chewylou :
I also have 1440 at 27" and yes, looks great. But films look not-so-great, and it's my only screen for movie-watching, which I do a lot of!
Also I thought it would be great to have a nice 1080 monitor for native gaming if my GPU muscle can't max out a game on ultra... Sounds like 24" may be the answer. I did have a 21" LCD IPS, and in all fairness it looked stunning. So if I can maintain that density at 24" then I'd consider that a victory.
Well IPS does look the best, especially for Movies. There's many IPS 24" 1080p panels out there.
The Monitor Im using right now is an AOC 24" 1080p IPS panel.
This one:
http://www.aocmonitorap.com/root/sg/product_display.php?id=271
It's amazing for me, although some people like Asus over AOC. I can't say for Asus but AOC is not bad at all. Just look around at your local store, heck at the same time while your looking at screen sizes ask to look at an IPS display while your at it.
-good luck