if you're talking about cutting edge CRTs, many of the last generation actually beat flat panels for years. Some may still in some aspects.

There were plenty of junk CRTs out there used for text only display with insane levels of persistence and other issues that lead to a very unique appearance. It's also sort of moot at this point. The existing CRTs out there that have this behavior have degraded over the years. No one makes new high persistence CRTs that I am aware of. So it's mostly down to our memory of them.

I actually have a flat panel that has over 2 decades degraded and now has some weird persistence going on.

Most of them weren't, but some were. If all you were doing was looking at screens of text, a long persistence phosphor could be desirable[0].

I've got one that is inside an Apple II monitor. Can confirm, the image looks very flicker-free, but has pretty bad ghosting if you're looking at anything that scrolls. It looks cool but is pretty rough to do any work on. The other green CRTs I have are barely more persistent than a regular black and white TV, and I've never heard of a long persistence color monitor.

[0] - http://www.trs-80.org/soft-view-crt.html

Damn, now I do not have fun with it anymore.

depends on how the brightness/contrast was set on the tube. if someone came in to a screen that was off and did not allow it enough time to warm up, it was common to see people adjust these knobs in the mornings. eventually, the tube would warm up, and things would just be too bright.

this is like looking at a monitor that spent 6 years as a security desk monitor before you got it

It's almost like a caricature of a CRT. I can see the novelty, but hope that people aren't lead to believe monitors looked like this.

I think what bothers me most is the horizontal line that slowly moves across the screen every few seconds. It's an artifact of recording a CRT on film and doesn't occur when you look at a real monitor...