The neat thing about monochrome monitors is that lacking color subpixels, text is (chiefs kiss) crisp. I have a vt420 and wow does the text look good on it.
Perhaps they were referring to colour monitors of the same vintage. Cheap composite monitors were terrible. Component video was much better, but also more expensive and not all systems supported it. I also seem to recall the text being fuzzier on component than on monochrome displays, but that may have been a function of the electronics or picture tubes of the monitors I had access to.
