This is the same one they were selling a week before christmas.
I have it, its pretty nice. The back has a plastic cover that keeps the cables hidden. Well mine would not ever fit back on after taking it off for the first time. So you can see the plugins, ect. Not a big deal. But if you want something "flashy" in an office to impress this may not be the one for you. I mean, it looks fine without the panel to me, but if you wanted the dvi plugin hidden you might not like it.
It works great, color saturation is good. Everything is very crisp and clear. Blacks are not "true" black. More like a dark grey.
The contrast ratio is small compared to the 500$ 19" lcd's, but thats not important. That just measures the difference in how dark it can be, and how bright it can be. There is only a narrow band of contrast most people use anyways.
The cheap back panel, no true black.
Also when paired with my radeon 9700 pro aiw - I have a darn hard time getting the monitor to work for bios. I have to turn on pc, wait a second, then turn on monitor so I can see bios. Or press bios key, turn monitor off then back on. Normaly when starting pc the monitor does not show anything till you get to the windows screen.
edit - oh about people complaining about the spec's being bad - actualy spec's don't matter much. Most of them lie anyways. The ones saying 15ms response times? Thats usualy 15 +10 - they just hide hte +10.
Also the "balance" brand is a generic brand. Balance notebooks are made by ecs and are complete crap. Just think of it as being a "Sam's Choice" brand product.
I'm told its a not uncommon issue with high end vid cards and lcd monitors.
I have not used the build in stereo speakers and I do not intend to. They are nicely hidden away though so its not even obvious it has them.
Construction is solid, I applied alot of pressure to the base when I first got it to see if it would break. Solid metal base, flexed but would not break with alot more pressure on it that it would ever have normaly. I did not "try" and break it, just made sure it would hold up if someone leaned on it or something.
oh, this is the first lcd I've owned, so take the image quality for what you will. compared to my friends and my previous crts - this lcd is superior