At under $290 ASRock's Phantom gaming monitor is the cheapest ultrawide I would actually buy

The usual online merchants are stuffed with weird and wonderful monitor brands. Ever heard of Luckyfive? Us neither. But if you want a 34-inch ultrawide high-refresh gaming monitor from company you're vaguely familiar with, then try this for size. The ASRock Gaming Phantom 34, AKA the PG34WQ15R2B, is currently yours for just $289.99 on Newegg.

So, what's this ASRock actually like? It's a VA panel, so there's bags of contrast. In absolute brightness terms, it's reasonable rather than spectacular. It does have HDR 400 certification, but there's no local dimming. In truth, it doesn't subjectively look good for the claimed 550 nits.

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But it's punchy enough and sports vibrant and yet not overly saturated colors. It's also decently quick for an LCD panel and particularly for a VA monitor. Where it really scores at this price point is the 165Hz refresh and low latency that enables.

Then there's the broader immersion on offer from all 34-inch ultrawide panels, in this case with a sensible 1800R curve, just to give a subtle wrap-around feel.

Long story short, while you could pay three times as much for a higher-spec 34-inch ultrawide, you wouldn't be getting three times the gaming experience. The ASRock Gaming Phantom 34 also makes for a very nice all-round workhorse. There's plenty of space for multi-tasking and the build quality is decent. It certainly doesn't feel like a budget model.

Jeremy has been writing about technology and PCs since the 90nm Netburst era (Google it!) and enjoys nothing more than a serious dissertation on the finer points of monitor input lag and overshoot followed by a forensic examination of advanced lithography. Or maybe he just likes machines that go “ping!” He also has a thing for tennis and cars.