Not all monitors are created equal.
I am surprised by how low the quality and specs of some retail/consumer monitors have become. This is the part of your PC you look at all day. The best computer money can buy will look like crud when connected to a cheap 'big box' monitor. The refresh rates and contrast ratios of some monitors being sold today are embarrassing.
Forget about our low price for a minute and look at these specs. I've bolded the more important numbers. Compare these to monitors being sold in Best Buy or other retail stores.
- Inputs: VGA, DVI-D, Display Port, USB 2.0 Ports
- Contrast Ratio 1000:1 / 2000000:1 (dynamic)
- Resolution: 1680 x 1050 at 60Hz
- Color Support 16.7 million colors
- Horizontal Viewing Angle: 170
- Vertical Viewing Angle: 160
- Pixel Pitch 0.282 mm
- Brightness 250 cd/m2
- Screen Coating Anti-glare, hard coating
- Horizontal Refresh Rate 83 kHz
- Vertical Refresh Rate 75 Hz
- Manufacturer Dell, Inc.
The reason these monitors are so much better than the ones you can buy in a store is they were made for office use and they were very expensive. They were built from the best available materials to the best specs. The other monitors were built to be cheap. That is how it works in retail stores. The cheapest product is purchased the most. So these companies build monitors from the cheapest available components using the least expensive technology they can get.
