I’m after a big monitor to plug into my Macbook for editing photos and doing designy stuff… I love the portability of it, but when I’m at home a bit of screen space would be nice! Must be big (22″ plus), decent quality and have at least one HDMI port, preferably two (I have an Xbox too).

What’s recommended for under say £200?

Theres an enormous amount of monitors out there in that size.

Have a look here for a good range.

I’ve had a couple of ‘Dabs Value’ monitors, a 24″ and a 28″. The latter is stunning, and cost much less than other brands.

something like this will probbly use the same internal bits as more spensive brands, yet cost a lot less for the same quality.

Unless you want proper high-quality, colour calibrated professionalness, then something like that is probbly all you’ll need.

Samsung SyncMaster P2450H would be my choice if I needed one right now.

Currently have a Dell S2409 but it doesn’t seem to be made any more.

Nah, much as I’d like an all singing all dancing colour calibrated jobbie I have NO real need for it whatsoever. 28″ Dabs value sounds like a good one…

One more questions – LCD / LED? What’s the difference?

No suck thing as an LED monitor as I understand it. It is just an LCD monitor that uses LEDs for the backlighting rather than compact fluorescents.

For photos I’d avoid going for a TN film based monitor altogether. They have the annoying characteristic that the colours look dramatically different when you change your viewing angle.

The reviews here are good: http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/

I have this bad boy: http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/nec_ea231wmi.htm

23″ 1920×1080 8-bit IPS panel. It’s probably the nicest monitor I have ever used.
A good mate has the Dell U2410 which is also good.

Both were around £250 about a year ago so should be in your range now.

Yeah I read up on the LED stuff after posting that, silly me! The monitor you link is still £250 plus on a quick google, but if it’s worth the extra I’ll stretch it – I reckon I shall do some reading up on TFTCentral and take it from there.

Cheers all!