supports it perfectly. Some monitors do letterboxed mode, which basically means you get grey/black bars on the sides of a normally sized window. This is preferable to the alternative, which is horribly stretched and ugly. Out of those panels, I'd probably go with the Acer.

[Grev Drasen]

Out of those panels, I'd probably go with the Acer.
The widescreen one?

I've heard good things about WoW and widescreen, but I'm just wondering how I'll like it for every day browsing.

[Morgan Evanar]

I wish I had a widescreen panel. 900 pixels tall is normally enough, and we're horizontally oriented anyway. It's really nice to have a wide work area, which I achieve with two monitors. If you run your apps in a "normal" 4:3 format you'll have more space for a chat program or whatnot.

[Khendon Sevon]

Wide screen is nice. I've found plenty of support for it, so, meh.

My roommate uses Acer and hasn't had problems. Personally, I go for Samsung. My college's computer vision department also uses Samsung. PC Gamer recently said Samsung's making the best screens around.

I love Samsung.

<-- brainwashed.

[Yog]

Trust me, you want widescreen. Games look so much better, and you're going to love all that space on the desktop. Movies / DVDs are closer in aspect ratio also. WoW is so rich and full of details in widescreen.

As for the 3 brands, I have no real preference there. While its true that Samsung tends to make some good quality panels, these are all cheap TN panels. Look for things like low latency, high contrast ratio and viewing angle.

If you had the money to spare, I would go for something slightly more high spec, like the LG 204WT, which has HDMI (you want this for Blue Ray), 1650x1050 resolution, excellent color range and contrast ratio, and is still good value for money. I use this and it looks fantastic.

[Grev Drasen]

Hanns G 19" widescreen just came in today. I'm thoroughly impressed, though I'm not used to this brightness.

Crappy CRTs have kept me in the dark.