These are for pros who need extremely good color accuracy, not frame rate. The 24" foes 99% of Adobe RGB, and the 27" does 100% of Adobe RGB... I doubt your $300 monitor can do more than 80% of Adobe RGB. In this market segment, these HP monitors are 'affordable'. This market segment exists because a lot of cheaper monitors are not color accurate, or are not color accurate *enough* for things like film and TV effects work (and print media) and everyone's Trinitrons are dying.