I have no idea what makes chrisseaton so passionate and adamant that CRTs commonly had resolutions higher than common LCD panels today but I had basically this exact same argument several days ago. I actually remembered it because they wrote almost the same comment word for word. For some reason they are convinced that all old CRTs were commonly 2k and 4K resolutions and the existence of cheap 4k LCD panels doesn’t excuse the fact that it’s still possible to buy a 1080p screen (which is I guess a bad thing?)
At a given resolution, CRTs pixels made for much more readable text (provided the refresh rate was sufficient; I found 60Hz nigh unbearable, 90Hz tolerable, and 120Hz preferable). LCD pixels are much more precise, which means that they appear much less smooth, so that you want a much higher resolution. CRT pixels were fundamentally imprecise, and that was actually really good for text. It’s about a decade since I last used a CRT, but my feeling is that text would look better (be smoother and more legible) on your 1600×1200 20″ CRT (100dpi) than on a 1920×1080 15″ LCD (141dpi). I think that the last CRT I dealt with much felt fairly similar in legibility &c. to my first laptop, and those were 1280×1024 19″ at 120Hz (~86dpi) and 1680×1050 15.4″ (~128dpi).
Some people have unusual passions I guess.