Hey devin and Alec,
I have been looking through forums and reading articles for about 3 months on LCDs and I believe and I have some info to help you guys.
Sorry if I start out too noobish for you guys but I will take it from the beginning.
A lot of 19" are well under $300...Hell you can even find them for under $200, but which to choose is a tough decision. First of all you dont want to cheap out on the brand. Some well known and trusted brands are Viewsonic, Acer, LG, NEC and Samsung (sorry if I left out a few). Just like with PSUs, the saying goes, "YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR".
Now we will dive into specifics. One main thing to look at with monitors is the response time. The response time is the amount of time it takes for the monitor to refresh the screen. Obviously you dont want a really high response time, but 16ms and below is good for this so you dont see ghosting of an image (aka Picture lag). Obviously if you are a gamer you want a lower response time, around 8ms is sufficient. Please note though that some monitors with 2ms response time have had issues where the image gets stuck on the screen.
Another important thing to look at is the contrast ratio. This is how well defined and the quality of the picture. Obviously the higher the ratio, the better the picture (ex: 1000:1 is better than 400:1).
A third thing to look for is the input compatibility. This is the type of connection your monitor will have to your GPU. Right now their are 2 types: Analog and DVI. All monitors have Analog inputs, however, only more recent monitors have DVI inputs since this is a newer input. Just as a note, DVI input creates a better picture on many monitors. This is the reason why Analog ONLY monitors are cheaper.
Here is some other information:
The viewing angle. This is the angle you can look at without the monitor becoming very distorted (from left to right). Obviously you cant look at the monitor at 180 degrees and see a perfect picture like you can right in front of it. This is important to some people.
The Horizontal and Vertical Refresh is the Hz at which both refresh at. Most monitors are pretty much the same so their is not much of a difference around these.
That is pretty much it for LCDs. Now please note that you dont want to go for the cheapest LCD monitor if you are looking to game, graphic design, photos, DVDs. Stuff like that requires very good LCD monitors. However, some of the really expensive monitors' response times stink, so please be aware of that. Overall you want to look for a mid-range monitor. For gaming you want a good response time and for Graphic design, DVD and photos you want a good contrast ratio.
Well if you guys need anymore help just let me know.
P.S. - Grey to grey is the response time of the monitor going through all of the colors (strarting with grey and ending with grey).