Monitor choice

[Deleted]

My current monitor is a very old Samsung SyncMaster 223BW, and the colors are just horrible (saw the difference when I got to use a new monitor for a couple of months) and pretty much anything would be better.

Trying to choose between:

BENQ 21.5" G2220HD - on sale for 109€ at the moment
BENQ 24" G2420HDBL - 179€

They're of the same series, but the latter is LED-illuminated while the first one is not - and there's obviously the size difference. I'd like to go straight for a better one in the 200-300€ price range, but well, my dad dislikes me spending a lot of money on computer stuff (I just bought a new CPU + mobo + RAM a month ago for 270€), so I'll gladly settle for a cheaper one for now - I'll get a better one a year or two later (hopefully IPS ones get cheaper by then) and use this one as the secondary display when that happens. Also at that price point I'd feel an even stronger urge to get a low-end IPS monitor...

Feel free to suggest other models in the latter's price range (160-200€) - I've checked a lot of discussion on monitors of that price range and people's opinions vary greatly, and very few have actually tried several of them and can thus make a more accurate comparison (note: a monitor that costs 200$ in the US tends to cost 200€ over here, instead of something closer to the true conversion rate).

So, some questions:

1. My current monitor is 1680x1050 @ 21,6" - would a 1920x1080 resolution make things way too small on the 21,5" one?
2. Can I expect IPS monitor prices to drop significantly in the next year or two (or perhaps a new, better but inexpensive technology to be introduced)?
3. Does LED-illumination really not make any difference in image quality? I'm aware dynamic contrast is pretty much useless, but I hear LEDs tend to have better whites but have a harder time to produce a good black color.

[ispano]

IPS is cheaper than it was years ago, tech typically drops in price over time. But there are several variants to IPS. For the LED backlighting, it depends on how they do it and what LEDs they use. Something sidelit will be mostly garbage compared to a CCFL.

[Deleted]

IPS is cheaper than it was years ago, tech typically drops in price over time. But there are several variants to IPS. For the LED backlighting, it depends on how they do it and what LEDs they use. Something sidelit will be mostly garbage compared to a CCFL.

I've understood sidelit LED monitors are the norm and roughly equal with CCFL in image quality, while the, um, LED "backlit" ones are the best and most expensive.

I ended up going for the non-LED version of the 24" one: BenQ G2420HDB, which was on sale for 149€. I noticed the LED version for the same price on Amazon.de, but unfortunately that wouldn't have arrived in time for the launch of The Witcher 2 :P

I'll probably get a better one a year or two down the road, when I hopefully also have a larger desk with enough space for 2 monitors.