You two are confusing me. Titanwolf seems to be talking about a CRT monitor since he mentioned refresh rate. With a CRT monitor refresh rate, max resolution and dot pitch are the most important factors.
nitestick mentioned looking for dead pixels which he claims to have on his CRT monitor. I suspect he means LCD monitor as I've never seen a CRT monitor with a dead pixel since it cant exist with the CRT architexture. Dead pixels are exclusive to LCD monitors.
When looking for an LCD monitor important things are response time, native resolution, dot pitch and contrast ratio.