While doing research on LCDs I found the Dell G2210 LED backlit monitor. It looks promising in regards to my biggest complaint of poor black levels, but I can't bring myself to drop $200 not knowing if the results will be acceptable to me. Here's an excerpt from a review at CNET:
This sounds like the LCD to pickup if anyone wants to give it a shot and report back here.CNET G2210 Excerpt wrote:Great scores in DisplayMate don't always translate into similar results in our real-world test, but the G2210 has some of the deepest blacks we've seen on a monitor; a critical attribute for good movie playback. We used the Movie preset to check out "War of the Worlds" ("WotW") on DVD and "House of Flying Daggers" ("HoFD") on Blu-ray. "WotW" looked great for a DVD, with a deep black level and accurate colors. "HoFD" also had deep blacks, accurate colors, and solid picture fidelity without any ghosting or streaking. The Gateway HD2201 used to be our favorite 22-incher to watch movies on, but it just cannot compare to the G2210.
Most of this incredible performance can be attributed to the LED backlight in the monitor. Most monitors use cold cathode fluorescent lamp-based backlights--several fluorescent tubes stretched horizontally across the screen. The Dell G2210 relies on individual LEDs all over the back of the screen that turn off or on independently, giving the display more precise control over the amount of light coming through. The purported advantages of an LED backlight are better energy efficiency, more accurate color reproduction, a conceivably thinner panel design, and a higher potential brightness level.
A high black level on a display will distort the grayscale and adversely affect color reproduction. However, thanks to its precise control of the backlight light, the G2210 is capable of a low black level, which translates into fantastic color reproduction. While its maximum brightness is lower than the Gateway HD2201 (249 versus 289 respectively), this was never a problem and at times we had to turn down the G2210's brightness to decrease the strain on our eyes. Its tested contrast ratio beat Dell's claim of 1,000:1 scoring 1,009:1 in our test.