Hi everyone i´m looking for some advice and suggestions in regards to buying a new monitor.
I know a monitor is a pretty personal device.
But since technologies have moved allot i´m a little bit out of the loop.
I´m basically looking for a 27inch 1080p or 1440p monitor for gaming, desktop use and watching tv / movies and stuff allround use.
Colors and viewing angles are very important to me so from what i know,
ips generally seems to have better viewing angles and better colors.
However VA panels also gained allot of popularity as of late in terms of price.
My budget would be anywhere between like €150 and €350,- ish in which i see very large variety of 1080p and 1440p VA en ips monitors.
It seems like monitors becoming pretty affordable there days.
But there is soo much it is a bit overwhelming really.
So yeah i´m basically looking for some guidance to look at.
Refresh rates: 180Hz / 240Hz / 280Hz.
HDR10 is this really important?
IPS or VA.
In regards to gaming it seems like 1440p is becoming a bit of a go/to standard,
given that midrange gpu´s can game on 1440p pretty well now days.
So i guess it might make sense to consider a 1440p monitor over a 1080p.
Because price difference between 1080p and 1440p monitors isn´t that significant either anymore.
If you have any recommendations for a good monitor please share.
IPS all the way.
I am yet to see a VA panel that looks as good as IPS. Either viewing angles or black color issues. Or both.
I would say 1440p is better even at slower rates than high refresh 1080p.
I have both 1080 and 1440 at home, and the resolution difference is astonishing…
I can’t recommend you a specific model, cause im using some 6-7 years old tech at home and i am super happy with it so I’ve not been looking at any monitors at all…
Not really. Unless it’s equipped with a full array local dimming it’s just blocks of lights turning on and off on the screen.
I’d say IPS because I’m extremely sensitive to smearing and lightbleed is mostly invisible on many IPS displays. Lower contrast is also a drawback but mostly compensated by better motion performance and, sometimes, color volume.
I’d say 144Hz is more than enough unless you plan on playing competitive games. Higher refresh rates require more aggressive overdrive settings that deteriorate image quality. So a lower refresh rate requires less overdrive and better picture quality, usually.
I don’t have a specific model in mind, but I suggest you to search for monitors in your budget and plug the results in RTings and MonitorUnboxed Youtube channel to see how they stack up.
Below 100PPI it’s not a pleasant experience. So 1440p makes more sense in my opinion. I’m at 109PPI on my display and I’d never go back, also because the screen real estate is really useful for multitasking.
As a person, who has a lot of problems related to backlight, and uses the monitor for both home use and work(code), last year I bought an https://www.msi.com/Monitor/MPG-321URX-QD-OLED (there is a 27" model).
Maybe have a visit at your local hardware store to actually have feel for the display? Reviews dont really convey the actual end product as well as seeing it in person with the UFO Test pattern.
Is OLED out of the question? If saving a bit longer means you get OLED than it may be worth of the wait, that is of course unless you are without monitor now.
Make sure you can tolerate the black smear you might get with a VA panel. That is e.g. white text on dark/black background disappears while scrolling. Personally I find the effect intolerable.
Others seem to hate IPS glow just as much though… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I would also strongly suggest 1440p on a 27" screen. Using my old 1080p 24" screen is not a nice experience. (It looks very grainy compared to my 32" 4K monitor.)
24" 1080p: 92 PPI
27" 1080p: 82 PPI
27" 1440p: 109 PPI
27" 4K: 163 PPI
32" 4K: 138 PPI
I also second MetalizeYourBrain’s comments on refresh rate.
Back in January I dropped and cracked my monitor. I bought esentially the same screen but newer. And I bought it direct from LG on sale for $200.
32" QHD is a very nice sweet spot (they do have 27" QHD options), 165 Hz FreeSync is plenty fast and HDR10 looks amazing.
My only regret was I threw away the telescope, tilt and swivel monitor stand from the old cracked screen. The new screen came with a basic non-adjustable stand. I wish I saved the old stand to work with the new screen.
Hey guys thanks for all the tips and advises so far really appreciated.
I did some further research in the panel technologies and it comes clear to me,
that IPS would indeed be the way to go for me.
This also comes that i already own a 27inch 1080p ips monitor which still gives me a very nice picture even after all those years i own it.
I also came to the conclusion with all your tips and suggestions that 1440p is the way to go.
Now i have to look at refresh rates most 1440p monitors i can find have a 180Hz refresh rate.
At leas the ones that come within my budget.
So i guess any monitor with like 144hz to like 180Hz would be totally fine for my needs.
Because in regards to gaming and planned system upgrade i´m looking at midrange gpu´s,
like 7800XT, 5060Ti or upcoming RTX9060XT like 1440p performance.
HDR10 technology is sill something i need to look into a bit further.
Because i´m not fully sure what it actually does.
Thanks for this suggestion looks definitely interesting.
I know that LG seems to make some of the better ips panels.
So i will definitely look into LG options as well.
Thanks i will definitely check out those Msi monitors as well and their availability.
I believe that particular model also came up in the HW unboxed recommendation video´s.
This is of course a very good tip thank you!.
I will definitely visit some local stores and check out what they have.
Unfortunately oled is probably a little bit too expensive still.
But i will definitely look into such options as well.
But of course i also have an entire new system to build as well.
HDR for movies is awesome, or at least poop without it, I am still not sure. Either way I’m beginning to think higher HDR non OLED monitors are just OLED with extra steps.
If I’m not mistaking, I have seen quite a lot of prays for this model. HWUnboxed (or someone) has even been doing a burn-in test(extreme scenario) for a year now, and it does still look good.
Plus I really enjoyed the part of 1 DP, 2 HDMI and a usb-c, although I don’t use the last one.
Completely agree on the Reviews part. Specifically the youtubers… (I would punch in the face some, if not most, of them…). Theire usage is in most scenarios a “OOohhh, Aaaah… look at this shiny”(for which I will make income in most cases). Maybe even “sit infront of one” for maybe a week.
But almost never a “folks, I have been sitting in-front of this monitor for the past month, doing 120% of my work and play” (and also I have eye problems).
On the other hand. Stores. Stores are neat, and actually are somewhere a plus. But in stores you come and see “this one is better than the other one”(but can you really tell that it is better than what you have at home?).
I’ve had a quite a few years of struggle to find a monitor to replace the old beat up BenQ monitor, bought in 2012. First problem was that my head can’t stand modern backlights. Second - I bought a fancy Acer Predator monitor with cool colors and stuff, but something wasn’t sitting right. Then I plugged my old one and set it near that one. There I realized how poor was the white color.
But still, in the end, I gave up, went to a big store, explained to the consultant my story and said “if you don’t mind, I will just go and sit for 10-20 minutes in-front of each TV, and see what works for me” (the dude spent that 1-2 hours with me, carrying a flash drive with different image/video scenarios).
One thing I can say from that story (apart from the TV, which I actually bought), is that “Sony”, which was prayed in all comments and reviews, turned out to be awful when placed near a Samsung screen… and so on.
Dell UltraSharp U2724D - Uses the new “Black IPS” tech and is supposed to double the native contrast ratio.
Xiaomi 27" 27i Gaming Monitor G Pro Mini LED - FALD backlight so can do real HDR. (But FALD and dynamic contrast means blooming around e.g. mouse pointers.)
LG UltraGear 27GS85Q 27" QHD “Nano IPS” - New, cheap at around 210 EUR. (Not sure what “Nano IPS” means, if anything. Edit: It’s supposed to increase color gamut.)
The first two can be had at around 320 EUR.
The big issue is none of these monitors have any high-quality reviews as far as I can see. So buying them is a bit of a lottery. It’s a shame really!
Otherwise I pretty much agree with what has been said, try to find one with good reviews and high refresh rates. I managed to snag a couple of $300 AOC 1440p@165 Hz during christmas sales and it’s honestly been a great experience for me.
Only problem is I can’t really watch 60Hz TV anymore T_T Watched LotR extended version the other day, it felt extremely choppy.
1440p IPS is a good target for now, OLED is nice but not $1k nice, definitely an option at $500 thou IMO
For what it’s worth: PPI tells one things about the panel composition, but not the graininess one might experience when using it. PPD – Pixels Per Degree; or better said as pixels per degree field of view – is what will tell about that aspect of image quality. This takes into account the viewing distance as well.
With that in mind, it’s possible to have a 1080p screen look good; but it’d either be smaller than 27" at typical desk viewing distances (really, more like laptop-sized screens), or far away. 1440p on a 27" at about 3’ / 1m (typical-ish desk distance) has been good though, in my experience. 4k is just good at this in any size one can buy a monitor for it, for distances that short.
The one other caveat about 1440p though: most video content is served up in either 1080p or 4k. So things fullscreened on a 1440p screen tend to look a tiny bit fuzzy because the math isn’t as simple as ‘multiply/divide by 4’ as far as which pixels to light up. Games don’t have that problem, though.
32" 4k is also an intriguing option to me, other than the GPU requirements to get decent framerates (or the settings drops needed, somewhat negating the point of the pretty screen). Effectively four 1080p screens together without bezels in the middle for productivity work (use window snapping to do this), doesn’t have the fuzziness problem for most video content. But if gaming is part of the use case I don’t think I’d lean that way unless one was comfy buying expensive mid to high tier GPUs every refresh cycle that the monitor’s still good for, or leaning on FSR/DLSS, or dropping settings.
That said, on my desk right now are some 27" 1440p screens. One’s a Pixio PX277 PRO 165hz panel, the other’s an LG UltraGear 240hz panel with an alphabet soup model name. My 7900XT is not capable of locking the games I play at 240hz on max pretty, and depending on the game engine and/or game even 120 FPS sometimes is a struggle. So I think the LG was a waste of money, and doubly so because the connectivity (USB ports and display input options) are better on the Pixio. YMMV, of course.
I do use a 32" 4K monitor + RX 7800 XT for both office work (90 %) and gaming (10 %). I use 1440p for gaming, which makes the desktop look decidedly fuzzy – I’d never use this setting for any real office work – but in 3D games, where everything is soft and anti-aliased anyway, I can’t say it bothers me much (or at all really). Perhaps it would be different if I was used to gaming at 32" 4K?
(“Proper” upscaling – FSR? – would be the way to go I guess but I have been too lazy to look up how this is done under Linux/Steam where I game.)
27" is too large for 1080p, you’ll start seeing the individual pixels if you sit at around 1m (or 39" if you’re one of those people) from your screen. I’d go 1440p at that size. As for the refresh rate, 180 Hz is the sweet spot for 1440p. If you insist on going the 1080p route 180 Hz is still a good spot, 280 and up is worth it if you only play e-sports games and you have the hardware to run such games at 300+ fps. As for the type of the panel, ips is the best option. Va ones can have pretty bad ghosting.
Strike that: after spending some time looking at tests/reviews of FSR upscaling (like this from Hardware Unboxed) I’d much rather use the monitor’s simple spatial upscaling than the artifact-generator that is FSR 3.1 4K Quality.
Why can’t we have simple spatial scaling (with perhaps some configurable amount of sharpening) of the 3D environment with the HUD rendered on top at native resolution? I would be much happier with that than the failed attempts at temporal scaling currently used.
Thanks for all your suggestions and insights i will definitely check the HW unboxed reviews out.
And i will also look into the availability of the suggested models.
So i guess that HDR10 on ips panels does not seem to matter much.
I will post a couple of models that have my interest as well.
But like mentioned above many monitors don´t seem to get proper reviews,
especially like the ones in the €200 to €300,- range.
