The purpose of this guide is to orient people who are trying to buy an LCD monitor of decent size and performance for the best price.

As of July 2006, the best cost-effective (around $220) LCD monitor available in the market is the VIEWSONIC VA1912WB model.

Some hardware experts will compare it with the NEC LCD 1970VX and Samsung 970P models, but its an unfair comparison. You should avoid brand names like HP that really dont have any advantage and are probably refurbished.

Samsung is about $100 (44% more!) and it really is not 44% better. For a good quality and guarantee of no dead pixels VIEWSONIC IS A GREAT OPTION. It also comes with somediscreet speakers that the Samsung version does not has.

A nice addon for PCI express users is the video cable that comes with the viewsonic.

Before buying check out that the seller does not has any neutral or negative feedback. Some people sell stuff they do not posses and generally deliver them out of the agreed time.