widescreen LCD montor advice
 

My 17" Dell LCD at home recently died. I need to buy a new monitor for family use & work - no serious gaming. The 20" widescreens seem to be the best combination of price and real estate.

The best prices I've found are for the Viewsonic Optiquest Q20wb and Acer AL2016WBbd Black 20", both around $180 at Newegg and others.

The problem is I can't find any reviews (except some user reviews on Newegg) for either monitor. No retailers I've visited to stock the Optiquest line from Viewsonic. I did see a few Acer monitors (not the model I'm considering) at Circuit City and they seemed a bit inferior to the Compaq, HP, and Viewsonic.

Is anyone familiar with the Optiquest (budget) line from Viewsonic? Is the LCD quality similar to their other monitors and the difference mainly in stand, speakers, and other components?

Any advice here would be appreciated.

I bit the bullet and bought an off-brand at Micro Center - the
Chimei (yep, Chimei!) 22" widescreen. 5ms response time. Gorgeous picture.

$239 on sale.

I'm now kicking myself that I didn't buy two at that price, just because.

Newegg has this now for $250:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16824252008