Good 17-19" color monitor for under $200?

I'm looking for a decent color monitor -- in terms of color fidelity and contrast ratio -- for under $200, preferably $150 or less.  Is that possible?  My current monitor makes pictures appear too dark when editing, even with the brightness turned all the way up.  When I edit photos to make them look good on the screen, they appear washed out elsewhere (i.e., on other screens or when printed).
I'm obviously not a pro looking for top of the line stuff -- just a decent 17-19 inch monitor for editing photos in Lightroom.  Thanks.

While a better monitor is always, well.....better...I'm not sure that's going to solve your problem. The issue appears to be one of color management, particularly monitor calibration. I would strongly advize investing $25 and taking a one month membership at lynda.com. There you can check out some excellent video training on this subject (and many others).
My experience is that to get anywhere close to matching prints to what you see on screen, be prepared to spend a couple of hundred bucks on calibration software and hardware. I opened this can of worms a couple of years back and it  took a while to get my head around the concepts of color spaces, gamuts, soft proofing, hardware profiles etc. etc. But it was worth it in the end. I'm certanly no expert, but I have a much clearer idea of what's going on with my prints color-wise. Screen-to-print is still not an absolutely perfect match (is anyone's?), but close enough for my purposes (weddings, events, portrait photography).
I looked into getting a better monitor, but my research tells me that if I'm paying much less that $1500, the result may not be much better than what I've got (an old View Sonic GS771, a snip at $20 !!).
Seriously, lynda.com, you can't go wrong. Best money I ever spent.

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