OK budget monitor for $230 or less

The Envision/AOC monitor is very similar to the Acer 22" model. In fact I was looking at both at Compusa and other stores before Compusa went belly up and was sold off to Tiger Direct.

The graphics overall is in the ball park of the other LCD monitors I saw lined up against the wall at my local COMPUSA late last year when I got it. In fact all the lower end LCD PC monitors and increasingly most of the mid-range of the LCD PC monitors are made with mediocre TN panels. TN panels have various shortcomings compared to MVA/PVA and IPS panels which are disappearing fast. You still see IPS panels on HDTVs. My Olevia 26" which uses a S-IPS looks much better than my Envision, despite the fact that it has lower resolution.

The primary reason firms are using TN panels of course is the cost, they are cheaper and given the falling prices for LCDs, most people would rather pay $200-$300 for a monitor than $400-$700. They also have a faster response time, something gamers are usually obsessed with.

Some of the problems with TN panels include the narrower viewing angle. If you check the specs TN panels generally say 160-170 degrees while the other panels may say 178 degrees. Another bigger problem is that, they are 6 bit panels. They use dithering to simulate more shades of colors. The other panels can be 8 bit which can theoretically get more accurate colors.

I initially bought it to get a wide screen LCD with better resolution since I was using an Olevia 26" HDTV as my main PC monitor which has 1366x768 resolution, a bit low for PC use.

In terms of text clarity, it's actually fine for me. I don't notice the blurriness that the above poster mentions. However, it's far darker than my Olevia which is to be expected to some degree, my HDTVs are very bright. In comparison my Envision looks grayish, dirty white when whites are displayed. I feel it's a bit dark, murky.
In fact I have the Envision's brightness cranked all the way up and it still looks a bit muddy, murky.

Even more annoying are the colors. Viewing photos, I noticed the skin on some people looked strange. Whereas it looks smooth on my Olevia, it looks a bit rough, not quite right, on my Envision.

Viewing movies on my 22" also looked a bit murky, the dark scenes were much worse than my Olevia. The contrast just seems worse than the Olevia. LCD panels in general are known to be fairly poor in displaying dark scenes, the fine gradations in dark shades aren't there. CRT are rated much higher in various areas compared to LCDs.

Specs:
1680 x 1050 resolution
300cd/m2 brightness
700:1 contrast ratio
5-millisecond response time
170 horizontal/160 vertical viewing angle

Frankly, if you didn't have a Super-IPS HDTV or one of the high end IPS/MVA panel PC monitors next to it, the differences would be far more minor. Virtually everyone from Viewsonic to Samsung, use TN panels for all their lower end monitors and increasingly their mid and low-higher end monitors, so this is probably OK for the money. The AOC/ENVISION 22" wide and Acer 22" wide and a variety of other generic makes, dominate the entry level 22" wide screen monitors, which fill the pages of weekly sales and bundled systems, so many people are using them and seem to find them perfectly acceptable.

I also haven't had the reliability issues the others have had. Mine still works fine. I do have one bad pixel though. It's a bright blue one stuck close to the middle of the screen which is mildly bothersome.

I'm actually looking for at least a MVA/PVA panel 24". Dell used to use them but they've been phasing them out too, in favor of TN panels.