I recall CRT monitors were capable of some quite high resolutions (often with a compromise to refresh rate), and it took a while for LCD panels to overtake them.
The refresh rate compromise at higher resolutions was due to the limitations of the graphics card, NOT the monitor.
LCDs took a little while to catch up for a few reasons:
1) expense! It was hard and expensive to manufacture a display containing millions of transistors with an acceptable (read: profitable) failure rate.
2) colors! LCDs had a reputation for extremely poor color quality in the beginning. Blacks were medium gray at best and primary colors all looked washed out. Today's LCDs still have a hard time getting to "true black."
3) ghosting! Early LCDs had poor response times. Move your mouse cursor and watch it leave a trail across your screen. Fine for word processing and spreadsheets. Terrible for games.
Another physical limit was the weight of the glass. The larger the display, the glass got thicker and thicker to "lens" the beam correctly so the edges/corners were straight. We had a Sony reference CRT for our film transfer/color correction suite that was a 32" HD monitor. MSRP was >$30k for it. (Sony's reference monitors were roughly $1k per inch in pricing.) The thing was stupid heavy requiring a minimum of 2 people if their names were Arnie; otherwise it'd take at least 3 maybe 4 typical post house employees. All of the weight was in the front.
The Sony 21" CRTs (and 24" in widscreen) had a very good run -- spanning several decades. They were certainly capable of higher resolutions, but the 1600x1200 was pretty much a standard (or 1920x1200 on the 24" widescreen) for that entire run. I can't think of any other desktop workstation performance 'metric' that was stationary for so long.
It's not surprising they fell out of favor though. Once the ghosting stopped being absolutely horrendous the LCD is just superior for office work. Uses less power, saves tons of desk space (and due to less weight, doesn't need a strong desk) and no flickering means a cheapo LCD is probably easier on the eyes than a cheapo CRT.
I bet the CRT wwould still be used more often if the supply chain to make them didn't fall apart when the demand disappeared.
When Sony first brought out their OLED reference monitors to the market, they had a demo at NAB to demonstrate the various screen types. All of the monitors were the equivalent reference version of that series: CRT, LCD, OLED.
It was an interesting demo as they had the same feed going to each monitor. When showing how each monitor could display black, the OLED looked like it was off, the LCD was just a faint shade of gray, while the CRT was much much more noticeably not black from its glowing screen. I started to think to myself how they might be pushing the brightness on the CRT to make it look bad against the others. Right as I was thinking that to myself, the narrator said something to address this thought and then displayed bars. All 3 monitors were correctly adjusted. A gamed CRT with brightness adjusted would have been obvious at this point to those knowing how the test pattern is meant to look.
The only thing I'd suggest that a CRT looks better is on true interlaced content.