Back in the day, you’d have to sell a kidney to get your hands on the money for a 26-inch monitor. Now Costco is selling a 26-inch Westinghouse for $200 plus $15 for shipping (apparently if you’re not a Costco member, it’s $210 plus $15 shipping).
The monitor has a 1920×1200 resolution, 5ms refresh rate, 750:1 contrast ratio, HDMI and VGA inputs, built-in speakers, and 350 cd/m2 brightness.
If the low price seems too good to be true, check out the customer reviews before you decide to take the plunge as some people have been complaining about a buzzing noise and ghosting. Those sound like defects to me, though, so you’d be allowed to return a troublesome monitor. I’d think that Westinghouse would have worked out those kinks by now, too.
Westinghouse 26-inch LCD [Costco via dealnews]
This is quite a price breakthrough but as mentioned the reviews are pretty frightening. Somewhat surprising, as in general Westinghouse monitor reviews don’t seem so bad for other models. For example on CNET a 26 inch gets 3.5/5 (can’t tell if it’s the same exact model).