I picked up this monitor today from Best Buy and overall it definately is a great bargain. As some have said, it has a rather large housing/bezel, but still it's a decent size. The picture is bright and the contrast is great.
On the negative side, the one I got has a "stuck" pixel on the lower left side of the monitor. It's blue and only shows up when the area around it is black (so I see it on the WinXP boot screen and when watching DVD's). Since there are more pixels on one of these than a 15" monitor, it's smaller and not really that big of a deal for me. But who knows, maybe I just got unlucky?
Also, the advertising for it is a bit deceiving. "Super-high 85Hz refresh rate." This may be true, but not when running the monitor at it's optimum refresh rate, which is 1280 x 1024. At this resolution, the highest refresh rate available is 60hz. For a CRT, that's terrible. For an LCD, that's do-able and only noticable when you move something around really fast on the screen (like moving a window around or scrolling fast through a webpage). Of course if you set it to a lower resolution, you can get the 85hz refresh rate, but then the screen will look a bit blurry from the anti-aliasing.
I also had purchased the Kogi 15" LCD from Best Buy a few weeks ago, and that monitor is flawless. Bundled with this 17" one I'd have to say that Kogi monitors are very high quality and a tremendous value.
You definately can't go by what you see on display at Best Buy. They hook up like 12 LCD's to one signal splitter, so the image quality is going to degrade big time. At home, it's quite a positive change.
$279.99 after rebate for a 17" LCD monitor is a no-brainer. The Best Buy I went to had like 8 left at 2pm and I was stunned to find even one left! Admittedly, $160.00 is a hefty rebate to be waiting on. It's the New Rochelle, NY address. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
So if the 60hz refresh rate doesn't bother you (and it probably shouldn't unless you are a heavy gamer and plan on running games at 1280 x 1024 -- which means you have a kick as* video card and can probably afford a more expensive LCD!), I'd highly recommend this Kogi monitor.
Remember, there are many LCD monitor brands out there, but in reality, only a few companies manufacture the actual LCD that goes inside of them.
