Ed,
I have a syncmaster that has wonderful colors. It is a 21". I think one of the big differences was the target market. Is it marketed at professionals (this category includes graphic designers). The paticular model I have is aimed at graphic designers specifically.
Next, try this on you laptop. while sitting and looking at the screen with a knife image up bring it forward and back on the hinges. See the color, brightness, etc change. That is the pixels making up the display getting off centered.
Now how do you get one that is good. Each of the monitors should have specs for viewing angle, color temp, contrast, brightness, pixel pitch, and resolution. These are what you want to compare, they will give you much more information than is typically displayed (resolution and contrast are typical on the box).
The new one I have at work has the following specs
Pixel pitch: 0.27 mm (distance between physical pixels on the screen. This is a little coarse, but wrt the size of monitor OK).
Brightness: Up to 500 nits (Excellent)
Contrast ratio: Up to 1000:1 (Excellent)
Response rate (typical): 6 ms (Excellent)
Viewing Angle - Horizontal: 178 ° (Excellent)
Viewing Angle - Vertical: 178 ° (Excellent)
Native resolution: 1920 x 1200@60 Hz (Native is the key here, always compare the native resolution on displays)
Interface (analog/digital): Analog/Digital (Display will look better if run from a DVI (digital) video card generally)
I didn't see a speced color temp, but it is adjustable on this monitor.
Look at
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en...70-444767.html for a good comparison across one companies line. If you look at the 17" displays you can see a lot of difference in the different panels.
Once you find one that you like, you then need to get it set up for your workspace, and adjust things like color temp, contrast, brightness, etc using a known good image that you have.
--Carl