LCD Monitor Specifications. What do they mean?

Question

I'm looking at buying an LCD monitor with the regular screen, Not wide screen. I see that there is the response rate, am I correct in assuming that the lower the number the faster the response?
Also there is the contrast ratio that goes from 450:1 to 1000:1. What does that mean and which is better?
Then there is the Resolution, the Viewing Angle, the Pixel Pitch, and the Brightness that is mentioned. What type of number should I look for there and which is better, higher or lower numbers.
Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

Response rate. The time taken for a pixel to change from black to white. Faster is better

Contrast ratio. The relative brightness of a white screen and a 'black' screen. Higher is better. Usually this means that the black is blacker.

Resolution: Number of pixels on the screen. Higher is better

Viewing angle: The angle that the screen can be viewed at befor the black/white contrast ratio drops below 10:1 (sometimes 5:1). The bigger the angle the better, but this is a bit of a joke specification.

Pixel pitch: the distance between pixels. This is determined by screen size and resolution. Lower is better.


Brightness: How bright the screen is. Seeing as many people are complaining that their monitors are too bright these days, who knows. Nominally higher is better, but anything over 300 Cd/m2 is kind of pointless in a PC monitor.