At last: The sub-$500 32-inch, 4K, 144Hz, Black Friday gaming monitor deal

A 32-inch, 4K, IPS, 144Hz, 1ms gaming panel is the preferred choice of the discerning gaming enthusiast. Discuss. Should you agree, the obvious catch has always been cost. That kind of monitor demands serious money. At least it did. Thanks to Black Friday, the GIGABYTE M32U ticks all those boxes and more for well under $500.

OK, that's not exactly chump change. But think of it as spread out over three or four years, and it's not a lot to pay for truly premium gaming experience. Once you've gamed at 4K, you won't want to go back to 1440p. More to the point, you arguably only really get the full benefit of 4K at larger screen sizes. A 27-inch 4K panel is slightly more dubious proposition.

For starters, it offers both DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.1, so you can do the full high-refresh 4K thing over both interfaces. That's particularly handy if you want to tag-team a PC with a gaming console. The GIGABYTE M32U also has a built-in KVM switch, which makes using more than one device even easier.

Further highlights include DisplayHDR 400 certification. OK, this is not a true HDR monitor. But HDR certification means you will at least be able to view HDR colors correctly. It also guarantees minimum 400 nits of brightness, which is reassuring.

It's also worth remembering that the advent of upscaling technologies like Nvidia's DLSS and AMD FSR means that 4K is much more viable than ever before in terms of frame rates. In short, 4K is pretty much the ultimate gaming experience, and that's not going change for many years to come. And now it's moderately affordable. Hurray.

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.