The Best Gaming Monitors for 2024

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Whether you're a serious PC gamer or a casual after-hours warrior, your display is the pivot point between victory and defeat. To get the most from the latest shooter, sports, and racing games, you need a PC with a powerful graphics card, plus a gaming monitor that can render the action without artifacts. At PCMag, we've been testing monitors since the early days of PCs, and in this guide, our analysts outline the displays that will give you an edge over your opponents. We test every monitor—gaming or otherwise—using industry-standard gear for readings on brightness, contrast, color gamut, and input lag, plus assess intangibles such as design, menu usability, connectivity, and stand adjustment. Our current top pick for everyday 1080p gaming is the Dell 27 Curved (S2721HGF), but read on for our other favorites, based on our extensive hands-on and formal testing. We'll cover everything to consider when choosing your next gaming display.

When it comes to deciding which gaming monitor to buy, screen size is a good place to start. Bigger is almost always better, but in some cases you'll want to keep the size of your screen to no more than 27 inches measured diagonally. If you've watched any esports tournaments lately, you've likely noticed that all the players are focused on screens smaller than that size. (A 24- or 25-inch panel seems to be the sweet spot, especially for esports-focused displays.)

Why? Well, if you're playing a highly competitive title such as Counter Strike: Global Offensive or League of Legends, having a smaller screen means you can keep the monitor closer to your eyes while also keeping more of the frame in view. Being able to see every element on screen at once is a vital advantage in a competitive multiplayer environment. The larger your screen, the more difficult it is to keep every enemy combatant in your peripheral vision.

If you have the room and don't care so much about ultra-competitive gaming, however, a larger monitor provides plenty of space for your avatars and characters to roam and offers the opportunity to go beyond full high definition (known as full HD or 1080p and measuring 1,920 by 1,080 pixels). Many newer models are Wide Quad High-Definition (WQHD) monitors with 2,560-by-1,440-pixel resolution (also dubbed 1440p).

The higher pixel count provides sharper imagery than full HD, but you'll need a reasonably powerful graphics processor to play the latest games at the higher resolution, especially if you have all the visual effects and eye candy enabled. This goes double for 4K or ultra high definition (UHD) screens with a resolution of 3,840 by 2,160 pixels.

If desk space is tight, there are plenty of 24-inch monitors available, but with most of them you'll be limited to 1080p resolution. If you have lots of room and money is no object, jumbo monitors are tempting. A 30-inch 4K display will deliver a stunning picture with amazing resolution; you can go all out with a 34-inch ultrawide monitor with either a flat or curved panel; or you can splurge on something larger still. (We've tested displays up to 65 inches.)

Ultrawide monitors typically have a 21:9 aspect ratio (as opposed to the 16:9 ratio of 1080p, 1440p, and 4K) and offer a much wider field of view than a standard monitor, but they take up a lot of room. A curved widescreen monitor enhances the immersive aspect by making you feel a bit closer to the action, and in some games the wraparound view will also give you a competitive edge.

Battle-royale titles like PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and Apex Legends both support 21:9 resolution. Rather than simply squashing and stretching the image as some games do, these games (and others with native 21:9 support) will actually show more of the battlefield on either side than you'd see on a 16:9 panel. Battle-royale players in particular will benefit from this increased real estate. A player on a 16:9 panel may not see an enemy standing on a hill far off in the periphery, but a 21:9 player might be able to spot the threat without having to turn their character.

Which Monitor Panel Technology Should You Get?

You'll see several main panel technologies used in different gaming monitors, and each has its pluses and minuses.

Twisted nematic (TN) panels are the most affordable and are popular among gamers because they offer fast pixel response times and refresh rates. Their biggest drawback? They're prone to color shifting when viewed from an angle.

Vertical alignment (VA) screens are known for their high native contrast ratios, robust colors, and ability to display deep blacks, but they're also known to produce noticeable ghosting effects or blur fast-moving images, which can hurt gaming performance. It depends on the model, which is where reading PCMag's and other reviews comes in.

In-plane switching (IPS) panels provide superb all-around color quality, strong grayscale performance, and wide viewing angles, but they can't match the fast pixel response of TN panels and are subject to motion artifacts. They're the best general-use monitor type, but discriminating gamers or competitive esports types may want to avoid IPS. This changed in 2019, however, when LG developed a new variation (dubbed Fast IPS, Rapid IPS, and Nano IPS by various manufacturers) that claims 1-millisecond gray-to-gray response time with overdrive turned on. These panels use a thin layer of nanoparticles applied to the backlight that enables wider color-gamut coverage and reduces response time, a combo that now makes Fast IPS the dominant choice for almost every midrange and premium gaming monitor. If you have room in your budget, Fast IPS monitors currently offer the best balance of gaming performance and image quality.

Organic light-emitting diode (OLED) and Quantum Dot OLED (QD-OLED) panels are the latest to arrive to the gaming display party. OLED tech has been a staple in TVs since 2018 or so, and now it's not out of the ordinary to see gaming monitors with OLED displays. In terms of power efficiency, color gamut, and viewing angles, OLED blows IPS and VA out of the water, but it's much more expensive. This cutting-edge tech hasn't reached the refresh rate performance heights of IPS monitors, but it has come pretty close, reaching 360Hz in some cases. If eye candy is what you seek, you won't go wrong with an OLED panel.

Because TN, VA, IPS, and OLED each have their pros and cons, we recommend looking at samples of each at your local electronics mega-mart if possible. That way, you can get an idea of their "feel" (visually speaking) and learn which compromises matter the least to you. Also bear in mind that not all panels of a given type are created equal, so seeing the actual monitor you're considering in person is always desirable.

Pixel Response, Input Lag, and Refresh Rate: Judging the Right Numbers

Gaming monitors should have a fast pixel response time and a high refresh rate, the latter commensurate with the frame rates your PC can push. (More on that in a moment.)

The most commonly used pixel response spec is gray-to-gray, which is measured in milliseconds (ms) and signifies the time it takes a pixel to transition from one shade of gray to another. (A few companies still use the older black-to-white measurement.) A fast pixel response will help eliminate smearing of moving images and provide a smoother overall picture. A gray-to-gray response of 2ms or less is ideal, but even a 4ms gray-to-gray response is usually adequate for single-player gaming.

Input lag is another important factor to consider when buying your next gaming monitor, especially for competitive players. Input lag refers to the amount of time it takes for an action (such as keypress or mouse click) to be reflected onscreen. We consider any screens with input-lag results below 5ms on our tests to be a good fit for players who rely on lightning-quick reflexes to best their opponents.

Then there's refresh rate. A monitor's refresh rate refers to the number of times per second it can redraw the entire screen, measured in hertz (Hz). Most standard LCD monitors (including older gaming panels) have a peak refresh rate of 60Hz, which means the screen is refreshed or redrawn 60 times per second. Fast-moving images may appear blurry at this rate, or the panel may suffer from screen tearing, an artifact that occurs when the monitor displays misaligned pieces of two or more screen draws at once. (This can be alleviated by a synchronization technique called variable refresh rate, more about which in a moment.)

The trend in gaming panels over the last couple of years is toward refresh rates substantially higher than 60Hz. The most common increments we see today in so-called high-refresh-rate gaming displays are 75Hz, 120Hz, and 144Hz. But models with 240Hz, 360Hz, and up to 500Hz and even greater are now available.

Most of the 240Hz panels we've seen peak at 1080p resolution, with 1440p and 4K panels topping out at 165Hz and 144Hz respectively. This is due to the throughput limitations of the two most popular cable technologies, HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort 1.4b. This should start to change as the faster HDMI 2.1 spec becomes more widespread, but that could take a while since we only saw the first instance of HDMI 2.1 in a gaming graphics card with Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3080 and subsequent RTX 30 series cards.

Games that run at frame rates higher than 60 frames per second (fps) can benefit from one of these monitors. The higher refresh rate can show motion more fluidly when in sync. Esports players who specialize in games that aren't especially demanding in terms of 3D rendering (and therefore run at very high frame rates) will especially want to take note.

Just because you have a high refresh rate, however, doesn't guarantee your gaming graphics will be free of tearing and artifacts. That leads us to the other big PC-centric trends in late-model gaming monitors: Nvidia's G-Sync and AMD's FreeSync.

G-Sync and FreeSync: Technologies in Flux

The newest gaming monitors use synchronization technology to help reduce tearing and other motion artifacts while lowering input lag. Displays equipped with Nvidia's G-Sync or AMD's FreeSync technology hand off control of the display's refresh rate to the graphics card or graphics processing unit (instead of the monitor), which lets the display operate at a variable refresh rate (VRR) matching what the card is capable of pushing at any given moment. The result is a smooth gaming experience with decreased input lag and no tearing. Note, however, that G-Sync and FreeSync monitors require a compatible graphics card with a DisplayPort 1.2 or HDMI 2.0/2.1 output (an Nvidia card for G-Sync or AMD card for FreeSync).

The latest FreeSync version, FreeSync Premium Pro, has the same basic aim as earlier FreeSync versions—synchronizing the frame rate of the signal from a compatible AMD graphics card with the refresh rate of the monitor—but adds HDR support, low input lag (i.e., latency), and support for low-frame-rate compensation. The last is the ability to sync the frame rate of a GPU with that of a monitor even when the GPU falls below the display's minimum frame rate.

Users of FreeSync monitors can also turn on G-Sync in the Nvidia driver software in some monitors. The results may vary, but in essence, owners of FreeSync panels can now try out VRR with an Nvidia rather than AMD graphics card. That should mean less or no screen tearing, ghosting, and other artifacts during variable-refresh-rate gameplay, as well as support for a wide range of refresh rates (for example, 60Hz to 144Hz) according to the monitor's specifications. Certain models at the link above are labeled as G-Sync Compatible. Where supported, you can try to switch G-Sync on from the Nvidia software control panel and see if, and how well, its adaptive sync works.

G-Sync has gotten more complicated in another way, too. The addition of the G-Sync Compatible category brings Nvidia's number of monitor compatibility levels to three. G-Sync Compatible is the lowest tier. Next are monitors that meet Nvidia's traditional G-Sync standards, containing specialized circuitry to support the standard; they've passed some 300 image-quality tests and are capable of operating over the full VRR range.

The top tier is G-Sync Ultimate, which bolsters the G-Sync standards with high-end features such as extreme luminance (1,000 nits) and a refresh rate of at least 144Hz.

HDR: Why It Matters in Gaming Monitors

High dynamic range (HDR) technology isn't just for making movies and TV shows look good. It can also turn a dimly lit, washed-out game into something vibrant and full of contrast, with sharply defined edges around every part of the environment. You can find multiple levels of HDR in gaming monitors right now, ranging from DisplayHDR 400 up to DisplayHDR 1600. (There are also True Black levels for OLED monitors.) The figure refers to the number of nits or the brightness level at which the display should be capable of maxing out.

While many gaming consoles, including ones in the Xbox and PlayStation lines, deliver flawless HDR in almost all their games, the PC still lags behind in terms of the number of game titles and monitors that support HDR. How well the tech is implemented varies on a case-by-case basis. That said, when done well, HDR adds a striking aspect to gameplay.

In testing at PC Labs, we've found DisplayHDR 400 is generally sufficient to get a nice visual effect, but the DisplayHDR 1000 and 1600 specs take the technology to an entirely new level.

Is a Gaming Monitor Also Good for Content Creation? How to Know

When we test monitors for their gaming capabilities, we also look at what they can do in general-use cases like watching movies or browsing the web, as well as how accurately they can reproduce color in a number of chromaticity tests.

The sRGB color gamut or palette acts like a baseline for how content on the internet will appear, while DCI-P3 is a measure of how well a monitor does at reproducing the color spectrum most often used for movies and TV shows. For still rather than motion images, there's also the Adobe RGB gamut, which measures how well a monitor does at reproducing accurate color in professional content editing software such as Adobe Photoshop when preparing art to be printed.

Color accuracy is also measured via a figure known as Delta E, which expresses the distance between, say, the theoretical most accurate orange and the orange that you see on screen. If you want to watch (or produce) a lot of movies on your gaming monitor, its percentage of DCI-P3 coverage should be your top concern; the Delta E, sRGB, and Adobe RGB numbers are the priority for creators who work in photography, 3D design, game production, modeling, or other creative fields where color accuracy is paramount.

What Ports Should a Gaming Monitor Have?

A gaming monitor should be equipped with a variety of video inputs, so you can connect it to a variety of PCs and gaming consoles. Dual HDMI ports are ideal, since the major game consoles use HDMI, while most high-end graphics cards released in recent years offer DisplayPort and HDMI 2.1 connectivity. The older DVI connector has all but died out, though you may still see it in budget hardware.

USB ports on a monitor are also a nice feature, as they make it easy to connect gaming controllers, mice, flash drives, and other external peripherals. You can often charge handheld devices by plugging them into a USB port. Side-mounted USB ports make it easier to plug and unplug peripherals than ones located on the back of the display.

A powerful speaker system with a built-in subwoofer will enhance your gaming experience and save desktop space, and a stand with height, tilt, and swivel adjustments offers ergonomic comfort for all-night frag-a-thons. That said, if you tend to game with a gaming headset, a conveniently situated USB port might be more useful than middling built-in speakers.

Finally, select models have RGB lighting on the cabinet. While some shoppers can't stand the stuff (it may wash out game visuals on screen, for example), plenty of gamers like to sync their gaming monitor with other RGB-illuminated components such as their PC case, graphics card, or memory modules. (Heck, you can even find RGB solid-state drives these days.)

Some of the software utilities that can sync your monitor to the rest of your RGB setup include Asus Aura Sync, Acer DisplayWidget, and MSI Mystic Light, as well as Alienware's Command Center. More advanced options like SteelSeries' GameSense work in tandem with some monitors to display in-game information like your ammo and health levels via RGB LED strips on the monitor. The number of GameSense-compatible games and apps is limited, but it's a neat look into a possible future of functional, not just decorative, RGB bling.

Ready to Buy the Right Gaming Monitor for You?

Screen size, panel technology, and features will determine how much you'll pay for a gaming monitor. You can snag a 24-inch model with TN technology and a fast gray-to-gray pixel response time well for under $200 (some models even start at under $100), but you won't get much in the way of features or brilliant image quality. Expect to pay more than $200 if you want a higher-than-60Hz refresh rate joined with some subset of perks, such as an adjustable stand, a USB hub, multiple digital video inputs, and either G-Sync Compatible or FreeSync support.

A full-blown 27-inch, higher-than-1080p gaming monitor decked out with features like G-Sync and a Nano IPS display can cost north of $500, while a 34-inch UHD monitor can run you more than $700. If you're looking for a big-screen, ultrawide monitor with a curved panel, plan on spending even more.

For more of our monitor picks, check out our top monitors overall. Players can also check out our favorites among other peripherals such as gaming keyboards and gaming mice to finish outfitting their game dens.