NeMon'ess's Journal: 22" monitor at CompUSA vs. others?

CompUSA has the wide screen Envision G22LWk 22-inch LCD monitor for $220 after two rebates totaling $90. After taxes it should be $260. My friend bought one yesterday and I went with him to compare. I'm need a new monitor and might get one today.

So far I'd rate if four out of five at the $250 price. Compared to a Samsung next to it I'd say visually they tied. That's after turning off color enhancement on the Samsung, and using paint.exe to draw blocks of colors. It has a very poor viewing angle though. Two people standing side by side three feet from it will see the same colors, but three people would not. Especially if there's a height difference. Tilting the monitor a bit up or down from the viewer noticeably darkens the colors. My friend bought it because he's going to sit at his desk and face it just where he should. HP has one for about $350 with a viewing angle that lives up to it's claims much better. So does Apple's 23" but it's hundreds of dollars more.

We checked in the store and found no dead or stuck pixels. At home next to my six years old 19" Viewsonic PF790 CRT I hooked it up digitally and messed with the controls on it and my Radeon for an hour or so before getting it remarkably close to match my screen. In fact I'd say it looks like the dark greens on my screen are a bit weak.

I made up the blocks of color test pattern again. On the Envision the blue and red match pretty well, the green is maybe a touch strong. But after playing The Rundown simultaneously on both and comparing the flesh tones as well as the jungle, I think it looks really good. I turned the brightness on the LCD down to 7 out of 100, the contrast to 66, and on my Radeon the brightness down to -69 on a scale of -100 to 100. At those levels the white wasn't causing eye strain on websites, and black was acceptably black. There's a little bit of light-bleed mostly in the bottom half-inch, but when watching a movie that's a black bar that wouldn't bother me.

So I'm wondering if anyone has opinions on, seen, heard, or read about the competition? I know there's 19" models with better colors and probably contrast too. I really like the 22" size, but if someone knows of a 19", or 20" that's visually great and has a fast refresh, I'd like to hear about it.