On 16 September 2012 my Sλmsung SyncMaster 2233SW monitor died, for the second time. The first time it was replaced under warranty, but now it's way out of warranty. I could get it repaired, or replace it with another 1920×1080 “high definition” monitor, but the writing is on the wall that higher definition is finally on its way. There are a number of surprisingly cheap 2560×1440 27" monitors available from Korea on eBay. This page contains two parts: the results of my investigations on 17 September 2012, and my opinion of the monitor I eventually bought.

Comparison

There's a lot of information available on the web, of course. It seems that all monitors use the same IPS panel from Lucky Goldstar, and most of them have only DVI inputs. This report investigates the the Achieva QH270, one of the cheapest, and finds it surprisingly good.

After a lot of investigation, I've established:

The monitors are available at prices between (Australian) $280 and about $400. The specs are almost identical.
Some claim On-screen display, but it's not clear what they mean by it. The This report describes the controls on his monitor: two buttons for brightness, two buttons for volume, and one on-off button. The image shows corresponding texts in Hangul. Other monitors also have 5 buttons, but they're arrows, suggesting some kind of navigation. I don't trust the item description to really mean what it says.

I've later confirmed that at least some of the monitors that claim OSD and have arrows in fact don't. Here's an example for the NEO 270WQ. I'm leaving the “OSD” column in the table below, but mainly it reflects the sellers' claims, not anything concrete.
About the only differences are different claims about the maximum brightness (350 cd/m² or 380 cd/m²), which seem dubious to me, and whether the thing has loudspeakers or not.
It seems that all monitors come with documentation in Korean only.
There are differences in the number of dead pixels that the sellers guarantee. For an additional fee some of them will guarantee zero dead pixels, if you believe them: others make it clear that they just mean zero stuck bright pixels. The actual number that the sellers guarantee varies, the worst being 6 pixels. Others divide the screen horizontally and vertically into 9 sections and guarantee no more than one dead pixel in the middle and a total of 5 in the other 8 sections.
Some offer an HDMI connector as well. It's not immediately obvious that this requires more electronics, which also allow scaling of different display resolutions. These monitors also have a D-Sub connector, and while that might seem archaic, it has one great advantage: you don't need a dual link connection. As I saw years ago, I can drive two monitors with a dual link card via D-Sub, or only one with DVI. So the D-Sub connector looks useful, but it adds $50 to the price.

Here's what I found on eBay. Prices are in Australian $.

Model

Seller

Feedback

Price

Dead

Brightness

Response

Contrast

Viewing

Speaker

Weight

OSD

HDMI

Power

pixels

time

angle

(lbs)

(running)

(standby)

Achieva QH270-IPSI

bigclothcraft

99.5%

$297

350cd/m²

6 ms

1000:1

178°

19.44

72 W

0.6 W

NEO LED 270WQ

bigclothcraft

99.5%

$299

380cd/m²

6 ms

1000:1

178°

yes

17.63

yes

55 W

0.6 W

Achieva QH270-Lite

bigclothcraft

99.5%

$308.90

350cd/m²

6 ms

1000:1

178°

19.44

yes

55 W

0.6 W

Achieva QH270-Lite

ta_planet

99.6%

$309.90

350cd/m²

6 ms

1000:1

178°

19.44

yes

72 W

0.6 W

Potalion 2710QW

ta_planet

99.6%

$315.80

380cd/m²

6 ms

1000:1

178°

18.56

yes

75 W

0.7 W

iMON 270 QHD

moaglobal

99.6%

$334.00

1/5

380cd/m²

6.5 ms

1000:1

178°

yes

Achieva QH270-IPSBS

bigclothcraft

99.5%

$339.98

350cd/m²

6 ms

1000:1

178°

yes

18.56

72 W

1.0 W

iMON 270 QHD

thebest_itemshop

98.9%

$340.00

1/5

380cd/m²

6.5 ms

1000:1

178°

yes

NEO LED 270WQ

bigclothcraft

99.5%

$340.35

380cd/m²

6 ms

1000:1

178°

yes

17.63

yes

55 W

0.6 W

Fineforce F2700QL-IPS

bigclothcraft

99.5%

$343.70

TOPSYNC LUXURY 2700Q

thebest_itemshop

98.9%

$345.95

1/5

380cd/m²

6 ms

1000:1

178°

yes

75 W

FSM 270-hj

thebest_itemshop

98.9%

$345.95

1/5

380cd/m²

6 ms

1000:1

178°

yes

55 W

TOPSYNC LUXURY 2700QWB

moaglobal

99.6%

$349.00

1/5

380cd/m²

6 ms

1000:1

178°

yes

Qnix QX2700

bigclothcraft

99.5%

$349.99

380cd/m²

6 ms

1000:1

178°

yes

17.63

63 W

0.6 W

Yamakasi Catleap Q270

bigclothcraft

99.5%

$359.90

380cd/m²

6 ms

1000:1

178°

yes

15.43

63 W

0.6 W

Dead pixels: 1/5 means 1 dead pixel in centre (⅓ each way) 5 in periphery.
Fineforce F2700QL-IPS has the specs for Acheiva QH270-IPSB. FSM 270-hj is also called FSM 270-YG, has controls marked in Hangul, the same as described here, labeled “Easy and convenient OSD”.
The “perfect pixel” for the Qnix QX2700 appears to apply only to bright pixels; it may have up to one black pixel.

In passing, it's interesting to notice that, while this resolution (3,686,400 pixels) is higher than anything I've had before, it still has fewer lines than the 2048×1536 CRT monitors I was using 10 years ago. Their 3,145,728 pixel resolution was only lower because of the width, not the height.

My new monitor

On 19 September 2012 I decided on a NEO 270WQ monitor for AUD 299. It arrived in Australia two days later, but I couldn't pick it up until 24 September 2012, and I didn't try to configure it until 26 September 2012. I was a little apprehensive, but in fact it Just Worked. And now my desktop looks like this:

https://lemis.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/grog/Photos/20120926/big/Monitors-2.jpeg

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What's not clear from that image is how much better the image is than the old TFT monitors. It needed no correction, which is good, because it doesn't support any; it would have had to done by the display driver. All in all, I'm very happy.