Do state your budget though.

Photo editing, go for the ones with IPS panel. If you're on the budget, then u2312 dell will be a no brainer.

As far as gaming is concern, unless you're playing Quake 3 or Unreal Tournament 2004 competitively, IPS monitors should do fine.

Dell U2711, i think its around rm2.3k depending on the resellers. I dont think there's any other alternative that can beat u2711 in the price:performance ratio department. Some might suggest you to go for a much cheaper Korean brand 27" 2560 x 1900, but you're taking a big risk there. The construction of the body, the warranty, the color reproduction, height adjustment etc ect.

And hey, Dell has the best after-sales warranty service by far.

Yeah, it seems that a lot of forumers are recommending dell monitors (ultrasharp line-up) and pretty much nothing else and you might get bored hearing Dell monitors, but thats simply because its the better option out there.

Im not sure about you, but those professionals, they'll opt matte screen instead of glossy anytime of the day.
S-IPS = 16million colors, H-IPS = 1billion colors.
Dell comes with standard 3 / 5 years warranty.

High refresh rate only good if you're gaming nuts. It's like the latest controversy of the upcoming The Hobbit movie which will be clocked at 48fps. Movies junkie wont llike high fps because its too fake.

Other brands, im not really sure. You can try LG or Asus, but u will lose the color customization ability of U2312. Not to mention, for the price of rm6xx, its as good as it could get.

However 1 thing I would like to emphasize here is the aftersales warranty service. Trust me, Dell's response and service is the best.

No offense, but comparing a 23" u2312 e-ips and korean 27" s-ips is like comparing an apple with an orange because the resolution and the type of panel used are different.
Yes, e-ips is inferior to s-ips but not by much, and both are much much more inferior than h-ips (10bit, 1 billion color, etc etc)
You should have compared the korean brand with u2711, only then it would be fairer.

Why apple monitor use glossy screen? Well, their top of the line 30" cinema display is matte. So, when apple announced newer cinema display without matte option, literally every owner of the previous cinema display laughed their ass off.
Its pretty much a marketing move by Apple, so that glossy fanatics would purchase em straight away. Yeah, glossy screen adds more aesthetic value to it.

Which is why Apple put a matte option for their higher res macbook pro in the first place, to cater those color freaks without any sort of hindrance from sun/light rays.
But you have to know, the world of photography/movie editing doesnt revolve only around Apple products. A lot of professionals too go for Dell, HP, NEC etc.

^ It uses the newer Display Port (to replace HDMI).

Btw, any u2312hm user try to snap pics of background bleed for black color scene? (aka ips glow) I just wanna know how bad it is.

For the U2711, is it okay to use only hdmi or display port connection instead of dual dvi link for full performance?

Oh ic. Because im gonna connect my Macbook pro + PS3 to u2711. Hopefully HDMI would be suffice to handle the WQHD res.

Btw, how's the 'IPS glow' for U2711 in comparison with cheaper IPS panel like U2312hm?