When shopping for LCD monitors...

[Arti]

Which brands are good? I want one to game, and 17" should be enough. From what I've seen, you want an 8ms or better response time. I've seen ones around $200 from brands like Polyview and Acer that get good reviews, but I haven't heard of them. How important is the brand when shopping for LCD monitors?

 

[Dra]

for a nice low-cost LCD, get a Samsung 730b. 17 inch, 8ms, 1280 x 1024 native resolution. It usually goes for $300.

 

[waddles]

It's the same as with anything else - if you go for a no name brand, expect that you might end up with poorer quality, worse customer service, inflated specs, etc. etc.

That said, with LCDs, the panels all come from the same couple companies, afaik. If you can try them out in person and find it satisfactory, I wouldn't hesitate on the lesser known brands.

 

[Stellar]

Better brands are Samsung, Viewsonic, LG, NEC/Mitsubishi, Sony, HP, BenQ, Dell, and Apple.

You may get a compareable quality unit from a generic brand name if you do your research but you have to consider the quality of the actual COMPANY you are buying from as far as warranty, RMA, customer service, etc.

 

[Unknown-One]

I agree with them, only get the off brand LCD if you can see it in person.

That said, about 5 years ago I was at Fry's and bought an LCD from GEM (this was the first time I had ever heard of them and from what I can tell they are not a well known brand) but its an awesome little monitor

I think I'll be buying my next monitor from them as well (a 17 inch screen to replace my current 15 inch)