There's a point where a monitor is so big that its individual pixels become visible. For me, a 23-inch monitor at arms length is just about right for a 1920 x 1080 resolution monitor. A 30-inch monitor would be too big since I would see the pixels. Whenever you can see pixels, that means the image will always have a grainy look. I chose 1080 pixels instead of 1200 pixels since the actual viewed video media image would be larger. If I was only using it for computing and never viewing anime/movies, then I would get the 1200 pixel one. It occupies my field of vision yet is not so wide that I have to swing my head from side to side to reduce the parallax effect (moving just eyeballs doesn't reduce parallax).
If you intend to watch video movies, a glossy screen may be your choice. For daytime use, glossy is still okay if you intend to locate the monitor where the light is not at a bad angle. Rather than spending a ton of money to get a brighter colour monitor with a matte finish screen, opt for glossy screen. The gain in colour, brightness, and sharpness is very large and is the most cost-effective way to improve your visual experience.
LED backlighting is best and a major advantage is that it doesn't change in either luminosity level or colour during its lifespan. With conventional mercury lamps, they have that nice bright white at first, but after a year or so, it will no longer be that way.
As for reading specifications, I've seen many cases where the printed specifications were pretty good, but the actual monitor performance was worse than a cheaper monitor with not as good printed specifications. For example, the chinese brand "Vizio" tends to have inflated specifications. As for price comparisons to any monitors that other people recommend or you see in your local warehouse club store, current monitor prices in the Fry's retail store on Sat, Dec 24, 2011 are:
