what to look for in an external monitor?

I've got a laptop running 1920x1080 native, I want to output the video to an external monitor. Should I be looking for a native 1920x1080 monitor, ideally, assuming the vid card can drive it? Or, if I'm potentially going to down-rez for higher framerates, does it matter?

Also, 16:9 is rediculous to me cuz I will never watch movies on the external display and I'd much rather have a little extra headroom. What would be the drawbacks of going with a 16:10 aspect display, would the 1920x1200 work against me because it's too fine for high frame rates and I'd be down-rez'ing it anyway?

I'm looking at 24" external displays.

 

Pretty much anything can drive the highest resolution display you can find, now whether or not you can game reasonably at that res with your specific GPU is a different story.

I personally like the 16:10 1920 x 1200 resolution. I recommend the Samsung T240HD.

 

Thanks for the recommendation, I will check out the T240HD.

Any other thoughts?

 

well u can get external 2500X1600 monitor... but i doubt the even the best mobile GPU can play at this res.. i would look at dell ultrasharp moitors.. some of the best... LG , Samsung will also be good but from what i heard , dell ultrasharp ones are excellent...

 

Yes, the ultrasharps seem perfect except for price. With so many cheap panels these days, it's hard to spend big money on one of them.

 

I should have mentioned the T240HD includes a TV Tuner so it might be more expensive than other 24" monitors.