What are the characteristics of a good monitor?

My dad recently bought a new monitor for my family: a Hanton H-570WDB. It is 22" widescreen, is glossy, and was cheap at GBP 120.00.

However, I'm not impressed. First up, I hate glossy screens because when working, the glare is very distracting -- however, this can be avoided by doing research before buying the monitor and ensuring it has a matte finish!!

By default it was way too bright. I turned the brightness down, but then everything looked too "black". I realised that I would need to change the gamma in my graphics card's control panel, since I've had a similar problem before and that did the trick.

However, I've used monitors before that even when turning down the brightness, there is no extreme 'blackening'. One was an old Tiny (remember them?) monitor which has no model number. Another, that my university has, is Dell 2009w. With these, I can turn the brightness down and I need make only minor adjustments to the monitor contrast and (software) gamma. Usually I don't even have to touch the gamma.

Needless to say, when playing games like Doom 3 or UT2004 on the new monitor, I had to ramp the gamma up in order to see anything in the dark environments. This was not necessary on the other monitors I mentioned.

My question is: is it a sign of a bad monitor if I have to make drastic changes to gamma after changing the brightness? I am tempted to say yes purely because of the pleasant experience I've had with other monitors.

On a related note, even with the brightness turned down to 5/100 on my new monitor, it is still quite bright -- almost uncomfortable to watch. I guess that's bad too, right?

Thanks for your advice everyone!

 

What are the contrast ratios on the aforementioned monitors?

 

According to the this website:
http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx?quicklinx=5GZB#specifications

the contrast ratio is 1000:1 (it doesn't say in the manual). The brightness is 300 cd/m^2.

For the Dell (http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/...ail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&sku=320-6523):

Contrast ratio is 2000:1 dynamic, typical. Brightness is 300 cd/m^2 typical.

 

Bad? No - not as a general rule for all monitors. Bad monitors have blurry text, unstable images, or are missing a primary color. Or they cannot be adjusted at all.

Note that entry level monitors are perfectly suited to office and school work - not games.

 

Cheers mate; I returned that monitor nevertheless as I believe the backlight was set too bright and there was no way of reducing it. Reducing both brightness and contrast didn't have a huge impact.

 

Some times that's what you have to do. I hope the retailer did not give you any problems with the return. What did you get in its place?