I'd always try and go for Dell or Samsung, nothing can touch their quality at the moment, unless the brand uses the same screens, such as the Apple ones and a few others. Obviously, bigger monitor + smaller price = lower quality, but with a decent colour profile any monitor can be good. I'd always go for the max res for the screen size. For example a 22" tft only has a 1680*1050, so all you get is bigger icons, which imo, is an eye sore. However if you get a 24" (or some of the more expensive 23"s) you're gonna get 1900*1200. Which is a fair bit more 'space' for your 'space', if you get what I mean. And to me that is more important than the brand.