So come and bask in something deliciously old school with me: the release of a good-looking new product you might be able to buy without selling a kidney. Philips says its new 36M4C5500P display is the world's first 36-inch gaming monitor with a 260 Hz refresh rate. Lovely.

This ultrawide's got a curved, 1500R VA panel. Oooooh. A 3440 x 1440 resolution. Ahhhh. And an overclockable refresh rate that makes sense for casual and competitive gamers alike. Stone the crows and call the fire department, it actually looks pretty decent.

Sure, VA panel tech is nothing fancy. And many a curved ultrawide has passed the doors of PC Gamer Towers over the past few years. But a 36-inch panel size is something interesting, filling the gap between your standard 34-inch ultrawides and the more desk-dominating, 39-inch-and-up models.

The specs aren't exactly earth-shattering, but I'm hoping they might push it towards the more affordable end of the market. It's got Display HDR400 certification, dual HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4 connectivity, and a tilting stand. Everything you might reasonably need. There's no word on pricing yet, but I've got my fingers crossed.

I even thought we'd make it through the press release without a mention of AI, but no, this display has "AI-enhanced gaming features" including Shadow Boost, Smart Crosshair, Smart Sniper, and Smart MBR sync. Most of which you can likely ignore. No product launch is complete without them, though, I'm sure you'll agree.

In these topsy-turvy times, it's downright refreshing to write about a new gaming product that simply looks nice, without having to bring up the global state of affairs. Many gaming monitors are actually very affordable right now, so if you're scratching around for something to upgrade without breaking the bank, it's products like this that I'd be keeping a close eye on.

There. A properly positive article, and I didn't mention the memory crisis once. Curses!

Can you have too much of a mediocre thing? If I was being unkind, that's the challenge I'd make to the new LG UltraGear Evo 52G930B. What we are talking about here, people, is a monumental 52-inch 5K2K gaming monitor. But it's based on an old-school VA panel.

Yep, not OLED. Not IPS. It doesn't even have mini-LED local dimming. It's just a huge, high-res, VA panel. At 52 inches, it's so big and so expensive it immediately poses another problem. Why wouldn't you just buy a 4K TV?

After all, this LG clocks in at $1,699 or £1,499, which buys you an awful lot of 4K TV here in late 2026. That kind of money puts you in reach of OLED TVs up to around 65 inches. And, like I said, the LG UltraGear Evo 52G930B isn't actually that well specced save for its size and resolution.

There is a counter argument in favour of this huge 52-inch ultrawide beast, and it goes something like this. For starters, this LG has various PC gaming-centric features. Most obviously, that includes 240 Hz refresh and the low latency that promises. But you also get lots of granular controls over image quality settings, such as colour spaces and pixel overdrive.

You likewise wouldn't expect to see the DisplayPort and USB-C interfaces that LG has included. Admittedly, various TVs have at least some of those features. But usually not all. There are also some ergonomic issues to bear in mind. This is a 21:9 aspect 5K2K display. That immediately makes this monitor a touch more usable than a similarly-sized TV.

Put it this way, there's only so tall you can go with a monitor on your desk before it gets a bit ridiculous. What this monitor offers is immense and immersive width with manageable height.

That it's also curved helps. The 1000R curve means it wraps around you from a typical PC gaming position, which is inherently much closer to the panel than you would normally sit when watching TV. The 5K2K resolution also means you're getting better pixel density than a big 4K TV, albeit you're still not getting great pixel density by PC monitor standards. Hold that thought, we'll come back to it.

All that said, the LG UltraGear Evo 52G930B isn't automatically an ergonomic master stroke. I have a pretty big desk and this thing barely fits on it. That extreme 1000R curve means that it isn't just very wide, but also quite deep. And, generally, if you are unconvinced by curved monitors, you really aren't going to like this LG. It's really, really curved.

Anyway, before we come to what kind of actual gaming experience you get from a monster like this, let's cover off a few more speeds and feeds. As I said, there's no local dimming and that means only limited HDR support.

Strictly speaking, there's HDR 600 certification. But without local dimming, there simply isn't the lighting control to deliver HDR visuals. However, you do at least get the intrinsic contrast of a VA panel. LG has rated this one at 4,000:1, which is about three to four times the static contrast that most IPS monitors offer. For the record, SDR brightness is rated at 400 nits.

Meanwhile, to go with the 240 Hz refresh, there's pixel response of 1 ms grey-to-grey. At least, that's the claim. For most VA panels, poor response is perhaps their most obvious shortcoming. And pixel response specs don't always tell the full story. So, we'll see about that.

On, then, to the experience this monster delivers. Out of the box—a particularly laborious process given the sheer scale of the thing—and it immediately feels unwieldy. I used a 49-inch 32:9 ultrawide as my primary display for about 18 months so I am not just familiar with using very large PC monitors, I'm absolutely a fan. But the LG UltraGear Evo 52G930B immediately feels too big.

That's not down to the width, which is comparable to one of those 49-inch ultrawides, but the height and depth. It's all so overwhelming and eats up so much desk space. Of course, the benefit is immersion and, crikey, does this massive monitor dominate your field of view when used at "normal" PC monitor viewing distances.

I think viewing it that close has surely got to be the point. Yes, you could push it back. But then why are you buying such a huge display? That close-up approach doesn't work so well for TVs, first because they are generally flat and that means the edges of the display end up being viewed at quite an acute angle. The other problem is pixel density.

Take a 55-inch 4K TV. That has a pixel density of just 80 pixels per inch, which looks really rough and blocky at PC monitor viewing distances. This LG improves that figure to 107 pixels per inch, or very nearly the same as 109 pixels per inch of a typical 1440p 27-inch monitor.

Okay, that's still not great compared to, for instance, the 138 pixels per inch of a 32-inch 4K monitor, let alone a 27-inch 4K panel. But it's tolerable in terms of things like text quality and overall image detail.

The same goes for the general appearance of this huge VA panel. It's definitely no OLED when it comes to lighting control. But it's punchy and vibrant and has very good contrast for a conventional LCD monitor. It's also pretty well calibrated in its various modes.

The one caveat to that observation is that you cannot enable pixel overdrive when using industry-standard colour spaces including sRGB and PCI-P3. Only the gaming-centric presets support pixel overdrive. The idea is to ensure greater colour accuracy in sRGB and DCI-P3. But, personally, I'd prefer the option to run those modes with overdrive.

Whatever, the most positive aspect of this monitor is definitely immersion. No other monitor I've used so effectively fills your field of view. That's true to an extent that I actually think is borderline impractical for, say, a first person shooter. It's certainly, far, far too big for esports where you want to be able to see pretty much all the screen within a relatively narrow field of view. You're not going to last long if an enemy pops up on the edge of the screen two or three feet outside of your central gaze.

For games that are more about exploration and adventure than precision head shots, on the other hand, let's say something like Witcher III or the Assassin's Creed series, this monitor is positively epic, if possibly a bit exhausting. Again, immersion is a singular experience. But actually having to swivel your head around extensively to see all parts of the screen, is that something you really want to be doing?

In that regard, the faster the action on screen, arguably the less sense this screen makes. Along with the ergonomic issues of actually viewing such a large screen, there's pixel response. And it's not great.

VA panels tend to be weakest when it comes to dark tone response and the LG UltraGear Evo 52G930B is no exception. Even with overdrive maxed out, there's visible smearing. At the same time, the fastest overdrive setting also introduces overshoot and inverse ghosting that's bad enough to be visible, in-game. As VA panels go, the response is fine as opposed to particularly bad. But compared to even an IPS monitor, it's a step down. Compared to OLED, it's absolutely hopeless.

However, for me where this beast really makes sense is strategy games. Frankly, once you've played one of the Total War series rendered across a huge 52-inch 5K2K panel, everything else feels positively puny. The sight of numerous battalions of infantry, regiments of cavalry, rows of siege engines, whatever, sprawling across your field of view is undoubtedly a seminal PC gaming experience.

Another obvious application for a screen like this is driving sims. Okay, the pixel response isn't exactly ideal, but the scale, the ultrawide aspect, and the wrap-around curve makes for one heck of a sim-rig screen.

At this point you're probably getting the impression that the LG UltraGear Evo 52G930B's appeal is pretty niche. And that's about right. As a general purpose PC monitor, it really doesn't make sense.

Certainly, it's miles behind the curve (waahwaah) by most technical metrics. Just about everything else at this price point is OLED these days. So, to have a plain old VA panel that doesn't even have local dimming in this segment of the market launching in 2026 feels like a bit of a throwback.

However, the combination of sheer scale and relatively high resolution does make for a unique proposition and, in at least some positive ways, an experience like no other. Well, almost no other. The obvious comparison here is the even bigger 57-inch VA panel as used by the Samsung Odyssey Neo G9 G95NC and Acer Predator Z57.

Right now, you can bag the Samsung for $1,449 on Amazon. Not only is it even bigger, it's far higher resolution at 7,680 x 2,160 pixels and has full array local dimming with over 2,000 zones and therefore some proper HDR capabilites. Similar applies to the Acer, which is largely the same spec and available for $1,599.

Of course, that huge resolution, which is effectively dual-4K, makes for monumental GPU load. Even an RTX 5090 will struggle at times. But the value comparison certainly isn't comfortable for this new LG.

In the end, then, the LG UltraGear Evo 52G930B isn't going to make sense for almost anyone, especially not with something even bigger, higher resolution and more capable available for less money. But if you're gaming in just the right niche, if money doesn't really matter, and if you feel like it, well, what the heck, why not pull the trigger and march those armies across the Nile basin?

Behold, the OLED gaming monitor price champion. We give you the Acer Nitro VG277U Xbiip. Not a great name, but this panel even offers a 240 Hz refresh rate, while the next cheapest OLED is only good for 144 Hz. Just note that this monitor uses Samsung's budget QD-OLED panel, and it's not the brightest.

Key specs: 27-inch | 1440p | 240 Hz | 0.03 ms | QD-OLEDView Deal

I've watched in horror over the last year as the memory crisis has continued to ravage the industry and take the prices of memory, storage, and even graphics cards with it. Yet monitors offer a light in the darkness by not only getting more impressive but cheaper too.

If you have been holding out on upgrading to an OLED gaming monitor but are still on a budget, the Acer Nitro VG277U Xbiip is a banger for $269 over at Walmart. That makes it not only the best-priced OLED at Walmart, but I reckon it's the best-priced OLED gaming monitor on the market.

👉Shop all of Walmart's gaming monitor deals here👈

Being an OLED gaming monitor, this Acer panel has some pretty impressive stats. A 240 Hz refresh rate is higher than most will ever need, and the 0.03 ms response time is super solid too.

Being Samsung's budget QD-OLED panel, you are getting some compromises for such a reasonably priced monitor, and perhaps the biggest compromise is in its brightness. The peak HDR brightness of 400 nits is pretty low, which means it will struggle in very well-lit rooms. That also means its HDR performance won't blow you away either.

As well as this, this generation of OLED and previous ones are vulnerable to font fringing. This is where the edges of text on the screen can appear blurry or come with colored fringes to them, especially on a 2560 x 1440 display at 27-inches; the pixel pitch is not as tight as with 4K panels, which can mitigate the issue. The good news for gamers is that it is not so noticeable in games, but for day-to-day productivity work, you will likely become aware of it.

However, despite these downsides, you are getting an OLED panel, which means you get true deep black and super vibrant colors. I've long argued that the best upgrade I've made in the last half a decade has been swapping to OLED, because it makes everything just look so good. And 1440p is a bit of a resolution sweet spot for price and performance right now.

The $269 cost is the same price we saw this monitor selling for over Prime Day. So, in my books, you are getting a phenomenal deal here on an excellent bit of panel technology.

That's according to Omdia (via Videocardz), which explains, "TCL China Star’s new Gen 8.6 IJP OLED fab is scheduled to begin production in 2028, with plans for larger panels, including 32-inch and 34-inch sizes and refresh rate offerings of up to 700 Hz. The facility is projected to make TCL China Star the first company to mass-produce IJP OLED monitor panels at Gen 8.6 fab."

To be clear, we've already seen 700+ Hz OLED monitors. We've even seen some that don't rely on dropping down to 720p, such as a WOLED from Asus that hits 720 Hz at 1080p in a 24.5-inch form factor.

We should also note that it doesn't seem like Omdia is saying the new 700 Hz TCL monitors will be 32-inch or 34-inch ones—those could be different offerings.

So what's new? Well, mostly that three-letter acronym: IJP. It stands for "ink jet printing" and is a way of making OLED panels that should be less costly.

Essentially, regular OLED production involves material being wasted because it relies on some evaporated OLED materials going through a mask (stencil), but a lot of the evaporated materials don't go through and are lost. IJP, on the other hand, prints the OLED materials directly on the substrate, meaning there should be much less wastage.

The result, of course, should mean more cost-effective production. For consumers like you and I, that should mean cheaper panels. It might also mean better colour volume at higher brightness, if previous claims about inkjet tech are anything to go by.

Which is good news, considering the aforementioned 720 Hz Asus panel is set to cost $1,099. OLED monitors in general have gotten quite cheap, when they're not gigantic top-end panels or ultra-high refresh rate ones, which explains why they're being snatched off the proverbial shelves.

It'll be great if we see that price trend follow the ultra-high refresh rate segment, too. Fingers crossed for TCL, then, even if we do have to wait until 2028 for production to start.

This is now how I feel about, frankly, a lot of technology. Not long before that episode aired I'd gleefully dropped $1,000 on my first HD display, a 26-inch 1366x768 Samsung LCD that served as my college dorm TV and doubled as my computer monitor. For the time it was state of the art, so much thinner and sharper and better than the CRT monitor still attached to the family PC.

Or was it?

Twenty years later, experts who are tuned into the minutia of display tech are still trying to get back what we lost.

"People older than 40 will generally remember the motion clarity of CRTs, while younger people who've never seen a CRT will not remember," says Mark Rejhon, founder of the website Blur Busters. For years, Blur Busters' "Test UFO" browser tool, starring a little green man in a red saucer, has served as the de facto way to judge the clarity of objects in motion on modern displays. Compared to older CRT monitors, the LCDs of the mid-2000s were particularly terrible, their pixels taking an eternity to change from one color to another and leaving a nasty "ghost" trail on fast-moving images.

The TV I spent an entire month's paycheck on was better than average for its day, but the novelty of the HD era made me overlook then what's far more obvious now: the richer colors and smoothness of a CRT that I gave up, and wouldn't get back for nearly two decades.

Today's high refresh monitors are far better than the smeary, washed out LCDs of the 2000s—but even the best of the best are still chasing the clarity of CRTs, which means Rejhon is chasing it too.

Cathode ray 'tude

In late 2024 Rejhon debuted a "breakthrough algorithm for simulating a CRT tube" alongside former Nvidia developer Timothy Lottes, which takes advantage of 240+ Hz displays to drastically reduce visible motion blur in retro games and other content that's locked at 60 Hz.

The trick, to grossly simplify some extremely complicated tech, is recreating the visual "phosphor fade" of a CRT, which is gentler on the eyes and less flickery than harsh black frame insertion (BFI), the previous go-to method for cutting down on blur as pixels swap from one color to another.

"The two main ways to reduce display motion blur is either flicker the frames (like a CRT) or add more frame rate (for high Hz)," Rejhon said. "Both methods will show frames more briefly, like a fast camera shutter, and result in less display motion blur. CRTs could flicker pixels brightly for less than 1/1000 second. The bonus with CRT is you do not require more frame rate to achieve low motion blur."

If that's still tough to wrap your brain around, think of the CRT simulation as DLSS, but for motion instead of resolution: When it's working just right, a game locked at 60 frames per second could look just as smooth and clean as one running at, say, 540 frames per second, without needing an RTX 5090 to hit those numbers.

540 Hz is the refresh rate of the ROG PG27AQWP-W Asus sent me for testing, an ideal monitor for getting the most out of CRT simulation. It even has a 720 Hz mode if you drop the resolution to 720p; and the higher the refresh, the more you can reduce the perceived motion blur. Unlike LCDs, OLED panels can go completely black (there's no backlight to bleed light) and get extremely bright, getting much closer to the contrast CRTs naturally offered. And the high refresh rate helps recreate the electron beam that would travel down a CRT screen to "draw" the image.

This effect isn't just a nostalgia thing: As Rejhon notes on BlurBusters, "60 Hz BFI and strobing flickers a lot" because you're flashing a black frame in between each one from your game. By comparison, the top-to-bottom scanning effect is less harsh: "CRT simulation is much gentler for 60 fps content, because of phosphor fade & rolling scan. Some light is emitted somewhere else on the screen all the time."

Despite the perfect hardware to test on, though, CRT simulation is so bleeding edge I practically sliced my brain to ribbons trying to get it working earlier this year.

The first actual implementation of BlurBusters' tech was in a shader for the emulation frontend Retroarch, but soon after it was built into an experimental branch of a standalone app called ShaderGlass, a great overlay for Windows that lets you apply hundreds of visual effects to whatever's on your desktop—scanlines, the fuzziness of an analog video signal, and so on. But the CRT beam simulation is so much more complex than a typical video shader, app developer Mausimus decided to split it off into a separate tool: ShaderBeam.

"The ideal application of beam simulation technology requires perfect synchronization with both the display (it cannot afford to drop a single frame even at those high refresh rates, since that causes very noticeable flashing) and input content (for aligning source frame generation with simulated CRT refresh rate)," said Mausimus. Right now, it's the best way to use Rejhon's algorithm.

Shader dreams

ShaderBeam doesn't involve much setup: launch its executable and use a hotkey to apply the shader on top of a game window. How simple it looks belies how hard the visual effect is to pull off when you don't work at Microsoft, AMD or Nvidia.

"ShaderBeam tries to use whatever's available, like screen capture and window transparency (even though these technologies weren't designed with this use case in mind at all and provide no timing guarantees whatsoever), to compensate for the inability to insert itself into the rendering pipeline from source content to display," Mausimus said. "It's at the mercy of opaque scheduling algorithms built into the OS and GPU drivers, hoping it can eke out enough resources to maintain its timing."

The ideal ShaderBeam setup involves disabling usual niceties like VRR, turning off all sorts of features in your graphic's cards driver settings, unplugging secondary monitors, using Process Lasso to give it higher priority, and even a registry edit. It includes the novel idea of splitting up the responsibilities of rendering the game and the CRT shader to two GPUs. If your processor has a built-in GPU, using it can help avoid a desync between the rate at which your game is spitting out frames and the rate at which ShaderBeam can apply the CRT beam simulation.

"By moving beam simulation to another GPU there is less contention for the primary GPU's time and effectively better scheduling consistency; it does provide a much more stable experience," Mausimus said. "The issue with single GPU isn't lack of GPU power, rather its unpredictable distribution."

If ShaderBeam "isn't given enough GPU time by the OS to present a frame on time," you'll experience some flashing—which I discovered by pushing my Intel chip's iGPU to output at 1440p at 540 Hz. Then I struggled through consistent stuttering while trying ShaderBeam with various emulators and shooters like Quake and Amid Evil, which led me down the rabbit hole of display subframe timing, where the minutia of monitor technology quickly becomes more and more arcane.

This all might sound like a borderline deranged amount of effort just to play a game like Nintendo's Metroid Prime 2: Echoes in GameCube emulator Dolphin, one of my test cases, the way I first saw it on the CRT in a high school friend's bedroom. I felt like a mad scientist (emphasis on the mad) while trying to troubleshoot stutters, flicker, and color banding for hours on end.

Even when everything is calibrated just right, there's also the possibility a game itself can throw a wrench in things—Unreal Engine 5's penchant for stuttering will naturally throw off the frame pacing of the CRT simulation, too, for example.

But when I started rolling Samus's morph ball in a tight circle and realized the room's columns remained pin sharp even as the camera whirled around, I got a glimpse of what Rejhon and Mausimus have been fighting for. "On moving objects (or the scene if you look around) the shader should allow you to see the individual pixels; normally they all just get blurred out," Mausimus said, using the intricate textures on a Quake column as a prime example. Factorio is another good test case: "It has this really smooth movement of the whole scene when you walk around without the shader, the pixels get blurred together, but with the shader you should still be able to see the details even when moving."

Hard Locked

On top of a vast library of 60 Hz console games, these PC classics would benefit from CRT simulation.

It almost feels uncanny once your eyes pick up on details that would normally be just a blur—the difference is as dramatic as switching to a higher refresh rate in a game you've only ever controlled at 30 fps. But it's frustratingly difficult to describe or demonstrate, since capturing the effect on camera is tough and impossible to perceive without a 240 Hz+ display, anyway.

Future vision

As impressive as ShaderBeam is, it ultimately requires a level of fiddling and compromise that I don't think make sense for anyone right now. It intermittently brings back what we left behind when we abandoned CRTs, but ultimately makes me think the real solution is either going to come from new hardware—like the next generation of Nvidia's Pulsar monitors—or from Microsoft digging into the guts of Windows to change some of the stuff that happens in between .exe and screen.

"Even if ShaderBeam's makeshift workarounds never reach levels of consistency needed for wide adoption, the hope is that they will boost users' interest in having this kind of technology properly supported by OS, GPU and display manufacturers," Mausimus said.

Rejhon seems bullish about that eventually coming to pass… but these things take time.

"In the future, when shader hooks are built into operating systems, as well as video-processing GPUs are integrated into the display of the 2030s, it will be much more user friendly," he predicted. "This is part of the advocacy that is being encouraged by Blur Busters' Open Source Display Shaders Initiative."

ShaderBeam's goal of awakening PC gamers to the benefits of CRT simulation worked on me, at least. I'm convinced we have to go back—even if it means dragging the people in charge of graphics drivers back to CRT paradise with us.

Behold, the new OLED gaming monitor price champion. We give you the Acer Nitro VG277U Xbiip. Not a great name, but this panel even offers 240 Hz refresh where the next cheapest OLED is only good for 144 Hz. Just note this monitor uses Samsung's budget QD-OLED panel and it's not the brightest.

Key specs: 27-inch | 1440p | 240 Hz | 0.03 ms | QD-OLEDView Deal

I knew coming into Prime Day that gaming monitor deals would offer a brief reprieve from the misery that is the price of memory, storage, and graphics cards, yet I wasn't expecting an OLED gaming monitor to drop all the way down to $270.

I was even more shocked that the $270 Acer Nitro VG277U Xbiip has stuck at that price point at Walmart even after the Big Deal Days have come to a close. That makes it an absolute steal right now.

• We're curating all the best Prime Day PC gaming deals here

One caveat worth mentioning here is that this Acer monitor uses Samsung's budget QD-OLED panel, so it's not majorly bright. In fact, most budget OLED panels around its price point are rocking the same panel (apart from the AOC Agon Pro, but that's seen a price jump). However, it's incredible to think you can get a 1440p OLED gaming monitor for the cash.

There's a reason people (myself included) love OLED monitors. They provide true blacks and offer color that pops. That makes them an incredible way to play games. They're so good, in fact, that I argue the biggest upgrade I've made to my gaming setup in the last half a decade is swapping from an IPS panel to an OLED one (yes, that includes getting a new PC).

This Nitro has some serious stats too, like a 240 Hz refresh rate and a lightning-fast 0.03 ms response time. These are mighty impressive, especially at its price.

OLEDs do have downsides, like they're less resilient to burn-in, and they tend to display font fringing during non-gaming use cases. This can blur text or add extra colors around it. Generally speaking, if you simply need something to edit with or build spreadsheets, I'd be going for an IPS panel.

Still, for gaming it's perfect, and that size makes it a great choice in a dual monitor setup. I have a 1440p OLED and 1080p IPS in my personal setup, and I can't recommend it enough.

👉Shop all of Walmart's gaming monitor deals here👈

ROG Strix XG32UQWMS: was $899.99 now $699.99
I only reviewed this hot new Tandem OLED 32-inch 4K panel in July. It was $899 back then, and I liked it a fair bit at that price. But it's already been chopped back to $699 and, at that level, I'm very much tempted myself.

Key specs: 32-inch | 4K | 240 Hz | 0.03 ms | LG Tandem WOLEDView Deal

It was only July when I reviewed the hot new Asus ROG Strix XG32UQWMS and its fancy 32-inch 4K LG Tandem WOLED panel. It was good enough to score 85% priced at $899 in July. But now it's already been reduced by $200 for Prime Day.

Newegg has the Asus ROG Strix XG32UQWMS listed at $699. At that price, it would have been flirting with a 90% highly recommended score.

Lest you have forgotten, this Asus Strix model gets the latest Tandem WOLED panel tech, which is LG's brightest yet for PC monitors. Asus rates it at 330 nits full screen and an eye-popping 1,500 nits peak HDR in this implementation.

• We're curating all the best Prime Day PC gaming deals here

LG Tandem WOLED tech isn't just brighter, however. LG claims it's 60% more durable in terms of light-emitting lifespan and so should resist burn-in even more robustly, an issue which is covered in any case by Asus's three-year warranty on this model.

Brightness aside, we're talking 32 inches and 4K, of course, plus 240 Hz at the native 4K and a 480 Hz dual-mode for adding some esports-friendly speed and low latency.

Asus has also gone for a glossy panel coating, which heightens contrast and really makes the most of OLED tech's perfect per-pixel lighting. As I noted in my review, the result is "some spectacular visuals for HDR content."

As for what you don't get, well, this isn't a pure RGB-stripe Tandem WOLED panel. So, the colour vibrancy isn't quite as good as the very best. And there's no USB-C connectivity.

But those details aside, this is a fantastic, bleeding-edge 4K OLED monitor at a very attractive deal price.

👉Shop all of Amazon's gaming monitor deals here👈

Truly, there are some spectacular deals this year when it comes to gaming monitors. It's almost bizarre when you consider that memory chips are basically now worth their weight in gold.

AI will tell you that monitors use different supply chains from chips, that there's actually overcapacity in the display panel industry and that tariffs can be sidestepped by conducting final assembly in countries that attract relatively low tariffs like Mexico and Vietnam. But still, a 4K high-refresh model for $250, a price that wouldn't secure the feeblest gaming graphics card? It's hard to compute.

• We're curating all the best Prime Day PC gaming deals here

Whatever, I've also been wondering when OLED monitors would get affordable. Well, that's happened this year with several models under $300. As I write these words, the cheapest is the Acer Nitro VG277U Xbiip at just $270.

Granted that uses Samsung's budget QD-OLED panel that isn't the brightest. But the AOC Agon Pro AG276QZD2 can be had for a whisker over $330 which has the proper 1,000 nit panel and 240 refresh Hz.

Meanwhile, it really wasn't long ago that high-refresh 4K was very much a premium monitor configuration. Now you can get the 144 Hz 27-inch MSI MAG 275UPD for $220. It even has a 288 Hz 1080p dual mode for esports versatility and IPS panel tech. What a bargain.

The slight snag is that you'll need about $5,000's worth of GPU to drive a 4K panel optimally. OK, that's a bit of an exaggeration. An RTX 5070 does a surprisingly good job at 4K thanks to the magic of DLSS upscaling. But the broader point holds. The cost of gaming monitors is out of sync with the rest of the PC, right now, in a good way.

Another of my favourite categories for gaming is 34-inch ultrawide. The 3,440 by 1,440 native resolution doesn't make for the best pixel density. But it is less demanding on the GPU and the size and panoramic scale of 34-inch ultrawides makes for such fantastic in-game immersion.

So, here's the good news. You can get a high-refresh 34-inch ultrawide for just $220 this Prime Day in the MSI MAG 346CQ. The bad news is that, for whatever reason, 34-inch ultrawide OLEDs are actually pretty pricey. The cheapest I can find is this AOC for $599, well over double the price of the most affordable 27-inch 1440p OLED.

Indeed, you can get a 32-inch 4K OLED for less in the $571 MSI MAG 321UP. Heck, even the magisterial Alienware AW3926QW, all 39 inches and 5,120 by 2,160 pixels of it, "only" goes for $1,100.

So, those 34-inch OLED ultrawides are the one segment of the monitor market that doesn't look that appealing price-wise, this year. But there's amazing value to be had just about everywhere else.

As for what I would pick, well, if my budget stretched to it, the obvious choice is that 39-inch Alienware. It's not actually on sale, but the $1,100 launch price was a lot lower than most expected.

Back in the real world, I think a 34-inch ultrawide for a whisker over $200 is hard to overlook. That's a really premium, highly immersive gaming experience at a truly affordable price point.

So, if a new GPU isn't a realistic option in 2026 and, more generally, the cost of a full PC upgrade has ballooned to nightmarish proportions, thank goodness we at least have these remarkably cheap gaming monitors provide one fairly attainable option for improving your gaming experience this year. Be sure to check out all the Prime Day gaming monitor deals.

👉Shop all of Amazon's gaming monitor deals here👈

If you're looking for the most immersive gaming experience around $200 will buy, I doubt you'll do better than the MSI MAG 346CQ. This 34-inch ultrawide hits 180 Hz and even though it's not the brightest, the inherent contrast of its VA panel should make for pretty vibrant visuals.

Key specs: 34-inch | 3440 x 1440 | 180 Hz | 1 ms | VAView Deal

Memory chips and GPUs may be silly money these days. But, if anything, gaming monitors just keep getting cheaper. How about a 34-inch ultrawide with 180 Hz refresh a 1 ms response for $220?

Personally, I'm totally sold on ultrawide panels for both gaming and daily computing. I love the immersion in games and the multi-tasking versatility back on the desktop. So, $220 for that fantastic experience? Yes please.

Our cut-price ultrawide muse for Prime Day 2026 is the MSI MAG 346CQ, yours for $220 from Best Buy. Along with the 34-inch 21:9 proportions and obligatory 3,440 by 1,440 resolution, headline specs include 300 nits brightness, 180 Hz refresh and 1 ms response.

• We're curating all the best Prime Day PC gaming deals here

Inevitably given the punchy pricing, this is a VA panel. That doesn't always translate into the very best pixel response. But the 1 ms rating means the MSI MAG 346CQ ought to have tolerable response. ANd the 180 Hz refresh rate certainly means decently low latency.

On the other hand, VA offers easily the best static contrast of any LCD technology, as implied by the 4,000:1 contrast ratio. That's miles better than any IPS panel and generally means VA monitors seem more vibrant and immersive than IPS.

That contrast performance will also help this monitor punch a little above its peak brightness rating. 300 nits is a little on the low side, after all.

Look, I'm not going to pretend that this thing is going to teach a cutting-edge OLED panel some new tricks. You've got to accept a few compromises at this kind of price point.

But this year's Prime Day deals are, unfortunately, a bit pants when it comes to 34-inch ultrawide OLEDs. The absolute cheapest I can find is this $600 AOC. And as much as I'm a big fan of OLED, almost three times the price is very hard to stomach.

👉Shop all of Amazon's gaming monitor deals here👈

It's "only" 165 Hz, but the MSI MAG 321UP is otherwise a very premium 32-inch 4K QD-OLED monitor for less than half the price these things used to go for in 2024. I can't think of a better way to spend about $500 on your gaming setup.

Key specs: 32-inch | 4K | 165 Hz | 0.03 ms | QD-OLEDView Deal

Ignoring 39-inch 5K2K monsters, I generally flip-flop between 34-inch ultrawide and 32-inch 4K when it comes to OLED gaming monitors. Today, I'm leaning 32-inch 4K, and I'm very much eyeballing this great Prime Day deal on an MSI model for well under $600.

There's also an intriguing 27-inch 4K option, but we'll come to that in a jiffy. First, the MSI MAG 321UP, yours for $571 on Amazon. It's a familiar unit, but none the worse for that. When this format of monitor based on Samsung's QD-OLED panel tech originally appeared in 2024, you were looking around $1,200. Now it's yours for less than half the price.

This particular model runs at a "mere" 165 Hz rather than the 240 Hz of more expensive variants. But then the idea that you're going to be running demanding games at 240 fps-plus at 4K is pretty implausible.

• We're curating all the best Prime Day PC gaming deals here

What you don't lose out on with this cheapest of 4K OLEDs is the bananas 0.03 ms response time, the perfect per-pixel lighting, the incredibly punchy colours of QD-OLED tech, all enhanced by the elevated pixel density of 4K.

Inevitably, this is a first-gen 4K QD-OLED panel with 250 nits full-screen and 1,000 nits peak HDR brightness. The latest 32-inch 4K QD-OLEDs are a touch brighter. And the USB-C input is limited to 15 W of power delivery. But make no mistake, this remains one of the great PC gaming experiences.

That said, if desk space is at an absolute premium or pixel density is a major priority, you might just prefer a 27-inch model. Not a problem, because there's an MSI 27 incher that's actually slightly cheaper.

The MSI MAG 272UP has had a haircut for Prime Day to $549 on Newegg. Again, it's a 165 Hz model to help bring the price down. Actually, the specs are pretty much the same across the board, including the 250 nit full screen and 1,000 nit peak HDR ratings. Indeed, the USB-C interface is again limited to 15 W.

So, the appeal here is the smaller panel but with the same 4K native resolution that makes for a tighter pixel pitch and even sharper image. For the record, if you really do desire the highest possible refresh rate, the Acer Predator X27 X1bmiippruzx is a very similar 27-inch 4K QD-OLED option that runs at 240 Hz for a $30 premium.

I'd personally sacrifice a touch of pixel precision for a larger 32-inch panel and both the gaming immersion and extra day-to-day elbow room that it allows. But the choice is yours, and any 4K OLED is going to be a fabulous experience.

👉Shop all of Amazon's gaming monitor deals here👈

Q27GADE: was $329.99 now $279.99
Is this the cheapest big-brand OLED gaming monitor money can buy? Right now, very likely. The refresh rate is pretty low, as is the brightness. Buit it's still tempting thanks to that perfect per-pixel lighting and incredibly fast pixel response.

Key specs: 27-inch | 1440p | 144 Hz | 0.03 ms | QD-OLEDView Deal

This isn't an entirely novel observation, but it is remarkable just how cheap gaming monitors are getting, all the while the price of just about every other PC gaming component spirals into the stratosphere. For proof, look no further than this pair of AOC gaming OLEDs, starting at below $280.

The cheaper of the two is the AOC Q27GADE for exactly $279.99 on Amazon. It's very much an entry-level offering in the 27-inch 1440p space with an unusually low 144 Hz refresh rate. Just as significant, perhaps, it very likely uses the new low-end QD-OLED panel from Samsung.

I say very likely because AOC is playing its cards pretty close to its chest with this budget offering, not even posting a product page on its website. The Amazon listing makes it clear it's a QD-OLED panel but doesn't include a brightness spec.

• We're curating all the best Prime Day PC gaming deals here

I'm virtually certain it's the same panel as that offered by the Alienware AW2726DM I reviewed recently and indeed the AOC AOC G27G41ZDF that James spotted yesterday, just running at the lower 144 Hz refresh. So, that likely means 200 nits full screen and 400 nits HDR.

These are not impressive numbers. And yet, I liked that Alienware enough to score it 85%. And that was for $350. This AOC undercuts it by $80, has the same super-fast 0.03 ms response and perfect per-pixel lighting. It's a steal.

All that said, I'd still probably plump for the slightly pricier AOC Agon Pro AG276QZD2, yours for $332 on Amazon. That is also a 27-inch 1440p QD-OLED, but it sports an upgraded panel running at 240 Hz and with 240 nits full screen and 1,000 nits peak HDR brightness.

It's basically a compromise-free option for an extra $50 and I think in a long-term context, it's got to be worth the extra money. Also note that the other really cheap OLED on our Prime Day gaming monitor deal hub, the Samsung Odyssey G50SF, is also the dimmer 200 / 400 nit panel.

In other words, the AOC Agon Pro AG276QZD2 is currently the cheapest way into what you might call a full-spec gaming OLED right now. And for that reason, it gets my vote.

👉Shop all of Amazon's gaming monitor deals here👈

G27G41ZDF: was $499.99 now $299.99
The cheapest OLED gaming monitor I'd recommend right now: you're getting a fast response time, high refresh rate, and everything else you expect from a modern OLED panel.

Key specs: 27-inch | 1440p | 240 Hz | 0.03 ms | QD-OLEDView Deal

The memory crisis is a dark cloud that lingers over almost every bit of hardware, and I'm worried it's only the start of the storm. Yet, gaming monitors have offered a single silver lining in all of this. They are getting fancier and better priced by the day, and none show that more than the panel I've picked out.

If you are looking to get an OLED gaming monitor and therefore get access to the vibrant colors and true blacks of this panel technology, AOC's G27G41ZDF is $300 at Best Buy right now, a whopping $200 saving.

• We're curating all the best Prime Day PC gaming deals here

Despite it being Amazon Prime Day / Week, it is, in fact, Best Buy that is offering the best monitor deal. Here, you're getting a 27-inch QD-OLED panel, with a super-high 240 Hz refresh rate and a lightning-fast 0.03 ms response time.

Given the price, you'd be correct in assuming it's not the latest QD-OLED technology. That means you will still get some font fringing in day-to-day productivity usage, but gaming is crystal clear here, and it's sporting a more reasonable resolution than 4K, so it won't necessarily bring your GPU to its knees.

If you need me to sell on why you should care about OLED monitors, they offer colors that truly pop and incredibly deep blacks, thanks to those self-emissive pixels. That gives them great contrast. I've made many upgrades over the last half a decade, and inarguably, my greatest has been getting my hands on an OLED monitor. You still have the aforementioned font fringing and will want to make sure to watch out for burn-in, but it just makes games look so good. Personally, I'd pick a 1440p OLED monitor over a 4K IPS one right now, and that's not just because 1440p is easier to run.

The monitor is pretty barebones in other places, providing just a single HDMI 2.0 port, one DisplayPort 1.4 port, and an audio out. You also only get a standard brightness of 200 nits and a peak brightness of 400 nits, which means I wouldn't be using this against a window. It does have a VESA mount, though, should you want to mount the monitor, and it's both Nvidia G-Sync compatible and HDR-ready. OLEDs and their contrast can help HDR performance, but the relatively low peak brightness of this one means you won't get the intense HDR-enhanced brightness of a more expensive panel

Because of the panel alone, this is a monitor I honestly couldn't recommend to you enough. OLEDs are worth the hype, and then some.

👉Shop all of Amazon's gaming monitor deals here👈

I was initially intrigued by the 27-inch OLED Samsung Odyssey G5 G50SF. I thought $330 was a great price for a gaming OLED with a 180Hz Refresh Rate and 0.03ms response time—but I did some digging, and it turns out it has been going for slightly less than this in the past. Boo. So, it might be best to wait for Amazon's Prime Day event on October 7.

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Then I found the Samsung Odyssey G55C, a curved 32-inch 1440p screen—I was even more intrigued when I saw it was more affordable at Walmart than on Amazon. Amazon may have its Prime Big Deal Days next week, but Walmart has multiple offers that feel like a steal right before the big sales event.

However, my colleague James tells me you can get the LG 32GS60QC-B, another curved monitor but with a higher 180 Hz refresh rate, for a very reasonable $230. He went on: If you're not fussed about a screen with a curve, then the KTC H27D9 is $50 less than the cheapest Samsung. If you're after a bump in refresh rate, this 27-inch Acer Nitro offers a 200 Hz refresh rate and is also just under 200 bucks. Make no mistake, our James knows his monitors.

Long story short, I was spoilt for choice when it came to shining our deals spotlight on a single gaming monitor. So, I've collected them all together instead. Feast your eyes below.

Today's best pre-Prime Day gaming monitor deals

However, I'd argue that it's actually the claimed 0.1 ms response time, not the 1,000 Hz refresh, that makes this new monitor interesting. Hold that thought while I introduce the new AOC AGON PRO AGP257FT. Actually, they'd rather have it known as the AGON PRO AGP257FT by AOC, a la Asus and the ROG brand.

Whatever, the AGP257FT looks like a dead ringer for that LG UltraGear 25G590B I mentioned, for the most part. Along with the 1,000 Hz headline refresh, we're talking 25-inches and 1080p's worth of old school IPS panelry (if panelry can indeed be a word) and HDR 400 certification, which means no local dimming.

However, AOC hasn't just pinched LG's 1,000 Hz panel and stuck it in their own chassis. Instead, the AGP257FT is the result of a collab' with Chinese display specialist BOE. The result is a new oxide-based IPS panel.

It is, perhaps, that fact—that this isn't just the LG panel rehashed—that explains why this AOC has an overclocking feature that tops out at 1,050 Hz while the LG model can go to 1,100 Hz overclocked.

Still, what's really caught my eye is the response claim. A notable aspect of the LG monitor is that the response time is only rated at 1 ms. Okay, that aligns perfectly with 1,000 Hz in theory. In practice, typical grey-to-grey response ratings aren't terribly indicative of real-world performance. You'd want plenty of performance overhead in hand, in other words.

Well, this new AOC has just that. The peak response performance is quoted at 0.1 ms. That's for the MPRT metric which is arguably even less representative. But AOC also quotes 0.3 ms for grey-to-grey, which is at least promising.

Indeed, I happened to review the 540 Hz Sony Inzone M10S II shortly after the LG, and the motion clarity on that 0.03 ms OLED is on another planet from the 1,000 Hz IPS LG. On paper, then, this new AOC looks potentially more appealing.

You get the same 1,000 Hz refresh and the preposterously low latency that implies, plus hopefully better motion clarity to close the gap to OLED a bit. I'm pretty confident I'd still take that Sony even for esports, what with its perfect per pixel lighting and crackers pixel response, plus a larger 27-inch panel and 1440p res for when you aren't esporting.

But if you absolutely, positively must have 1,000 Hz, you have to think this AOC is worth a look versus that LG. And you'll have to do that looking early next year. The AOC AGON PRO AGP257FT comes out Q1 2027. Pricing is TBC.

The new OLED panel is from Chinese manufacturer TCL CSOT and is derived from technology first developed by now-defunct Japanese OLED specialist JOLED. We've already seen the first PC monitor based on the TCL CSOT's novel inkjet-print OLED panel from MSI. But now a new generation of the inkjet-based tech has already been announced and it's much brighter than before.

This panel tech from TCL CSOT is known as "inkjet" because the OLED material is "printed" onto the display substrate using a process akin to inkjet printers. That's in contrast to the evaporation and metal-mask deposition techniques typically used by Samsung and LG in existing OLED panels.

Showcased by Vincent from YouTube channel HDTV Test at the IFA 2026 event, the demo panel is a 27-inch 4K model running at 120 Hz. The first-generation inkjet OLED panel from TCL CSOT in the MSI Pro Max topped out at 300 nits for full-screen brightness. That's roughly on par with the latest QD-OLED and WOLED panels from Samsung and LG, which are capable of 300 nits and 335 nits respectively.

Samsung and LG's panel's have been getting incrementally brighter with each generation, with both lines of OLEDs kicking off at 250 nits full-screen when they debuted in PC monitors a few years ago. But that process has been pretty long winded. At 500 nits full-screen, this new inkjet OLED therefore promises the single biggest leap in OLED full-screen brightness since the technology has been widely adopted for PC monitors.

For now, the wider specifications of the panel and exactly how this increased brightness is achieved isn't clear. We know the DCI-P3 coverage is 99% and, like the first-gen inkjet panel, this new technology offers true RGB-stripe subpixel structure, which bodes well for both clarity and colour brightness and vibrancy.

Speaking of colour coverage, one other detail that TCL CSOT has revealed is that inkjet OLED has another advantage in terms of colour volume. Apparently, both Samsung QD-OLED and LG WOLED have limitations maintaining full colour volume or coverage at lower brightness levels.

However, the new inkjet panel is claimed to maintain its colour volume regardless of brightness. The extent to which this is visible to the naked eye, I cannot comment.

Anywho, I've long taken the view that the problem of OLED panel full-screen brightness can be considered "solved" once it hits 500 nits. I can't see that in terms of full-screen brightness as opposed to small detail brightness, where currently available OLED monitors are already capable of 1,500 nits, anything much above 500 nits would be needed. Indeed, 500 nits full screen is well above what most people would find comfortable, day-to-day.

Yes, there will always be niche scenarios, perhaps involving strong ambient light and specialist displays for use outdoors, where well beyond 500 nits is needed. But for conventional PC monitor use cases, I think 500 nits has got to be enough to ensure a vibrant experience.

So, if TCL CSOT's claims are accurate and we soon see retail monitors with that capability, that will be game over in a good way for OLED monitors. Well, barring ye olde burn-in.

There's no word on when we might see this new panel tech in a monitor you can actually buy. Likewise, it's unclear what formats it may become available beyond the 27-inch 4K demo panel shown as IFA 2026. Watch this space.

39 5K OLED Gaming Monitor AW3926QW: was $1999 now $1449.99
If you're a Prime member or using a free trial, this discount on Alienware's blissfully excessive 5K widescreen OLED monitor will be available to you. Of course, you're going to need a damn fine rig to make the most of this display, but if you managed to build something at the bleeding edge before prices skyrocketed, aren't you a lucky bean: this is for you.View Deal

The RAMpocalypse has kicked my ass: about 18 months ago I was preparing to upgrade from a long in the tooth 30 series gaming laptop to something with a whole lot more grunt. Alas, the kind of specs I want are nowadays extremely expensive and upgrading is no longer on the cards. My only consolation? I know I'm not alone.

But if you're not like me and happened to upgrade just before the AI-induced pandemonium was unleashed (or indeed, if you're just filthy rich) you might be in the market for a gaming monitor that can squeeze as much life out of your high end GPU as possible. For that, no mere 4K display will suffice: you probably want a 5K2K display, or in other words, a 5120x2160 display.

The 39-inch Alienware AW3926QW, while not without its launch controversies, is among the best you can get if an extreme excess of pixels is your bag. Complimenting that ultrawide resolution is:

• DisplayHDR True Black 500 (for bright brights and deep blacks: vibrancy, basically)
• A maximum 330Hz refresh rate (165Hz at the full 5K2K, or 330Hz at 2560x1080)
• RGB-stripe subpixels (basically eliminates some OLED bugbears, like blurry text)

Normally this monitor sells for AU$1,999. Indeed, that's what Dell is currently selling it for. But as part of Amazon Prime Big Deal Days you can get it for AU$1,449.99.

The catch? It's small: You'll need to be a Prime member, which means grabbing a free trial. Once that's activated, the AU$1,449.99 price will be available to you, with free shipping to boot.

I referred to launch controversies above, and while they're not insignificant, they're being fixed. As Jeremy Laird reported last week, the AW3926QW's habit of vignetting around the edges during gameplay—which can be blamed on its Convex Power Control tech—will be fixed in a forthcoming firmware update, as per Alienware's Kris Graft.

But that annoyance aside—and it is an annoyance, and if you buy this monitor tomorrow you may have to cope for a while—Jeremy's 89 / 100 review of this model was obviously well deserved. "This is the biggie, the 5K2K 39-inch ultrawide that everyone was going bananas for," he wrote. "Well, it's here in all its RGB-stripe, Tandem WOLED glory. And it's mostly incredible. But there is also some truth in those Reddit threads about the flaws."

The AW3926QW is of course a 39-inch 5K2K OLED masterpiece. It's huge, it has the pixel density of a 32-inch 4K panel and it comes with LG's very latest Tandem WOLED panel tech complete with RGB-stripe subpixels for purists like me. It's even relatively affordable (given its specs) at around $1,100.

There was just one problem. As I explained in my review, "during gaming the edges of the panel gradually dim ever so slightly," an issue generally referred to as "vignetting."

The reason why this happens comes down to a feature called CPC, or Convex Power Control. "It’s an LG Display WOLED panel protection feature and dims all four edges of the display to help prevent burn-in. As far as I am aware, it can't be toggled on or off on this Alienware, but if CPC is causing the vignette issue, it should be easy to address in a firmware update. Broadly, I don't think this is a hardware limitation, but a configuration issue," I explained.

Turns out that was correct, which is precisely why a fix is possible. During a recent AMA on Reddit held by Kris Graft, Alienware's monitor expert, the company revealed that a solution is in the works.

"We hear the feedback on uniformity and are actively testing a potential toggle that could give customers more control over uniformity. We want to make sure we understand the full customer experience implications before we enable anything. More to come soon," Graft said.

Graft appears to be saying that Alienware is planning a firmware update that will add a toggle for CPC in the AW3926QW OSD menu. The possible catch is what Graft was hinting at when he said, "We want to make sure we understand the full customer experience implications before we enable anything."

The implications here likely involve OLED burn-in and its increased likelihood with CPC disabled. I would guesstimate that the CPC feature exists to reduce brightness around the edges during gaming specifically to minimise the extent to which persistent in-game screen furniture and UI elements like status bars, minimaps and so on can be permanently burned into the panel after extended gameplay.

My slight fear is that if Alienware does introduce a toggle to for the CPC feature, it might have an impact on the panel's burn-in warranty. Maybe turning CPC off will void that warranty or maybe there will be a counter recording how many gaming hours with CPC toggled off have accrued, with a trigger point that eventually voids the warranty.

But that's speculation. We'll have to wait and see exactly how Alienware deals with this. For now, it's simply good news that the "vignette" problem has been recognised by Alienware and that it is working on a fix.

At Logitech's G Play event (featuring a Counter-Strike 2 tournament) in Warsaw earlier today, I spoke to Oscar Bell, AKA 'Azuwu', and Simon Boije, AKA 'yxngstxr'. Both currently play for Luminosity, a team that particularly tugs at my CS2 heart strings given it was very big circa 2016 when I was still lapping up the tailwinds of CS:GO novelty.

Regarding refresh rates, Azuwu tells me: "When I had 240 at home, I didn't even really notice 360. But now I'm 360 I can't go back down, you know, I feel it a lot. So I think 360, 400, 600 are all pretty similar... I'd say 400 is a nice spot and 600 is extra nice. But anyway, in a lot of PCs, you won't hit 600 frames."

And Yxngstxr says: "I think it's kind of a placebo, personal thing, you know? Because on most PCs you rarely get 600 fps, right?... 600 Hz with like 300 fps, it doesn't even matter."

I run CS2 on a pretty high-end rig—featuring a Ryzen 7 7800X3D and RX 9070 XT—and I can't usually hit 600 fps in CS2, even at 1280 x 960 or 1080p. Usually I'm hovering around the 500 mark.

One thing that does make a difference, according to Yxngstxr, is Zowie's DyAc anti-ghosting tech. The team all uses Zowie monitors, as do many other pro players, and it's in part because of this.

"The edge of the players," Yxngstxr says, "get more noticeable."

I noticed the same when I tested the 600 Hz Zowie XL2586X+. The tech is a proprietary kind of backlight strobing that helps improve motion clarity. For most uses it's overkill, but if you're a pro gamer I can see why it would be useful.

However, regarding this DyAc tech, Azuwu says, "I have it on, but it's hard to tell."

If there's one thing we all seemed to agree on, in so many words, it's that when you get up to these ultra-fast refresh rates, the returns start to become diminishing. But given what both pro players said, I don't think I was wrong when I said 360 Hz is the sweet spot for competitive FPS.

According to a new report, it might just be part of the solution, at least. According to Taiwanese outlet Economic Daily, Intel is partnering with display specialist AU Optronics on a new approach to embedding electronics into microLED glass substrates.

The report says that has obtained a US patent for "IC Package with Micro LEDs" which involves, "embedding at least part of a semiconductor chip within a glass substrate." The implication of this is that the display control chip would be integrated into the microLED panel itself, which could have have both packaging and cost advantages.

More broadly, Intel probably wouldn't be pushing into a new display technology unless it foresaw the sort of large volumes that come with mainstream adoption, which again implies a more affordable price point. Currently microLED displays cost tens of thousands of dollars and upwards, preventing them from entering the consumer market.

Economic Daily also says that AUO's chairman Peng Shuanglang has indicated that the company is increasing its range of microLED products this year as it pushes to make the technology more accessible.

As for why you should care about any of this, well, microLED is widely expected to be both the next big thing in display tech and, just maybe, the actual end game in display tech. In many ways, microLED is a lot like OLED. In both cases, each pixel and indeed each subpixel is an individual addressable light source, making for perfect lighting control.

Like OLED, microLED is super fast, too. It differs from OLED in a few key areas. First, it's less prone to degradation, so the whole OLED burn-in thing would be a thing of the past. MicroLED is also much brighter and capable of producing a wider range of colours.

Put those factors together and you have a flat panel tech that solves all the problems of OLED and promises pretty much the perfect flat-panel solution. As for why it has yet to take over from OLED, there are two main issues. The first is the cost issue mentioned above. It's super expensive.

The other problem is pixel density. Right now, the smallest 4K microLED panels are about 100 inches across. Not exactly ideal for PC monitors.

Anyway, it's worth noting that we have somewhat been here before. Years ago, Intel dabbled with LCOS or liquid crystal on silicon tech, creating a line of LCOS chips for projectors. That experiment got cancelled pretty quickly.

Moreover, Intel's track record for product lines that are outside its CPU wheelhouse isn't great. Whether it health diagnostic chips or GPUs, when Intel does something other than a CPU, it doesn't tend to go well. But here's hoping its foray into microLED goes better. We'd certainly love to see microLED in affordable PC monitors, that's for sure.

Until now, every OLED gaming monitor we've reviewed has been rated at 0.03 ms for pixel response. Well, not any more ladies and germs. Give it up for the new Sony Inzone M10S II, which clocks in at a mere 0.02 ms.

Is it a bit of a stretch to think the human eye can tell the difference between three one-hundred-thousandths of a second and two one-hundred-thousandths—or 30 microseconds and 20 microseconds, if you prefer. But the point here is what that pixel response spec hints at.

The Sony Inzone M10S II is unambiguously, unashamedly, unapologetically aimed at fast-paced gaming and esports. Indeed, this monitor has been developed with the help of pro esports outfit, Fnatic.

Along with the almost pointlessly fast pixel response, you get a 1440p native resolution and 540 Hz refresh. Oh, and we're talking 27 inches and an LG WOLED panel. That basic recipe of 27-inch 1440p OLED is carried over from the first generation Sony Inzone M10S, but this time Sony is using the latest LG Tandem WOLED panel generation.

The most obvious upside of that panel involves brightness. Sony has this model pegged at 1,500 nits peak HDR and 335 nits full-screen brightness. Those numbers are about as good as gaming OLEDs get, today.

They also indicate that this is an RGWB panel rather than one with the so-called pure RGB-stripe subpixel structure we've seen monitors like the Alienware AW3926QW and Asus ROG Swift PG32UCWM. We'll come back to the implications of that in a bit.

Further gaming centric features include the image processing trifecta of dual-mode support, motion blur reduction and anti VRR flicker tech. The dual-mode options include both 24.5-inch modes and a 720 Hz 720p mode.

Actually, even the stand has been optimised for gaming. For starters, the round base is absolutely tiny. You might think that makes for an unstable monitor. But provided you place it on a flat, hard surface, it's rock solid, while leaving minimising intrusion into your desk space. In classic Sony style, it also looks and feels expensive in a way that very few monitors manage.

What's more, the tilt adjustment allows for 35 degrees of upwards movement. Some pro gamers like to tilt their monitors aggressively and then shove their faces right into the panel. If that's something you want to emulate, well, the Sony Inzone M10S II will cater for that right out of the box. You won't need to buy an aftermarket VESA stand.

Connectivity, meanwhile, includes HDMI and DisplayPort, but there's no USB-C for single-cable connectivity to a laptop. Obviously, this is an out-and-out gaming panel, so USB-C connectivity isn't automatically a high priority. But at this price point, it seems like something of an omission.

Oh, yeah, I hadn't mentioned the price, had I? The Sony Inzone M10S II weighs in at $1,099 in the USA and £1,199 in the UK. Yup, that's mega money and it emphasises just what a premium has been placed on achieving the 540 Hz and 0.02 ms speed.

Both of those fancy RGB-stripe OLEDs I mentioned earlier from Alienware and Asus can be had for similar money. One is a 39-inch 5K2K panel, the other a 32-inch 4K model. In short, you are paying dearly for the Sony Inzone M10S II's refresh rate and response performance.

Just to round everything out before we get to what this thing actually looks like, Sony has gone for a matte anti-glare coating as opposed to glossy. Again, this arguably squares with the tight focus on esports over optimising for the last word in contrast and HDR image quality. Finally, the panel is covered by a three-year warranty, including OLED burn-in.

On, then, to the actual performance. Out of the box and the first thing you notice is that matte anti-glare coating. By today's standards, it's properly matte as opposed to the semi-glossy coating that most "matte" panels have these days.

That has an immediate impact on the look of the display. Subjectively, it's not as contrasty and saturated as most OLED monitors. The upside is that reflections are suppressed really well, especially in bright ambient light. But it does slightly undermine the immediate impact of an OLED monitor.

The RGWB subpixel structure feeds into that somewhat. This is certainly a very bright monitor for an OLED as the specs imply. But as with all RGWB panels, the colour saturation isn't all that great, so it doesn't seem quite as vibrant as a monitor using Samsung's QD-OLED tech or arguably even the technically less-bright alternative LG Tandem WOLED panel tech with the RGB-stripe structure.

But the speed, there's absolutely no problem with the speed. I recently reviewed LG's new 1,000 Hz IPS monitor, the 1080p one with the clunky pixel density but mega low latency. For motion sharpness, this 540 Hz OLED frankly tears it a new one. This monitor has the best motion clarity I have ever seen, it's absolutely fantastic.

What's more, as I found with that LG monitor, actually achieving the in-game frame rates required to saturate 1,000 Hz refresh isn't easy. I couldn't get near that in Counter-Strike 2, for instance. So, in terms of latency, you could argue that going beyond the 540 Hz offered by this Sony panel is pretty pointless. Well, it is until AMD or Intel release a CPU that'll do 1,000 Hz in most esports titles without the need for liquid nitrogen cooling.

Anywho, the Sony Inzone M10S II is just lightning quick, both in terms of pixel response and latency. It also offers 24.5-inch modes in both native 2,368-by-1,332 pixel and 1080p resolutions. And because this is an OLED, the unused area of the panel around the 24.5-inch image is completely off, not bleeding light in a distracting fashion.

All of that means I'd take this 540 Hz Sony over the 1,000 Hz LG all day long for esports, it's absolutely fantastic for my esports distraction of choice, Counter-Strike 2, let alone general gaming and computing. And I think even pro gamers would, too. Partly that's because of the real-world limitations around frame rates I just mentioned. But it's also because the image quality on offer here is so much better.

When it comes to spotting enemies, motion clarity and contrast matter and this Sony absolutely owns the LG IPS monitor. The inclusion of the 24.5-inch dual-mode options only makes the serious esports proposition even stronger.

On that note, Sony has included a couple of FPS Pro presets which accentuate the contrast even further and make red tones more vibrant. The latter is handy in games like Valorant where enemies are outlined with a bright red border.

To cover off a few of the other gaming-centric features, what about the Motion Blur Reduction and anti-VRR Flicker modes? The former does an impressive job of effectively making 270 Hz look about as clear as 540 Hz.

It basically works by inserting a black frame in between each rendered frame, effectively halving the refresh rate from 540 Hz to 270 Hz. It does reduce brightness noticeably, but not catastrophically. I think for esports titles where you're not getting anywhere near 500-plus fps, it could come in handy for maximising motion clarity.

As for the anti-VRR Flicker tech, well, that was a bit of an odd one, albeit in a positive way. No matter what game I loaded and regardless of both in-game and monitor settings, I couldn't detect any VRR flicker at all on this monitor. Where it gets odd is that this was true whether or not I had the anti-VRR Flicker feature enabled or not.

Whatever, the Sony Inzone M10S II is unquestionably an outstanding gaming monitor. Not only is it dramatically more versatile for all kinds of gaming than a 25-inch 1080p monitor thanks to its larger 27-inch panel and half-decent 1440p pixel density. I think it's actually preferable for the ultra-narrow remit of really serious esports, too. It has better motion clarity, far superior contrast and the real-world latency gap is probably negligible.

Of course, in a broader gaming and computing remit, the Sony Inzone M10S II doesn't look like a great deal. Not when you can get a really nice 32-inch 4K OLED for far less money and a fabulous 39-inch 5K2K for the same investment. But that obvious caveat aside, and assuming you are okay with a matte as opposed to glossy OLED, this is one of if not the best ultra-high-refresh gaming monitors currently available. It's really, really, super.

1,000 Hz. That's 1,000 frames. Every. Single. Second. Welcome to the wild world of the new LG UltraGear 25G590B, the first ever 1,000 Hz gaming monitor.

Well, it's the first gaming monitor capable of 1,000 Hz at full 1080p resolution, as opposed to displays hitting that kind of refresh rate at, say, 720p. The tempting immediate reaction, of course, is to doubt the relevance and benefit of something so fast.

I mean, at what point do diminishing returns kick in with this refresh rate stuff? You could argue that anything above 144 Hz is overkill for most gamers. That was a common view just a couple of years ago. And it's certainly true that 144 Hz is enough for very smooth visuals and a good sense of immediacy and response.

But as the frame-rate ante has been upped in recent years, to 240 Hz, 260 Hz, 480 Hz and well beyond, that narrative has shifted. In fact, our resident competitive shooter, Jacob, is adamant that 360 Hz is the current sweetspot. Keen esports gamers, it turns out, really can feel the difference, especially in terms of latency, as the refresh rates ramp up. And so here we are in 2026, somewhat inevitably, with LG bursting through the 1,000 Hz barrier.

Aside from the headline refresh rate—the UltraGear 25G590B is actually capable of 1,100 Hz using an "overclock" mode—many of the rest of the spec list is, predictably, pretty pedestrian. That goes with the territory with this type of monitor.

So, we're talking 25-inch panel size and IPS technology. Brightness comes in at 400 nits, contrast is a mere 1,000 to 1 and there's only the most basic DisplayHDR 400 certification. So, this panel will decode an HDR signal, but it can't really render HDR visuals.

Again, all of that is expected in this class of gaming panel. It's not about high-DPI visuals or OLED-style per-pixel lighting. It's all about speed. Actually, it's primarily about one aspect of speed: latency. The other major metric of speed, pixel response, isn't such an obvious win for theUltraGear 25G590B.

LG has rated it at 1 ms for the most often quoted grey-to-grey transition. That's pretty quick for an IPS monitor, but not actually exceptional. Not when there are 0.5 ms LCD-based monitor models knocking around, never mind the OLED crew which all clock in at a mere 0.03 ms.

That's something of a surprise given the absolutely cutting-edge refresh rate. On paper, the 1 ms response perfectly matches the 1,000 Hz refresh. But then measures of pixel speed are infamously mercurial. There isn't actually an enforced, or even widely agreed upon metric for pixel response in the monitor industry. So, response ratings are really only ever a rough guide.

Anyway, connectivity includes two HDMI ports and a single DisplayPort input. Only the DisplayPort interface is capable of the full 1,000 Hz refresh and it's critical to note that you need a GPU that supports the latest Displayport 2.1 standard. DisplayPort 1.4 is only good for 850 Hz at 1080p.

In practice, that means for the full 1,000 Hz you need AMD GPUs from the Radeon RX 7000 series of 2022 onwards, while in Nvidia terms only the latest RTX 50-series chips will do. There are other system spec and configuration issues that you'll also want to consider if you're thinking about dropping a grand on a monitor this fast. But hold that thought, we'll come back to it.

Just to round out the speeds and feeds, further features include FreeSync and G-Sync support, Motion Blur Reduction Tech and small dash of configurable RGB lighting via the logo on the rear of the chassis. It's all housed in a pretty anonymous looking dark grey plastic chassis with fairly chunky bezels. But you do get a full complement of adjustment, including tilt, height, swivel and a touch of pivot, so it's easy to get this display set up just so.

All of which brings us to the most important question of the day. What is a 1,000 Hz monitor actually like to game with? It turns out, that poses quite the conundrum. Initially, it's easy enough to get a basic impression of the impact of 1,000 Hz on motion clarity. All you need do is load up something like UFO Test and watch those little flying saucers zip by at multiple different refresh rates.

And you know what? The benefits in terms of motion clarity do keep on coming, even as you climb beyond 500 Hz. Yup, 1,000 Hz is noticeably better, at least in that narrow, rather synthetic metric, when it comes to clarity.

But what about in-game motion clarity and, perhaps more importantly, latency? That's where the trouble comes. Because it's quite hard to achieve the 1,000 fps required to saturate the 1,000 Hz refresh actually in a game.

By way of example you cannot, to the best of my knowledge, achieve it in Counter-Strike 2, the CPU ends up bottlenecking performance long before that. Well, strictly speaking you can get that high, somebody managed 1,300 fps, but that was with an Intel Core i9 chip overclocked to 8 GHz courtesy of liquid nitrogen. Not exactly practical.

Something like an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D is probably the fastest stock-clocked CPU for running Counter-Strike. And that's good for about 600-odd fps at medium 1080p settings. I was getting in the high 400s with an Intel 14th Gen Core i9-based rig. So, yeah Counter-Strike 2 wasn't cutting it.

But there are other games which run fast. And that's how I found myself installing Valorant. The things I do for you people. But even Valorant wasn't giving me 1,000fps, more like 500 to 800 fps depending on how much is going on, on screen.

Actually, using this monitor raises a whole lot of questions about your rig and game engine setup. For instance, you want a mouse with a fast polling rate, but not too fast. An 8,000 Hz polling rate just saturates the CPU with hardware interrupts to no benefit.

Suddenly, everything from CPU cooling and memory timings, to enabling features like Nvidia Reflex become critical to eeking out every frame and minimising latency. Actually seeing the full 1,000 Hz in-game, though? That is far from straight forward even with titles where it may be theoretically possible.

With those provisos noted, what is 1,000 fps gaming, or as close as I could get to it, like? The immediate impression isn't exactly mind blowing. It doesn't look dramatically clearer or feel dramatically more responsive than, say, a 480 Hz panel.

But there is a subtle difference and the more you game, the more you key into it. I'm not sure the motion clarity advantage, such that it is, is really a major factor in that, however. Maybe a 1,000 Hz OLED panel would be different. But I think in subjective terms, motion clarity above 500 Hz on an LCD is likely a case of diminishing returns.

I think that applies doubly to a monitor like this that uses an IPS panel. It's a legitimate question to ask if the liquid crystals in this monitor are actually fast enough to fully deliver on the 1,000 Hz promise in terms of pixel response. Like I said, LCD response specs should be viewed with some healthy scepticism. And this monitor doesn't even claim to have the fastest IPS panel out there.

For the record, I'm not much of a fan of the Motion Blur Reduction feature, either, which is basically a backlight strobing solution. It dims the brightness and doesn't give much visible benefit at higher refresh rates. It is a bit more impressive at lower refresh rates, but then running at 120 Hz is not why you just spent so much money on this monitor.

The latency, however, now that's a little different. The sheer speed and immediacy as you whip your mouse around to the next target definitely gets under your skin. The more you play, the more you feel hard-wired right into the game engine, any and all sense of disconnection falls away. It's pretty cool.

Reverting to a lower refresh rate makes that a touch more obvious. Put it this way, once you've played for a while on a monitor that can respond fast enough for a game engine knocking out 700, 800, 900 fps and beyond, a 360 Hz panel feels like a tiny bit of a retrograde step. Maybe, just maybe even a 500 Hz display, too.

All that said, I also don't want to overstate the upside. You'd readjust to that "sluggish" 500 Hz monitor pretty quickly. And we are talking about very marginal benefits at best. Ultimately, then, this is going to come down to how serious you are about competition in games and esports.

In part that's because this monitor is pretty rough for everything else. Once upon a time, widescreen 1080p-ish monitors like this felt huge and futuristic. Anyone who was around when the Dell 2405FPW launched in 2005 will remember how awesome that panel was. Well, 20-odd years later, a 1080p 25-inch monitor now looks small and very pixellated.

The colours are fine, ditto the viewing angles. But this monitor is $999 / £899 and at that price point, you have so very many options. Heck, the monumental new 39-inch Alienware 5K2K RGB-stripe OLED I reviewed recently isn't really much more expensive.

Of course, the LG UltraGear 25G590B is unambiguously targeted at a very narrow niche of the most serious and committed esports fans and pro players. A 39-inch ultrawide OLED really isn't relevant. On the other hand, a 27-inch 1440p OLED probably is. That would mean a bit of a compromise on frame rate, but also a monitor that's a much better all-rounder for both gaming and general computing.

Indeed, it's a little hard to understand just where the money is going with this 1,000 Hz LG. Peruse our best monitor deals page and you'll find high-refresh 25-inch 1080p IPS monitors from about $100. There's an Alienware model with 320 Hz refresh for just $199. Yes, this LG will need extra driver ICs, a custom TCON, that DisplayPort 2.1 interface, a quick backlight driver for the Motion Blur Reduction feature. But none of those are hugely costly.

Ultimately, then, there's a pretty big tax being applied here in return for being at the very cutting edge in terms of refresh rate. If you want the absolute last word in frame rates and low latency, this is unambiguously it for now. If you're a pro esports gamer, for instance, the broader context of the monitor market really doesn't matter. For everyone else, you have to think there's better value elsewhere.

Q27GAZD: was $369.99 now $329.99
OLED gaming monitors are slowly but surely becoming more affordable, and this AOC is a good example. With a 240 Hz QD-OLED panel beaming games, movies, and dare I say even spreadsheets at your eyeballs, I reckon you'd be pleased to call this your own—although you'll need to use the DisplayPort 1.4 connection to make the most of it.

Key specs: 27-inch | 1440p | 240 Hz | OLED | 0.03 ms

Price check: Newegg $547.99View Deal

While most hardware is becoming increasingly expensive, gaming monitor deals are looking particularly good right now. So, while 2026 is arguably not the year to buy new RAM or SSD, it may well be the perfect time to upgrade to an OLED.

Case in point, the 27-inch AOC Gaming Q27GAZD is now even cheaper than the last time we featured it, back in April. This QD-OLED is pretty perfectly proportioned for 1440p gaming, offering all the brightness and colour vibrancy you'd expect of an OLED. It's also decently nippy, enjoying a 240 Hz refresh rate plus a 0.03ms response time all for the low price of $330 from Amazon.

Already very reasonably priced for an OLED, a $40 discount certainly sweetens the deal. As our Andy highlighted before, the main drawback is that you'll need to use this monitor's DisplayPort 1.4 connection to get the most out of it, as connecting via the HDMI 2.0 port will cap that lovely refresh rate at 144 Hz. That's not terrible, but it's also not the best use of your money.

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Lacking port options are par for the course at this price point. Take the similarly lovely 1440p Samsung Odyssey G50SF OLED our James spotlighted recently (though has unfortunately gone back up to full price since): you're similarly restricted to either a DisplayPort, or a HDMI connection and, worse still, this previously similarly priced OLED taps out at 180 Hz no matter which port you go with. Comparatively, the AOC Gaming Q27GAZD really is a cracking deal.

The Samsung also features a 'Glare Free' coating that is apparently '54% less glossy'. While that may not be fully matte, I do have to also wonder how that will affect contrast and colour vibrancy compared to the AOC Gaming OLED's glossy finish.

There's at least one point my hardware team colleague and I agree on—1440p resolution is a great compromise. As James says, you'd need a pretty beefy graphics card to play the latest games at 4K, and that's less than ideal if you're trying to put together a more budget gaming PC build (worse still, a number of high-tier GPUs may well be going up in price again before too long). 1440p is still Quad HD and, as I've already said, will look great on a 27-inch OLED.

Besides, a smaller monitor offers greater flexibility when it comes to setting up your gamer den. Sure, on a desk this would be fine flying solo, but the smaller size also means it could easily take to the stage as a second monitor without massively cramping your style. Either way, at only $330, this is one gaming OLED deal you won't want to overlook.

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Dual-mode is still not perfect in gaming monitors, but we are consistently getting the option for nearly no extra cost, and that is making it a mighty viable choice, especially if you are running a rig that can only sometimes run the native resolution.

The option to flit from 1080p at double the refresh rate for competitive or highly intensive games, and then back to 4K for lush sights or just a clean desktop in only a few seconds, and with native resolutions, makes so much sense to me. Koorui manages to offer both dual-mode and aggressive 4K pricing at the same time.

It's been more than a year since our review, but the Asus ROG Strix XG27UCG, which sits as our pick for the best budget 4K gaming monitor, is $100 more and offers almost identical specs. That's a few ticks in my book already.

But stats don't tell you absolutely everything; I've had this Koorui gaming monitor planted on my desk for a few weeks, and I was pleasantly surprised by it.

Features

In most of its basic specs, the Koorui G2741L fits the mould for a budget-oriented 4K gaming monitor. Koorui claims a 1 ms response time and 160 Hz refresh rate in 4K. It makes compromises where it needs to, being not massively bright and not super fast, but good enough in both categories to work just fine for 4K gaming. The 400 nits brightness (in HDR mode) is slightly above budget spec, though, which makes it bright enough for gaming beside a window.

The only place I might have expected even more compromises is in the size, perhaps going down to 24 inches, but then that's small enough that 4K likely isn't worth the price bump and performance hit—4K monitors smaller than 27 inches are quite rare for that reason. 27 inches is a sweet spot for dual-mode monitors, being big enough to get value out of the super high resolution, and small enough that 1080p doesn't feel like a massive hit.

It's super easy to set up too. The monitor comes in two parts, the panel and the stand, which clip together in mere moments. Despite this being very easy, it's not a weak stand, and my desk shaking does not cause anything to pop out of place.

You're getting two HDMI ports here, plus a DisplayPort port and an audio jack. that makes it a decent pick for a console and PC at the same time, or as a spare for your laptop when you need a second screen. You get no built-in speakers here or a USB port for charging, which is a slight shame but understandable given the cost.

The monitor itself can pivot 90 degrees to the left and right, making it a solid pick for both vertical and horizontal use. It can also tilt up to 25 degrees, and the stand holds it in place firmly.

Dual-mode is the standout feature here. You can swap from 4K to 1080p in just a few seconds with the button on the back. As it only has one button, you do have to scroll through menus, and I'd personally love a single button for activating dual-mode quickly, but it doesn't take too long to activate once you know where the button is.

Performance

Being an IPS panel, you're getting a strong viewing angle, good colours, and consistent performance. The HDR400 rating is pretty barebones, but in practice, it's punchy and feels rather bright. In fact, the monitor seemed rather stale without HDR on, and that's down to how day and night it feels. With 95% DCI-P3 colour coverage and 100% sRGB, its colour accuracy is lush for the price, though obviously it lacks the true blacks and vibrant colours of an OLED.

Though there are the typical 'not quite black' blacks of an IPS here, the contrast is strong, and made stronger thanks to the monitor's software. Mine needed very little tweaking out of the box, though I did up the contrast and brightness just a touch. I'll get into it more in the software section, but I'd advise not tweaking it too much, as it's pretty finely tuned already.

Generally speaking, using the desktop day-to-day is best in 4K, as it's not super intensive, but the smoothness of text and even just casual video really pop here. Then, picking between 4K and 1080p for gaming is largely reliant on whether or not your rig can actually handle it. In my RTX 4070 Super machine, I'd almost always opt for the higher resolution, occasionally with a helping hand from upscaling or frame gen. However, my RTX 2070 rig benefitted from being able to swap at a moment's notice. It is worth noting that 1440p is still a very solid resolution, especially at this panel size, as it still offers a solid pixel density. Therefore, there's a good reason to consider a monitor with a native 1440p output.

Koorui has gone for a matte anti-glare coating here, which makes it slightly more viable near a window letting in a lot of light, but glossy finishes tend to offer a clearer image.

Control looks phenomenal in 4K, its angular brutalist architecture contrasting against all the blood and moody lighting. Even without true blacks, the G2741L does a great job at contrasting blacks, reds and blues, with little clarity getting lost in high-contrast scenes. The RTX 2070 can handle it at 4K, though with lower graphical settings. That's the beauty of dual-mode, though; you can bump up the textures, get a higher FPS, or just get a higher refresh rate quickly by cutting the resolution by a quarter.

Dual-mode is still, however, in somewhat of an infancy stage. I find the Koorui's 1080p performance to be just fine in the majority of games, but there's a slight fringing and softness to text on the desktop that isn't quite as present in native 1080p gaming monitors. If I were purely going for 1080p, I'd be picking a dedicated, much cheaper 1080p gaming monitor instead. It's not quite a 'best of both worlds' situation, but it's the best of 4K at its price and pretty good 1080p. Though that's not quite as catchy.

For gaming, the monitor feels plenty snappy to me, with it being decently responsive. Naturally, IPS panels are more limited than say OLEDs in terms of response time, but I wouldn't call it slow.

Dual-mode does take a few seconds to swap over, though, and you may have to exit your game and go back in, but Windows swaps resolution without any prompting. Generally, it's not a major inconvenience to swap to 1080p when I want high frame rates in Fortnite and then swap to 4K for lush sights in Cyberpunk 2077's Night City.

Aesthetics

The Koorui is a gaming monitor, and its stand suggests as much. It's angular with red trimming, and not particularly subtle. However, with no RGB and no ugly branding slapped on the side, it looks pretty sweet to my eyes. Not understated but not loud either.

The bezels aren't super trim, but they don't distract from the gorgeous sights of 4K in between them, and the build quality is solid for the price too.

It does have a fairly wide panel and rather large base, which may make it struggle on smaller desks, but I'd wager smaller desks wouldn't be looking for 27 inches anyway. It has a VESA connector should you want to connect it to a monitor arm too.

Koorui does use a lot of plastic in the monitor, as you might expect from the price, but it doesn't feel flimsy, and it looks solid too.

Software

I suspect the OSD picks its size on the screen based on resolution, as it's oddly small in 4K. Not so small it's unusable, but certainly not as big and upfront as the 1080p version. Though it's easy to navigate, dual-mode takes a few more button clicks than I'd personally want.

You are getting a whole pile of fairly superfluous options in the OSD, like a crosshair mode that, well, adds a crosshair in the middle of the screen. Personally, this seems niche at best and distracting at worst, so I'd never use it.

You also get a DCR mode that automatically adjusts brightness and contrast based on what's on your screen. This is neat in principle but, in practice, it feels like the monitor is constantly adjusting brightness and contrast, which is just a little annoying. You get all the settings you would otherwise expect here, like brightness, contrast, an HDR game/movie mode, plus other tweaks like the overdrive mode, but it's plenty snappy, bright, and vibrant in HDR game mode, which is where I'd leave it. I mostly just used the software dual-mode, as it's not particularly laggy or hard to navigate.

Value

Though the MSRP is $350, the G2741L regularly hangs around the $250 to $300 mark. I look after our roundup of the best cheap gaming monitor deals every week, and this price tag puts it at around the same place as the MSI MAG 275UPD, which offers similar specs but a lower refresh rate.

It is around $100 more than the Acer Nitro VG270K L1, which is also a dual-mode 4K monitor, but the Acer panel offers a very limiting 72 Hz refresh rate in 4K. That's all to say that the G2741L is very competitively priced, hanging around the lowest-cost 4K panels right now.

If I were looking for a 4K monitor, this Koorui would no doubt be on my list. If I had exactly $250-$300, I can't think of anything I'd be picking over it.

But there's an elephant in the room here, and that's OLED. OLED gaming monitors have become such good value recently that budget 4K IPS panels are sitting around the budget OLED price point, and that opportunity cost is fierce. For instance, the gorgeous 1440p Alienware AW2726DM comes in at the same price point, and though its max refresh rate and resolution are lower, you are getting the true blacks of an OLED, plus super snappy response times too.

As is ever the case, the biggest problem with gaming monitors right now is that there are too many choices, but Koorui has successfully made that decision even harder.

G2741L: was $349.99 now $279.99
A punchy IPS panel with decent HDR support and a wicked-fast 320 Hz refresh rate in 1080p mode, this 4K monitor is very reasonably priced, even at MSRP and a bargain with $70 knocked off.

Key specs: 27-inch | 4K + 1080p (dual mode) | 160/320 Hz | 1 ms | IPSView Deal

I'm currently reviewing the Koorui G2741L, and I was pleasantly surprised to see a big chunk taken off the MSRP. That means you can get yourself a 4K dual-mode IPS I personally quite like, for a sweet discount.

If you want to pick up the monitor for yourself, you can get it for $280 at Amazon right now, which is a saving of $70.

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I look over our roundup of the best cheap gaming monitor deals every week, so I'm happy to report this Koorui pick is among the cheapest 4K monitors I'd personally recommend. You can, if you want to go very cheap, pick up the Acer Nitro VG270K L1 for $180, which is a strong saving, but you are getting just 72 Hz at 4K, which is really rather low. There's also the MSI Mag 275UPD E14 with a max refresh rate of 288 Hz for $250, but after a few weeks with the Koorui, my money would be going there.

First off, you are getting a punchy IPS panel, with a just-above-the-norm 400 nits of brightness. Though the HDR 400 compatibility is technically pretty barebones, I can attest that HDR performance is surprisingly good here. Color accuracy and consistency are super solid, and contrast is good for an IPS too. It does have a matte finish, which means less contrast than a glossy one, but you get better performance in natural lighting.

You are missing any sort of USB hub function, but you do get two DP ports, one HDMI, and one aux jack. The stand itself is also pretty strong, and despite being mostly made of plastic, it doesn't look or feel too cheap.

The main selling point here is the fact that, with just a few buttons, it can swap from 4K at 160 Hz to 1080p at 320 Hz. That means when you want your game to look good, or just plan on watching videos, I'd switch to 4k, and when you want to play competitively, I'd bump it down to 1080p for higher frame rates. In practice, dual-mode works well, though 1080p performance in dual mode is a little blurrier than the 1080p performance you would expect from a native, finely tuned 1080p panel (that's the norm for dual-mode right now).

If I were picking out a budget-oriented 4K gaming monitor for my personal setup, Koorui would be getting my money right now. The only opportunity cost I'd really have to think about is whether I'd want to throw an extra $20 on and get an OLED panel like the ASRock Phantom Gaming PGO27QSA instead. This only goes up to a max of 1440p, but you are getting deeper blacks and more vibrant colours. As has been the case for a while now, the hardest part of buying a gaming monitor is picking just one. Oh, and having the cash for it.

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As such, monitors are one of the few things I check over without rolling my eyes, and therefore, they're one of a handful of techie bits that actually excites me. But that doesn't mean even they can't improve; when I chatted to gaming monitor brand AOC a few months ago, even its designers are aware the software isn't up to snuff.

I've been testing out the Koorui G2741L, a dual mode 4K/1080p monitor, over the last few weeks, and all I can think is 'gosh, why aren't more companies doing dual mode,' and 'why aren't more companies doing dual mode better?'

The central argument for dual mode makes so much sense to me. When you want your games to look pretty, you swap to 4K at a lower refresh rate, and when you want something snappy and competitive, you drop it to 1080p with a much higher refresh rate. You can get dual mode monitors like this Acer Nitro 4K/1080p one for as cheap as $160, they're even pretty reasonably priced right now (even if the 4K refresh rate is a pretty tiny 72 Hz).

Sure, you can technically just swap the resolution of your monitor at any time, but dual mode gives you access to a max refresh rate that is above what you would get if you just turned down the resolution of a 4K monitor.

But dual mode monitors have a few problems. For one, the thing I spotted instantly with the Koorui is that the swap between 4K and 1080p is a tad slow. The swap happens with a physical button, and in the case of the Koorui, it's a series of physical buttons. These navigate through the monitor's built-in software to then switch modes. It also just takes a while to swap, and the more seconds it adds, the less convenient it feels.

Another problem with dual mode monitors is the added blur. 1080p on a dual mode monitor tends to look worse than 1080p on a 1080p native screen. The reason 4K dual mode monitors go down to 1080p is that dual mode traditionally reduces the resolution to a quarter while doubling the refresh rate (though some monitors now triple or quadruple the refresh rate).

Most gaming monitors seem to use some sort of interpolation algorithm. Our Jeremy said in his Asus ROG Strix XG27UCG review, "You wouldn't want to use this monitor's 1080p mode on the desktop. It's a little soft and blurry. However, in-game it actually works pretty well and is certainly preferable to 1080p interpolated in the normal fashion onto a 4K panel."

Gaming monitor companies do have the ability to make better dual mode monitors. The Alienware AW2725QF opts for a form of pixel doubling (doubling up pixels in both vertical and horizontal directions), getting you much closer to a 'native 1080p' resolution. This is called integer scaling.

So, right now, if you buy a dual mode monitor, you are likely making a compromise on the lower of the two resolutions. But even with that downside, I'd take a 4K desktop experience and 4K gaming in singleplayer games, then 1080p for competitive games over 4K for absolutely everything.

There's plenty of room for dual mode monitors to grow. Just look at how far OLEDs have come since their inception: Burn-in has become far less of a problem, and LG's latest RGB Stripe panel has effectively killed font fringing. Not only could interpolation algorithms get better, but integer scaling could become more commonplace with the growth of the dual mode market.

The same could be said for the process of actually swapping modes. The ability to swap between resolutions could benefit from being snappier and easier to access. I'd personally love a single button that makes the swap in just a moment. And I'd also love that the biggest downside of swapping to 1080p is simply the resolution, and no other artifacting or blur.

But even now, with its flaws, I quite like dual mode. 1080p for some gaming on a dual mode monitor, even with plain 'ol interpolation, works well enough, and 4K for a standard desktop experience isn't such a resource hog that I'd want 1080p for it anyway.

I particularly like the fact that the price point has become so good on dual mode monitors that it's almost just an added bonus, and not something you specifically pay more for. As even OLEDs are becoming downright reasonably priced, I'd love for dual mode to get the love it deserves. Now, a value-oriented dual mode OLED monitor with integer scaling and good software? That's the dream.

Once in a while, something comes along that recalibrates your expectations and also sort of ruins your enjoyment of what was once impressive. The Xgimi Titan Noir Max does just that. It makes mainstream projectors look positively pedestrian.

That's not to say it's perfect. There are a few niggles that take the triple-laser shine off this $5,000 beast, especially for gaming. But Xgimi's new big-screen beamer is an absolute stunner and deeply, deeply desirable.

The basics begin with triple-laser RGB technology that's good for an eye-popping 7,000 lumens. That's combined, inevitably, with DLP and pixel-shift tech to deliver full 4K resolution at 60 Hz, plus 1080p at up to 240 Hz. Running at the latter setting, Xgimi claims that the Titan Noir Max is good for just 1 ms of latency.

That makes it a pretty plausible proposition for online gaming and esports, at least in terms of response. The ergonomics of playing Counter-Strike on a projector might be pretty questionable, but in performance terms, well, the Titan Noir Max delivers the numbers.

If that's the broad brush of what the Xgimi Titan Noir Max offers, the details are arguably even tastier. Xgimi is using a new generation of DLP chip that enables improved native contrast. That's combined with a 50-laser light source and Dual Intelligent Iris technology to deliver 10,000:1 native contrast. Factor in other digital contrast enhancements and you're looking at 100,000:1 claimed dynamic contrast.

Then there are the optics. This thing has some very trick lens hardware. It's built around a 15-element lens system that's said to deliver consistent edge-to-edge focus. You also get very broad optical lens shift of 130% +/- vertical and 50% +/- horizontal. That gives this projector immense installation flexibility without the need to resort to digital keystone correction.

And you absolutely, positively don't want to use digital keystone correction on any projector. It does horrible things to pixel precision and in turn image sharpness. It's also worth noting that this is, essentially, a traditonal long-throw projector rather than one of those nifty short throw things that can sit right below your projection screen.

That said, it has 2x optical zoom and a throw ratio of between 0.98:1 and 2.0:1, so it's actually pretty configurable. It can create both a pretty large image at short distance and shrink the image from distance to fit your projection screen.

All of that is built into a beautifully lush looking alloy cube chassis that's presented in a nifty carry case and goes some way to justifying the hefty $5,999 MSRP. The real-world pricing of this projector is a bit more complicated than that on account of it being the subject of a Kickstarter campaign. But hold that thought, we'll come back to the value proposition later.

Connectivity includes three HDMI ports, LAN, both optical and 3.5mm audio, and Wi-Fi. Note that the latter doesn't indicate that this projector has built-in smart TV functionality. It does not. It's a pure projector and that's fine by us. Devices like Firesticks, after all, are so very affordable, if that's your use case.

Still, you do get a very slick remote control with, again, a lush metal chassis that lights up when you pick it up and allows access to the Xgimi's various menus and settings. And, boy, are there a lot of settings.

That's immediately obvious as soon as you fire the Titan Noir Max up. After choosing your language upon initial boot, the system goes through an automated setup and focus routine, powered by its triple-sensor TOF, which among other things detects the range to your projection surface and automatically focuses the image and optimises framing and geometry.

In testing, I found the auto-focus worked really well, but the rest of the automated setup is more problematic. For starters, the automated digital keystone is on by default. Especially in a computing context, that's a bad idea. The Titan also failed to frame the image correctly on my projection screen, albeit it's not absolutely clear to what extent the automated features are supposed to be capable of that.

Whatever, that's not really a negative given how excellent the manual lens shift functionality works. Lens shift, for the uninitiated, allows the image position to be adjusted without compromising geometry. In other words, it means you don't have to be as precise in terms of physically positioning this projector to achieve an image that lines up with your projection surface perfectly.

Not only does the Titan have a really wide range of adjustment, it also provides a grid pattern that makes it super easy to perfectly align the image. Slightly less user friendly is the rest of the settings menu. Part of the problem is that there are just so many options, whether that's features like so-called AI-enhanced contrast, iris aperture settings, colour spaces, and much, much more.

It's definitely a little bit more difficult than it should be to ensure whether features like digital keystone are enabled or not. To me it's also a bit of a worry that there are no controls on the chassis save for a power button. Lose that remote control and you really are in trouble. Though I suppose you could say the same of most TVs.

Anywho, this is a complex device and I've barely touched on a whole range of further features and functionality. There's the Harmon-Kardon audio, which produces pretty decent sound in a pinch when you don't have access to some speakers, for instance. Or the broad HDR support including Dolby Vision, the MediaTek image enhancing chip or even Xgimi's own X-Vision chip that powers the AI contrast capability, known as Dynamic Black Level Enhancement.

But let's get to what really matters, namely how good this projector actually looks. Xgimi has clearly configured Titan Noir Max projector to pop from the get go because the dynamic iris functionality is enabled by default and hence maximum brightness is essentially toggled when hooked up to a PC. And it is really, really eye poppingly bright.

In practice, the sustained brightness capability is actually 5,000 lumens. The 7,000 figure is something that can only be sustained for short periods. But, seriously people, 5,000 lumens is still awfully, awfully bright. Happily, the Titan Noir Max has such fantastic native contrast, that doesn't translate into washed out black tones.

The caveat here is that this thing is so bright, light reflecting back onto the screen from the general surroundings is an issue. If you have a dedicated black-out cinema room with low reflectivity walls, that's not a problem. But in a regular room with white walls, it's an issue.

Still, this is one heck of a bright projector and that means it works better in the daytime than dimmer alternatives, though I personally don't think any projector looks great when there's lots of ambient light around. At night, well, you can adjust the brightness to suit.

I won't get too bogged down into the movie watching experience. It's frankly stellar once you've got everything setup correctly, albeit I wasn't quite able to achieve a colour balance I was completely happy with, no matter what colour space or colour mode I chose.

And you do need to dig down into the settings to get a good result because there's far too much image processing on by default in the non-gaming modes. The MEMC (Motion Estimation, Motion Compensation) motion smoothing feature is on by default in most modes, and it looks like absolute crap.

For gaming, all that nonsense is mercifully disabled to achieve the lowest possible latency and, indeed, the very last word in colour calibration is likewise less critical. That said, most of the colour options while running in Game Mode are atrocious, even for gaming. After a bit of a panic, I eventually discovered that, for whatever reason, the only colour space in Game Mode that gives decent results is Rec.709.

That's a relief because you absolutely want to use Game Mode to game. There's noticeable latency in all the other modes, even the pared-back Filmaker Mode that supposedly disables all the image processing to "faithfully convey the film director's creative intent."

That initial caveat aside, gaming at 4K on the Xgimi Titan Noir Max is to die for. So many projectors look a bit weedy and washed out when playing games. Not this beast. It's so bright, the desert sun in Cyberpunk 2077 is actually kind of painful when you point your mouse at it.

The detail and precision thanks to the true 4K resolution is fantastic, too. Just to put this into context, a lot of digital cinema projectors are still 2K, so you're getting a far sharper image with this projector than you often do at the cinema. Of course, 4K support is pretty commonplace these days, so that's not unique to the projector by any means. But the high-quality optics make for an exceptionally sharp image thanks to the precision and consistency of the focus across the screen. It's pretty special.

At this point, so far so good. This is the best gaming experience I've had on a projector. But here come the caveats. First, the variable refresh rate support is problematic. Enabling VRR at 4K results in the image being downscaled to 1080p. The game itself is still running at 4K with all the GPU load that implies, and your PC will still be outputting at 4K. But the projector is downscaling the image. And that's pretty obvious. Long story short, you don't get true 4K with VRR enabled.

I assume this is related to the fact that, as with most 4K projectors, the Titan Noir Max uses a 1080p DLP chip to create a 1080p image that shifts the image four times per frame, very quickly, to achieve 4K. Doing that fast enough to make VRR viable at 4K is perhaps too much to ask, given the DLP chip is actually generating four different images for each rendered frame.

The 1080p modes are using the DLP chip at its native resolution, of course. So, there's no problem running VRR at 1080p 240 Hz. And, really, there's still decent image detail at 1080p. Like I said, a lot of commercial cinemas are still running 2K projectors today. Oh, and I found that there's relatively little visible rainbow effect in any mode, even without Xgimi's anti-RBE technology enabled.

All of which means it's hard to gauge the Xgimi Titan Noir Max as a gaming display. It has an MSRP of $5,999 which probably makes it irrelevant to nearly all gamers. It can currently be had for $4,999 and it was available to early adopters on Kickstarter for $2,999, though that early tranche of units is sold out. There are cheaper versions of the Titan Noir series available, too, starting from $3,999. But even that is a hill of money.

The things that the Titan Noir Max is really good at, aside from the sheer brightness, like achieving near perfect focus and geometry with absolute ease are certainly impressive. But are they worth paying thousands more for in a gaming context? I'm not so sure.

But, in all honesty, one of Xgimi's own cheaper projectors will almost certainly make more sense. The Xgimi Horizon 20, for instance, goes for $1,559, is a full 4K model with optical lens shift and 3,200 lumens and offers the same 240 Hz, 1 ms 1080p gaming mode. Indeed, the Horizon 20 is one of the cheapest 4K projectors currently available with lens shift and the projector I'd recommend to pretty much any mere mortal, even before seeing the new Titan Noir Max.

Money no object, then, the Xgimi Titan Noir Max is a stunning piece of engineering. It really is. But in the real world where money does actually matter, it's almost certainly overkill for gaming.

We’ve been reviewing some silly-priced gaming monitors in recent times but, some of the latest-and-greatest models wield premium features that are unnecessary for many buyers. Gigabyte’s GO27Q24A strives to keep things simple by stripping-away some of the less-universally popular, expensive technologies to produce a spartan gaming monitor that focuses on the category’s most-important facets, to keep the price down. Gigabyte has successfully done this before using WOLED and Tandem OLED panels in the same range, so how will this QD-OLED model fare?

Assembling the Gigabyte GO27Q24A is simple: the stem clips to the screen and the stand uses a single thumbscrew to attach to the stem without any tools being needed.

The stand is the same, solid, small-footprint unit that Gigabyte’s premium monitors use and it lets competitive types sit right up close to the screen. The stem is also the same seen on its superior siblings and affords a generous degree of manipulation to get the screen sitting just so: there’s -5°~+21° tilt, ±15° swivel and 90° pivot. There’s also 13 cm of height adjustment. Impressive.

All that comes in the box is a cable-tidy clip that attaches to the stem, and a DisplayPort cable (I rather feel an HDMI cable would be more universally useful). Still, you don’t actually need many cables as there aren’t many places to stick ’em—there are just two HDMI 2.1 ports, a DisplayPort 1.4 port and a headphone jack. Forget your USB-C, KVM hub and optical ports. There’s also no RGB. We’re on a cost-saving mission, here.

Once up and running, you’re presented with a 27-inch, 1440p Windows Desktop that offers plenty of real-estate for work, but displays text that’s a smidge spidery for all-day office use in this day and age—people who often squint at spreadsheets would be better served elsewhere. But, this monitor isn’t for them.

It’s a Samsung QD-OLED panel (likely Gen 3) which has the usual, impressive-sounding 0.03ms pixel response time and 1:1,500,000 contrast ratio. It also displays 99 percent of the tricky DCI-P3 colour space (so pernickety designer-types will warm to its colour accuracy). However, despite its support for HDR10, the (understated) standout spec is its peak fullscreen brightness of just 200 nits. In a market where everyone (not least Gigabyte) is yelling about their 1,000+ nit brightness, that’s unusually very low (for a QD-OLED panel especially) and likely related to where many of the production costs have been reduced. But, how does it actually perform when gaming?

If you don’t regularly look at super-premium gaming monitors, you could well be wondering where the limitations are. Contrast is excellent, colours are vibrant and, in HDR mode, both colourful and monochromatic transitions and gradients are smooth and step-free. The lack of peak brightness means HDR can be kept active all the time without melting your eyes. It generally does a good job of displaying bright and dark areas of content simultaneously and details still get revealed in darker areas (making it hard for enemies to jump out of shadows) but details can get lost in brighter highlights (not unlike many premium monitors, frankly).

Gigabyte veneers the screen with a semi-gloss, anti-reflective coating which, in some scenarios, does a physics-defeating job at eliminating reflections. However, when viewing dark content, or when you’re in a bright environment, it can still transform into a black mirror.

Nvidia G-Sync and AMD FreeSync Premium technologies are present to help prevent image tearing, and VRR is present to stop brightness flickering. Gigabyte’s also states that its Ultra Clear motion-smoothness technology (black-frame insertion) will be present in a future firmware update, but we’ve heard that one before.

The GO27Q24A also has a fast (0.03 ms stated grey-to-grey) pixel response time and this marries with a 240 Hz refresh rate to keep very-fast-moving objects looking smooth, crisp and clear to the point where only elite-level eSports players might grumble.

Ultimately, it functions very well as a gaming monitor. The HDR peak brightness of 400 nits means the in-your-face, potentially eye-piercing impact of premium models is missing and technical, true-black performance is only very good rather than outstanding (a black screen can feel slightly washed out), but most gamers will care more about the excellent colour vibrancy, contrast and speed on offer.

Gigabyte packs in most of its premium gaming enhancements too. They’re activated by a joystick button at the rear (on the right) of the screen. Their degrees of usefulness will depend on the proclivities of each user and most detrimentally affect overall image quality in some way.

The AI Black Equalizer destroys contrast (to selectable degrees) by brightening dark areas to prevent enemies hiding in very dark shadows. Super Resolution enhances details in areas of uniform colour to make objects look bad but harder to miss.

Game Info features include adding an on-screen timer that counts up or down. You can add on-screen crosshairs of various designs and offset them from the middle of the screen if necessary. These can be useful when playing CoD in Hardcore mode. Also, unlike (for example) MSI, the crosshair won’t move around the screen every time you move the joystick button.

Night Vision turns the screen green for those who like to LARP as a Navy SEAL super soldier. Flash Dimming helps prevent flashbangs acting like in real-life, while Eagle Eye magnifies the middle of the screen like a sniper scope. I’ve found the latter to be unusably poor in past iterations, but the new implementation (which features a round-shaped ‘optic) feels increasingly like an unfair advantage. Still, it’s still some way off being a hacker tool.

Many of these settings can be activated using Gigabyte’s ‘Tactical Switch’ which sits just below the joystick button. However, the primary function of this is to transform the screen into a more competitive FPS-display. Using the menu, you can change the settings with one press to: 1920 x 1080 (16:9); 1280 x 960 (4:3); 1024 x 768 (4:3); or 1280 x 1024 (5:4) while (potentially) dropping the display-size down to 24 inches. This suits competitive eSports players who sit close to the monitor, want low resolutions for easier headshots and who don’t want to be distracted in their peripheral vision. Clicking the button simply acts like you’ve added a different screen (from Windows’ perspective). It works very well. Unlike other Gigabyte gaming monitors, it doesn’t increase the refresh rate, though.

Another feature that can be activated by the Tactical Switch is pixel cleaning which is part of the OSD’s OLED Care technology. This can automatically (or manually) scan the pixels of your screen and eliminate any dark or bright spots that develop over time. It can also detect static images and logos by arousing the relevant pixels to help prevent burn-in. It works in tandem with Gigabyte’s bespoke, fan-less cooling technology (which uses optimised heat flow channelling, a bespoke heatsink and a graphene film layer) to enhance longevity and back Gigabyte’s three-year warranty that includes burn-in.

At the end of the day, the Gigabyte GO27Q24A doesn’t put a foot wrong. Yes, there are brighter models out there and they might have features like KVM switches and even-faster refresh rates, but these are unnecessary and expensive embellishments to many gamers. The GO27Q24A’s RRP of $450 is low compared to many rivals (and Gigabyte siblings). It even launched at $299 via Newegg for its first month on sale, and we wouldn’t be surprised to see good deals on this again. Frankly, even at $450 it’s a bit of a bargain, but it's hard to look past the excellent Alienware AW2726DM, a monitor that uses the same panel but despite being an Alienware it comes in cheaper.

Nitro VG270K L1: was $229.99 now $159.99
This is on the budget end of 4K monitors, and in some ways you can feel it. 72 Hz at 4K is very low as far as refresh rates go, but still, getting 4K for a decent bit under $200 would have felt near impossible not that long ago, and now you're doing it with a decent size and fast response rate.

Key specs: 27-inch | 4K/1080p | 72/144 Hz | up to 0.5 ms | IPSView Deal

One of the few bright lights in the dark, dark cloud that is the component pricing crisis is the current state of the gaming monitor market. They are getting better and cheaper literally every single day, and be it an OLED pick, an Ultrawide so big it will barely fit on your desk, or a 4K panel, there are sweet deals to be found in pretty much every major genre of gaming monitor.

If you want a 4K gaming monitor and want to pay as little as possible, my money would be on the Acer Nitro VG270K L1, and I wouldn't even have to think about it. That's because you can pick one up for $160 at Amazon right now. That's only really tens of dollars above the price of a decent 1080p panel, which is pretty incredible when you think about it.

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I look over our roundup of the best cheap gaming monitor deals every single week, and this panel is such a good price that it is clearly the cheapest 4K gaming monitor on there. In fact, the next cheapest option is the MSI MAG 275UPD, which is $90 more.

Naturally, at such a low price point, you expect to make compromises, and the biggest one here is the refresh rate. At 4K, the Nitro is down to a rather pitiful 72 Hz. If you have a super beefy rig, or are a huge fan of frame generation, you may want to go for something snappier. But if you are on a modest machine like me, that refresh rate is fine.

And the Nitro is a dual mode monitor, meaning you can bump it down to 1080p at 144 Hz for more competitive focused games, and bump the resolution up to 4K for something pretty. At 27 inches, it's plenty big for a desk, and the up to 0.5 ms response time is pretty killer too.

As well as this, you get HDR 10 support, IPS panel technology for strong colors and wide viewing angles, plus AMD FreeSync to cut out screen tearing. The refresh rate is naturally a pretty big caveat here, but it will cost you nearly $100 extra for a good 4K monitor with a better one, and it's therefore an excellent budget pick.

But if you're not satisfied with that, there are some strong value picks all around today. Koorui's ultrawide 1440p 180 Hz VA panel is down to $250, and the ASRock Phantom Gaming PG027QSA OLED 1440p 240 Hz gaming monitor is just under $300. The biggest problem with picking up a gaming monitor right now is that there are simply too many great deals to pick from.

During the announcement, head of product Matt McGowan said that Alienware were aiming to offer "more price points people can actually reach," though that pricing promise isn't the only thing that piqued my interest.

First, something for the esports sickos: the AW2527HX. Head of product Matt McGowan pitches this as Alienware's "fastest monitor ever," featuring a 560 Hz refresh rate and a 0.03 ms response time.

Co-designed with 4-peat World of Warcraft Race to World First champions Team Liquid, McGowan said that "Every detail [of this OLED has been] informed by how pros actually set-up and compete." Pricing and release details for the AW2527HX OLED will be announced in early 2027.

Alienware isn't the only company who has set its sights on the competitive scene recently. Last month, Asus announced that the ROG Swift OLED PG259QWS Ace would be the official monitor for PGL CS2 Major Singapore 2026 later this year. Odds are, Alienware is hoping for a similarly lucrative slice of the tournament pie. But it's worth noting that the Asus OLED has a very slightly faster response time of 0.02 ms and a higher refresh rate of 720 Hz. Could Alienware be attempting to compete on price point instead? We'll find out next year.

Some of the AW2527HX's tournament-friendly features include a built-in headset hanger, plus a matte coating on the screen to minimise glare. On top of that, esports fiends can look forward to a screen with brightness to write home about thanks to Penta-tandem OLED tech. RGB Stripe subpixels will keep text sharp and offer overall improved image clarity too.

Alienware's second OLED, the AW3226Q, is much less mysterious. For a start, I can already tell you it's a 32-inch 4K OLED that will arrive this Autumn, and will set you back about $699. That's more than twice the price of our top pick for the best budget OLED, the AW2726DM, which is also from Alienware but only costs $350. That said, this cheaper option doesn't have the tandem OLED tech. The MSI MPG 322UR X24 that our Jeremy recently rated is a '5-layer tandem' QD-OLED (so that's Samsung's tech, not LG's) but will set you back over a grand from Newegg. With that comparison in mind, $699 is a good price for that level of brightness on the Alienware.

But what else is the AW3226Q offering for the money? Well, 1,000 nits of peak brightness plus Tandem OLED tech, though it may turn out to be slightly less bright than Alienware's esports monitor. This gaming OLED also has a lower refresh rate of 165 Hz, but the same 0.03 response time plus the same clarity of image offered by RGB Stripe subpixels. Overall, it's a less specialised bit of kit, with McGowan saying it will be "Stunning for gaming and equally impressive for everyday use." Well, us lot on the hardware team will be the judge of that.

For a new gaming monitor that ticks an awful lot of boxes, the Alienware AW3926QW has also arrived with an awful lot of controversy. Some early adopters of this epic 39-inch 5K2K OLED panel have reported numerous issues, including green tinting, so-called "vignette dimming" and adaptive refresh flicker.

We'll get into the specifics of what Reddit is losing its hive mind over with the Alienware AW3926QW later. But first let's consider the stellar on-paper proposition of this monitor. For starters, it's OLED. Not just any old OLED, but LG's fancy Tandem WOLED tech.

Oh, and it has pure RGB-stripe subpixels, it's a 39-inch ultrawide with sensible 1500R curvature for epic immersion, packs a 5K2K native resolution and thus excellent pixel density, has a glossy screen coating, DisplayHDR True Black 500 certification, a high-refresh 330 Hz dual-mode and, well, plenty more besides. Heck, it's even cheaper than you might expect, coming in at just $1,099 in the US and £999 in the UK, therefore undercutting LG's own $1,799 5K2K 39-inch OLED model by miles. And that LG monitor doesn't even get RGB-stripe tech. No question, this Alienware is absolutely stacked.

If that's the broad brush strokes of the Alienware AW3926QW's proposition, how about the finer details of its tech specs and configuration? The basic panel format is 21:9 aspect and 5K2K resolution, which means it's essentially a 32-inch 4K 16:9 panel widened out to 21:9 and with exactly the same pixel density, just on an even more immersive ultrawide panel.

As I've covered on several previous occasions, Tandem WOLED is LG's very latest panel tech. Confusingly, the "W" doesn't refer to the white subpixel that all previous generations of LG's monitor panels have included, but rather the white colour of the light produced by each subpixel, which in turn is passed through a colour filter.

Likewise, the "Tandem" bit as used here doesn't mean two full OLED panels sandwiched together as per, say, a tandem OLED panel in a Apple iPad Pro. Instead, it's a reference to the additional emissive layer LG has added, again within the sub pixels.

Anyway, this new Tandem WOLED generation is brighter than ever before. At least, it is in some cases. This is actually the fourth OLED we've reviewed this year with the new Tandem WOLED panel tech. The first two, the aforementioned LG UltraGear Evo GX9 39GX950B and then the Asus ROG Strix XG32UQWMS, use LG's traditional RGWB subpixel structure, cranked out 1,500 nits of peak HDR brightness and good enough for DisplayHDR True Black 500 certification.

But the Asus ROG Swift PG32UCWM adds a twist by taking that Tandem WOLED panel tech and inserting LG's new pure RGB-stripe subpixel structure that does away with the additional white subpixel in a quest for sharper, more precise rendering and broader colour coverage. In that Asus Swift, RGB-stripe comes at a pretty pointed cost when it comes to brightness.

Where the two RGWB Tandem WOLEDs I mention hit around 330 nits full screen, the RGB-Stripe Swift can only manage 250 nits. It also tops out at just 1,000 nits peak HDR and makes do with DisplayHDR True Black 400 certification. But here's where it gets really confusing. This new 5K2K 39-inch Alienware is also RGB-stripe Tandem WOLED just like the Asus Swift, but achieves 300 nits full-screen brightness, 1,300 nits peak HDR and DisplayHDR True Black 500 certification.

Long story short, then, what this Alienware seems to offer is the benefits of RGB-stripe subpixels, including more precise rendering at subpixel level and so crisper text and fonts, plus wider colour coverage more akin to Samsung's competing QD-OLED tech, while minimising the downsides in terms of compromised brightness.

Of course, all this also promises a monitor that might match QD-OLED's vibrancy without that technology's own downsides, which include purple tint and compromised contrast in bright ambient light, plus overly warm colour balance. Then there's the usual upsides that come with all OLED monitors, like perfect per-pixel lighting and ridiculously quick 0.03 ms response times. It's a lot to keep up with but a tantalising overall proposition.

For the record and just to cover off the broader feature set, the Alienware AW3926QW is very well specified beyond the core panel tech. You get DisplayPort 2.1, two HDMI ports and USB-C with 90 W of power delivery, plus a multi-port USB hub and a KVM switch. As for refresh rate, at the native 5K2K or 5,120 by 2,160 pixel resolution, the AW3926QW hits 165 Hz, while an alternative 2,560 by 1,080 resolution dual-mode ups that to 330 Hz.

There are also additional alternative resolutions of 4K at 165 Hz, and a couple of further 25-inch and 27-inch 330 Hz modes which run at sub-1080p. As you would expect, further gaming-friendly features include AMD FreeSync and Nvidia G-Sync support. It's all buttoned up by a full three-year warranty that includes the all-important cover for OLED burn-in.

Finally, the physical design is a dead ringer for other Alienware monitors. Gone is the Storm Trooper-style white plastic and retro lines, which is a bit of a pity. In is a more organic vibe and dark blue plastic throughout. Still, it's well enough built and looks modern with slim bezels on all four sides of the WOLED panel.

Hopefully that covers off the context, now we can consider how this display actually performs. And that performance is mostly incredible. It's immediately obvious that there are fewer compromises when it comes to brightness with this RGB-stripe Tandem WOLED versus the similarly equipped Asus Swift.

How Alienware has managed to make this huge 39-inch 5K2K model noticeably brighter than the 32-inch 4K Asus, I don't know. But it clearly has. It's punchier everywhere, whether you're talking SDR or HDR content. What's more, there's very little noticeable dimming when, say, you expand a small white browser window across the display. It's much less clunky than the Asus in that regard.

Subjectively, you lose very little compared with RGWB Tandem WOLEDs in terms of perceived brightness, too. But you gain loads when it comes to colours. This is not only a more vibrant display, it's more accurate. Gone is the slightly green-tinged colour balance of an RGWB WOLED. Overall, it's right up there with a QD-OLED panel for vibrancy, but with a more natural and accurate vibe. It's really super.

It's also bloody quick, like all OLEDs. The caveat to that is the 165 Hz refresh rate at native 5K2K. Some commentators have criticised this display for that supposed shortcoming. After all, most 32-inch 4K OLEDs run at 240 Hz.

Admittedly, the fact that you have to step down from the 240 Hz widely available from 32-inch 4K OLEDs doesn't sit comfortably with is otherwise a bleeding-edge monitor. Personally, I think the idea that 165 Hz is a major limitation given the huge resolution isn't terribly convincing.

Indeed, the immediate assumption is that you'd want at least an RTX 5080 to make the most of this display and even then you're probably not going to run into that 165 Hz limitation with a lot of games. With graphics card prices escalating by the day, that's a significant worry.

In practice, you might be surprised how usable this monitor is with an RTX 5070-level card, such is the effectiveness of the likes of DLSS upscaling these days. Okay, it's not a super slick high-refresh experience with an RTX 5070-level card, but you can get playable results and fantastic image quality with only minor settings tweaks. Of course, you have those higher refresh dual-modes to fall back on when frame rates really matter, too, though as ever with dual-mode features, image quality and sharpness take quite a hit.

Anyway, the general picture, no pun intended, with this monitor is very positive. I cannot tell you how lush it looks fully lit up running the latest titles with HDR enabled. The scale of the thing, the clarity and detail, the incredible contrast, the pixel speed, it's just fantastic.

It is, however, not perfect. Apart from the arguable refresh rate limitations, let's cover off those Reddit concerts. First, the claimed green tint. That's essentially a viewing angle thing. Yes, it is visible at the edges of the display, but it's really only clearly apparent if you shove your nose a few inches from the panel then crane your neck to view the edges.

Personally, I couldn't detect any VRR flicker, either. It's possible there are settings and frame rates I didn't try where it's more obvious, but I don't think that's a major limitation. The one Reddit-raised issue that I do think is more problematic, however, is the so-called "vignette" or corner dimming.

This is a tricky issue to isolate. But to summarise, during gaming the edges of the panel gradually dim ever so slightly. The best way to see this is to have an app displaying full-screen white on the Windows desktop that you can alt-tab out to. At which point you'll see the "vignette" effect of dimming around the edges with a brighter central area of the display.

If you remain on the desktop, the dimming gradually fades and normal full-screen brightness returns after about 30 seconds. Equally, the dimming takes about 30 seconds of bright-scene gaming to fully kick in. It doesn't seem to happen when gaming in darker scenes.

In terms of why this happens at all, the most likely candidate is a feature called CPC, or Convex Power Control. It’s an LG Display WOLED panel protection feature and dims all four edges of the display to help prevent burn-in. As far as I am aware, it can't be toggled on or off on this Alienware, but if CPC is causing the vignette issue, it should be easy to address in a firmware update. Broadly, I don't think this is a hardware limitation, but a configuration issue.

Exactly how much of an actual problem it is, on the other hand, is subjective. It's worth noting it seems to happen in all modes, SDR, HDR, the works. I'd say it's one of those issues you won't immediately spot, but once you are aware—either because you notice or because you've read about it—well, it does then niggle a little.

That said, the reported issues with this panel are generally pretty subtle in reality and fall into the category of minor flaws from which pretty much any monitor will suffer at least a few. The somewhat frenzied community discussion around this Alienware, then, probably comes down to the fact that it's an expensive panel with fantastic specs that has generated a lot of anticipation and scrutiny.

It's probably inevitable, therefore, that any minor glitch was going to be immediately jumped on by the tech community. But I've seen far worse flaws on displays that have generally reviewed very well, the obvious example being backlight oddities on just about every mini-LED monitor.

In the end, it's a very tough and subjective call to make. I'd say the vignette dimming is an issue that needs to be factored in to a purchase decision. It's by no means catastrophic, but it is a tiny bit bothersome. It's just enough, I think, to prevent a full, caveat-free recommendation and pull our score below the critical 90% mark.

This is still an incredible monitor. I personally prefer it to the other 39-inch 5K2K OLED option out there, the LG UltraGear Evo GX9 39GX950B, which also didn't achieve 90-plus percent for its own reasons. This Alienware is, as things stand, still the monitor that I personally would buy right now, money no object. But to attach an unreserved buy recommendation for everyone else, that vignette dimming issue, relatively subtle as it is, needs to be sorted.

AW2525HM: was $249.99 now $199.99
Our Jacob is a fan of this competitive-level budget gaming monitor, giving it 85% in his review. It's reasonably priced, incredibly smooth, and has solid HDR too. Naturally, 1080p is a bit low for casual gaming, but you can get started as a competitive gamer for cheap here.

Key specs: 25-inch | 1080p | 320 Hz | 0.03 ms | IPSView Deal

Though the memory crisis casts a dark cloud over the gaming PC hardware market, monitors offer a brief respite thanks to their killer technology and even better prices. No matter what type of gamer you are, there's a solid panel out there for you, and if you're looking for something for competitive play, I've got you covered.

Right now, you can pick up the Alienware AW2525HM IPS gaming monitor, with its 320 Hz refresh rate and 0.5 ms response time, for $200 at Amazon, which is a saving of $50 and its lowest ever price.

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Our Jacob Fox reviewed this monitor back in June, giving it an 85%, and he is particularly fond of the monitor's price point, as well as those great stats. 320 Hz refresh rate is likely too high for the average casual gamer, but if you have competitive aspirations, you likely want to get those numbers as high as possible. In Fox's testing, he also reckons 360 Hz is the point of diminishing returns for refresh rate, so you're getting pretty close with this Alienware pick.

Refreshingly, it's not a monitor that only cares about the refresh rate, either. It is fitted with an IPS panel (which I'd generally prefer over VA or TN), and we reckon its HDR10 (without VESA cert) compatibility is pretty solid too, offering an impressive experience.

Jacob's words: "I didn't expect much, but actually, after calibrating everything, playing Doom Eternal with HDR on is wonderful. Everything just feels that much more immersive and realistic with it enabled, thanks to the improved colour space and contrast."

We reckon the monitor itself looks nice, too, with thin bezels, an adjustable stand, and even a handy headphone hook on the left-hand side. It also has two USB ports with passthrough.

Naturally, you aren't getting everything for the price. At 1080p, the resolution is pretty much the absolute lowest you want to go for a modern gaming monitor. Generally speaking, a casual gamer will get more out of a less impressive but nicer-looking 1440p monitor (Like this MSI Pro with a 100 Hz refresh at $120 or this 200 Hz Acer Nitro at $150).

As well as this, we spotted significantly more motion blur than the much more expensive Zowie XL2586X+, but if you're looking for something competitive level on a budget, we really rate this one.

👉 Check out all of Amazon's gaming monitor deals 👈

Asus' new monitor, the ROG Swift OLED PG259QWS Ace, is going to be the official monitor of the 2026 PGL CS2 major. It's a glossy tandem WOLED with a response time of 0.02 ms (GTG), which is low even for OLED.

More relevant here, though, is that it's a 720 Hz, 24.5-inch panel. We've seen high refresh rate OLEDs before, but most of these (A) are 27-inch or bigger, and (B) only achieve their high refresh rates when dropped to 720p. Getting up to 1080p is ideal for pro gaming, especially in CS2, where some will want to stretch a 4:3 resolution, and 24/25-inch monitors are preferred.

It might seem silly to some, but I've tested some pro-level monitors and can confirm that 24/25-inch monitors can make playing CS2 a little more comfortable, allowing you to see the entire game scene without squinting in a way that pushing a 27-inch monitor further away somehow doesn't quite replicate. I did also find in that testing that there are diminishing returns to higher refresh rates above about 360 Hz, but hey, I'm not a pro. I have no doubt they can make use of those extra returns, diminishing as they are.

All this is to say, the fact that we've now got a 24.5-inch OLED reaching up to 720 Hz is really going to give TN panels like those from Zowie a run for their money. Especially given OLEDs don't need to use backlight strobing to reduce motion blur because their pixels already change incredibly quickly. And, of course, given they look gorgeous.

It seems PGL (the tournament organiser) agrees. According to Asus, PGL CEO Silviu Stroie remarked: "The first OLED Major on the fastest OLED ever made—it’s a new generation of competitive Counter-Strike."

And you know what? I actually don't doubt it. CS2 tournies have been run on TNs for, well, forever. And pros have been reluctant to switch away in part for this reason: it's best to practice on the monitors you'll be using in tournaments. So if tournies start switching over to OLED, this could indeed be the start of a new generation of pro gaming, at least as far as monitors are concerned.

And we couldn't really ask for a better kind of gear for such a change to happen to than the monitor. I love writing about monitors these days, as they're one bit of PC gaming kit that hasn't felt the pricing bite of the global memory shortage.

It also helps that technologies seem to be not only improving but also actually getting cheaper, and nothing highlights that more than the wonderful world of OLEDs—$299 for a 1440p, 240 Hz panel, anyone?

Phantom Gaming PGO27QSA: was $465 now $299.33
Take a second to look at the specs on offer here, then back to the price, then back to the specs again. That speaks for itself, and we've had a good run with Phantom Gaming monitors over the years. Affordable and effective.

Key specs: 27-inch | QD-OLED | 240 Hz | 0.03 ms | FreeSync Premium | 1440pView Deal

There are a few things I look for in a gaming monitor nowadays: OLED panel, high refresh rate, low response time, and some type of variable refresh rate technology. Lo and behold, this ASRock Phantom Gaming monitor has the lot, and for a very good price.

While most PC components keep getting pricier, gaming monitors, especially OLEDs, are only getting more affordable. This is a prime example of that trend: the Phantom Gaming PGO27QSA is just $299 at Newegg.

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It features a resolution of 2560 x 1440, within a 27-inch frame. That's 108 pixels per inch, for anyone counting, and provides a clear and crisp image overall compared to larger monitors.

A 1440p resolution is within reach for most modern midrange or better graphics cards; however, you will need a powerful GPU to reach the lofty refresh rate offered by this panel. That's 240 Hz. Though the inclusion of a variable refresh rate technology in AMD's FreeSync Premium helps there, matching the monitor's refresh rate to when the GPU is ready to fling another frame over.

This monitor is using a QD-OLED panel from Samsung, and as we've seen in our own testing, this panel technology delivers infinitely deep blacks and stunning vibrancy for gaming. With a typical SDR brightness of just 200 nits, this is sure to be an older generation panel compared to the latest and greatest found in MSI's MPG 322UR X24. We've seen Alienware taking a similar approach with its affordable AW2726DM: older panel, lower price.

The ASRock gaming monitor won't have the RGB Stripe subpixel layout we've come to enjoy on the latest panels, either. That means you can expect some level of text fringing across the panel. Generally, this has minimal impact on gaming, which remains just as glorious even on older QD-OLED tech.

With an option for black and white, and a surprisingly dextrous stand for the money, there's a whole lot of monitor here for the money. You don't get a USB hub, but you do get 2x HDMI 2.1 and 1x DisplayPort 1.4 ports. It also should come with a couple of cables rated to meet those specs in the box, which makes life a little easier.

👉Take a look at Newegg's entire Gamer Zone sale here👈

The biggest problem with shopping around for a gaming monitor right now is that there are too many deals to pick from, so I've whittled it down to just five.

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Starting at the bottom of the budget, we have a 1080p choice. Being VA, you aren't getting the wide viewing angles of an IPS or deep contrasts of an OLED, but you are getting a snappy monitor at a very good price.

Then, we've got two 1440p picks, one IPS and one mini-LED. Rounding out the list, we have a dual-mode 4K pick, and an ultra-cheap OLED gaming monitor.

I update our roundup of the best cheap gaming monitor deals every week, so I've developed a good sense of exactly how much you should expect to spend on a gaming monitor, and every one of these picks is a banger for the price point.

Gaming Monitor deals

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However, RTings has some disappointing news. A long-term test of OLED TVs manufactured between 2020 and 2023 did not show significant reduction in burn-in compared to a 2017 LG model—and it's the increased screen brightness that is likely to blame.

The newly-tested OLED TVs are significantly brighter, which means any major improvement in burn-in resistance appears to have been offset—at least under these test conditions. RTings found that the average 2023 OLED was 28% brighter then the 2017 OLED's average in a 10% SDR window test, and 52% brighter in a sustained full-screen SDR test.

This higher brightness appears to have resulted in a stalemate when it comes to burn-in avoidance. The tested TVs were subjected to thousands of hours of non-stop CNN viewing, where the static banner at the bottom of the screen remained present for the entire experiment.

At the 10,500 hour checkpoint, the banner still burnt its way into the display of the newer models to a noticeable degree. Boo, hiss, etc.

However, there is some good news to take from this data. Each of the TVs were tested at their maximum SDR brightness settings, without adjustments to account for the higher brightness levels compared to the older model.

As the newer panels are capable of pumping out a much brighter full screen image, turning down the brightness may result in a longer burn-free lifespan. Or at least, less noticeable burn-in over the same period.

It's also worth noting that this is a deliberate, "worst-case scenario" test, which is far from representative of actual TV usage. The full 18,000 hours stint would be equivalent to 10 years of watching nothing but CNN for five hours a day. Mixed viewing over the same period would be very unlikely to create similar burn-in results.

"What's clear is that for most mixed-content viewers, burn-in remains unlikely to become an issue," RTings concludes. "Users with static-heavy SDR workloads can lower the brightness setting to reduce cumulative stress while still retaining more usable brightness than earlier OLED generations offered."

So, swings and roundabouts. It appears you can't have searingly bright OLED panels and significantly reduced burn-in at the same time, but if you're prepared to turn the brightness down a notch or two, things may well have improved.

For what it's worth, we've tested lots of OLED gaming monitors over long periods of regular usage without noticeable burn-in issues. And for those still on the fence, many manufacturers offer extended warranties for burn-in protection.

It's still worth taking reasonable precautions to extend the lifespan of your expensive new display, but OLED tech is developing at an astonishing rate. Here's hoping that anti-burn-in measures improve as time goes on—because how eye-scorchingly bright do you really need your TV to be, anyway?

Horizon Ultra: was $1699 now $849
This 4K beamer has been attached to my wall since I reviewed it back in early 2024, and it's been a mainstay of my media-devouring habits ever since. It's brighter than the Horizon Pro it replaced and delivers a pin-sharp Dolby Vision-bolstered image. In its game mode runs with a minimal 17 ms of latency, which makes it great for some big-screen antics, though its refresh rate is limited to 60 Hz. Use code 300SAVE for the full discount.

Key specs: 3840 x 2160 | DLP | HDR10, HLG, Dolby Vision | 2300 ISO lumens | Android TV View Deal

The XGIMI Horizon Ultra is the brightest projector I've ever had the pleasure of using. Coming from the previous-gen Horizon Pro beamer, with its 1500 ISO lumens peak, the 2300 ISO lumens output of this thing feels almost searing in its brightness. But that makes it an outstanding HDR projector for both games (with HDR10 support baked in) and movies with Dolby Vision support as standard.

I reviewed this XGIMI projector back in early 2024, and I've had it attached to my wall ever since, delivering on both movie and gaming nights. I played almost the entirety of Baldur's Gate 3 plastered over a big ol' 100-inch 'screen' and it was glorious.

One of the big issues, however, is that at $1,700 it's a mighty costly bit of kit, even if beamers of this quality had previously come in at twice the price. But thanks to a handy dandy discount code (300SAVE), you can get $300 off the already discounted price, which brings the XGIMI Horizon Ultra down to $849 at Wellbots. And at half price, this is a lot of projector for the money.

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Both the image and the device itself look great. If you want a projector to fit into your home without being crazy intrusive, the Horizon Ultra's got a neat party trick. When it's turned off, the lens is covered by a fabric mesh screen, which slowly lowers itself down when you power it up. It looks pretty stylish when it's off, and I do love that little bit of theatre when it gets up and running. A small thing, but I'm a nerd, and those things please me.

It's got a set of Harmon Kardon speakers built into the projector housing itself, and they're genuinely impressive. The bass response on them is truly surprising, and the clarity and volume have meant I've never been tempted to trail more cables down my wall to run into some third-party speaker setup.

It's running Android TV out of the box (with Chromecast built in), though this is where the first of the slight niggles crop up. I don't pretend to understand the ring-fencing, but not all the apps in the Google Store are available on this device despite nominally being available on Android TV. So, Netflix is a no-no natively.

Personally, I've got a wee Nvidia Shield tube plugged into it to circumvent those issues, which also gives me easy access to GeForce Now and Steam Link for gaming fun times. Though the other niggle is that you're only getting a 60 Hz refresh rate out of the Horizon Pro, which puts it below the likes of the Dangbei DBOX02 Pro, which will hit 120 Hz at native and 240 Hz at 1080p.

But 60 fps at 4K is still a challenge for a lot of gaming PCs, so whether that's an issue you can live with will depend on you. For me, the glory of a huge game image at a smooth 60 fps still hits hard. The Horizon Ultra's game mode is pretty impressive too, cutting the input latency down to just ~17 ms, and that works whether you're keystoning or not.

And that is another area where the XGIMI beamer shines (see what I did there?) - the auto-keystoning. You can stick this projector anywhere and it will adjust the image and the focus to fit whatever flat surface you're pointing at, with simple manual adjustments so you can fit it to a certain area of your wall. It takes a ton of the hassle out of projector placement.

So, if you're after some big screen HDR thrills without the thousand-dollar-plus price tag, this half-price beamer is well worth a look. I can personally vouch for it.

👉Check out the other projector deals on Wellbots👈

According to analyst firm TrendForce, shipments for OLED panels have increased 26.1% in the past three months. Comparing to last year's figures, they're up 98%. And the firm chalks that up to gaming, specifically, noting that adoption is strong for 27-inch QHD monitors, which sit at the top of the increasingly large pile of panels for popularity.

TrendForce says these "results underscore the rapid penetration of OLED technology in the gaming and premium display markets."

In the first three months of the year, TrendForce reckoned shipments for OLED panels increased 78% year on year. This suggests OLED monitor shipments are still on the rise through 2026.

The analyst firm lists the biggest companies in the space by market share, as it stands today: Asus at the top, then Samsung, MSI, AOC, LGE, and the rest. Samsung slipped due to a "gradual withdrawal" from the Chinese market, while MSI made some waves. Panel supply is said to be improving, too, with new brands entering the market as a result.

Though it's worth noting that most OLED panels for gaming monitors are made by Samsung and LG, even if rebadged under another company's name. We have seen some new developments in recent weeks regarding OLED panels from Chinese goliath TCL making their way into MSI's professional lineup; however, for gaming, we're mostly all in on those Korean-made panels.

Nevertheless, OLED monitors are becoming way more accessible for PC gamers as the technology develops and new products make it to market. Once upon a time, most OLED gaming monitors would demand upwards of $600–$1000. Yet our best budget OLED, the Alienware AW2726DM, has an MSRP of $350. That's brand new. Sure, it's an older panel tech than the very latest panel as found in our top pick, the MSI MPG 322UR X24, but an OLED looks fantastic either way.

We've said it a whole lot lately, but monitors are one of the few good deals left in PC gaming. You can thank the memory crisis for everything else sucking. That pox hasn't touched the monitor market. Prices are still coming down, the technology is still rapidly developing, and OLED monitor deals are still to be found.

Our James checks for deals every week and he's spotted this Samsung Odyssey G50SF for $350 over at Amazon. There's also this AOC Agon Pro for $350. Both 27-inch, 1440p monitors as was suggested to be the most popular by TrendForce. Though even the 4K-capable MSI MAG 321UP is down to $700 over at Newegg.

It's just nice to see a healthy market that's actually serving to the benefit of us regular consumers right now. Demand is high, supply is sufficient, and there's loads of competition; which all feels like a bit of a rarity right now.

34E6UC: was $359.99 now $249.99
This Koorui is currently our pick for the best budget ultrawide gaming monitor, and for good reason. It's well built, punchy, bright, and great value. Being VA, it's a little sluggish, but still strong for gaming.

Key specs: 34-inch | 3440 x 1440 | 180 Hz | 1 ms | VA | 1000R curveView Deal

Be it 1440p, 4K, OLED, or now even ultrawides, gaming monitors have become incredibly good value over the last year or two. The memory crisis may continue to drive up everything else, but now is the perfect time for a monitor upgrade.

If you've been wanting to test out an ultrawide, the Koorui 34E6UC is 34 inches and just $250 at Amazon right now.

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We gave this budget beast a solid recommendation in our review just a few months ago, and it soon became our pick for the best budget ultrawide gaming monitor you can buy. Pricing on the 34E6UC has flitted around quite a bit, with it going as high as $400 near the start of the year, and previously dropping to around the $260/$270 mark. It has stayed at its discounted price of $250 for a while now, but it is truly the best ultrawide you can get for the money out there.

Being a VA panel, it does have somewhat sluggish pixel response times, and you aren't getting the color accuracy of an IPS or the superior contrasts and near-instantaneous response times of an OLED, but one huge benefit is that price. And it's certainly not a bad panel otherwise.

It's plenty bright, it's punchy, and it's well built too. Our Jeremy said in his review, "This screen is all about context and value. Put it up next to the latest OLED panels, and the shortcomings in terms of contrast, black levels, lighting control, viewing angles, pixel response, and more are pretty stark. But they're also pretty irrelevant if your budget is $250, or thereabouts."

Still, where this monitor does stand out is its ultrawide panel. At a tight 1000R curve, you are getting a seriously immersive experience. For the unaware, ultrawide gaming monitors are well-liked because they get more information on the screen at once. In first-person games, this broader angle is quite immersive, and in strategy games, it can give you more information without having to move the screen around.

One obstacle to using ultrawide is that some games don't natively support the format. Street Fighter 6 and Elden Ring are among those that don't support ultrawide, but the likes of Flawless Widescreen can force the format on unsupported games.

Unlike memory, SSD, and graphics card, monitors don't have any pricing or stock issues. Instead, the problem is that there are simply too many options out there. I look after our roundup of the best cheap gaming monitor deals every week, and right now, you can get the aforementioned Koorui for $250, an MSI Pro 27-inch 1440p monitor for $120, an Acer Nitro 4K gaming monitor for $180, or even a Samsung OLED monitor for $350. Take your pick. They're all bangers for the price.

Every time a new OLED gaming monitor comes out of late, it seemingly poses pretty much the same question. Is this the one, is this the model that effectively "completes" the task of gaming monitors, that represents 2D panel technology perfected? Give it up, therefore, for the latest candidate, the Asus ROG Swift PG32UCWM, a 32-inch 4K model.

There's a lot to keep up with when it comes to OLED panel technology developments, but big news here is the inclusion of a new LG Tandem WOLED panel with RGB-stripe subpixel structure. We've already seen LG's Tandem WOLED tech in 32-inch 4K trim recently in another Asus monitor, the Asus ROG Strix XG32UQWMS. But that didn't get the RGB-stripe version of the new panel type, instead retaining the additional white subpixel LG has long used to boost brightness in an "RGWB" configuration.

In theory, then, this new panel has it all. You get the very latest LG Tandem WOLED panel generation with all the benefits that brings, but applied to a pure RGB-stripe subpixel structure. That's it then, job done, the perfect OLED gaming monitor?

Not quite. It's not all pros with this RGB-stripe panel. There are some cons, too, at least on paper. The RGB-stripe subpixel structure—or red, green and blue subpixels arranged vertically in that order—should mean more precise rendering, especially for elements like fonts that rely on addressing the panel at subpixel level to achieve maximum crispness. It also promises more accurate colours and a wider overall colour volume, too.

However, LG has been using the white subpixel on all of its previous OLED panel generations for PC monitors for a reason. And the consequence of removing it is that this RGB-stripe 32-inch Tandem WOLED panel has lower full-screen and peak HDR brightness ratings than its RGWB cousin.

So, where the Asus Strix model was rated at 330 nits full screen and 1,500 nits peak HDR in a 2% window, this RGB-stripe Asus Swift clocks in at 250 nits and 1,000 nits respectively. It also makes do with DisplayHDR True Black 400 certification instead of True Black 500.

Just to confuse things, this new RGB-stripe panel tech is also being used in the new Alienware AW3926QW 39-inch 5K2K monitor, a review of which we also have coming. That has exactly the same pixel density, but somehow Alienware has managed to squeeze 300 nits, 1,300 nits and HDR True Black 500 from that panel. Odd.

Anyway, it should also be noted peak brightness specs aren't the whole story, in any case. As I've explained before in reference to monitors using Samsung's competing QD-OLED panels, which have never used white subpixels at all, peak brightness ratings are for pure white.

But panels with lower brightness ratings thanks to using pure-RGB subpixel structure can actually offer superior colour brightness. Put another way, if you want to show pure and accurate red, for instance, the white subpixel isn't much help in boosting brightness.

Speaking of QD-OLED monitors, it's notable that the likes of the MSI MPG 322UR X24 uses a Samsung panel with no white subpixel to achieve 300 nits full screen and True Black 500 certification. What's more, Samsung has also announced an even better 32-inch 4K QD-OLED panel with 360 Hz refresh and True Black 600 certification. Samsung hasn't quoted panel brightness, but the True Black 600 tier requires 350 nits full-screen at minimum. Like I said, it's a lot to keep up with.

One last note on the panel tech. LG's branding for all this stuff is getting really confusing. The "W" in Tandem WOLED doesn't refer to the white subpixel, hence its use here. It refers to the fact that each subpixel emits white light that is then passed through a colour filter. And the "Tandem" equally doesn't actually mean two full OLED panels stacked atop one another, but instead refers to additional emissive layers, again within the subpixels.

My actual final note on the panel is that it's glossy, not matte, which isn't always a given with LG-based OLED monitors. Anywho, aside from the panel specs, this is an Asus "Swift" model, which makes it more premium than the Strix version I reviewed recently and that has implications for the feature set. First up, that includes a 480 Hz 1080p "Dual" mode to complement the 240 Hz native 4K refresh rate.

Connectivity wise, you get full 80 Gbps DisplayPort 2.1, two HDMI 2.1 ports, plus USB-C with 90 W of power delivery. There's also full KVM switch support. Further gaming-friendly features include ELMB motion blur reduction and VRR anti-flicker. Oh, and there's not only HDR10 support, but Dolby Vision, too, albeit Dolby Vision is more relevant to HDR video than HDR gaming.

It's all wrapped up in a premium chassis that includes height, swivel and tilt adjustment, RGB lighting, including a down projector, and some nifty design elements. Most unusual is the partly transparent rear chassis cover.

It's a lot like the see-through rear cover on devices like Nothing's smartphones and headphones. It's pretty neat, albeit you're obviously not going to see it day-to-day on a monitor sitting up close to a wall.

Without further ado, then, how good, exactly is this new RGB-stripe Tandem WOLED panel? Pretty darn good, but not quite perfect, is the short answer. There's some subjectivity in this, but I have never personally much liked LG OLED panels with the added white subpixel. They lack colour vibrancy and suffer from slightly green-tinted white tones.

That's all fixed with the RGB-stripe panel. To sum up the experience, it's a lot closer to a Samsung QD-OLED panel in terms of how pleasing and punchy the colours are. But you don't have to worry about the purple tint that even the latest QD-OPLED panels suffer from in bright ambient light.

This RGB-stripe WOLED also has a more accurate and neutral colour balance compared to the slightly warm colour temperature of QD-OLED panels. Add in the precision of the RGB-stripe subpixel structure, especially as applied here to a super-sharp 4K panel, and all the usual OLED upsides, including ridiculously fast 0.03 ms pixel response, perfect lighting control and very wide viewing angles and, well, you have one heck of an experience.

For the record, the banding or "dirty screen effect" that some other lower resolution Tandem WOLEDs suffer from is more or less invisible here. So, that's good. And if you are wondering, yes this monitor does have something akin to MSI's EOTF boost mode that essentially enables maximum available brightness in both brighter and darker HDR scenes.

Asus calls it "Adjustable HDR" on this model, but it does basically the same job and works well enough, albeit with some limitations, which we'll come to in a moment.

Now, I know I go on about this routinely when it comes to OLED monitors. But the night time HDR scenes in CyberPunk 2077 really do look spectacular on this panel. Let me give you an example to get across the experience. You know those neon lights and signs that populate many of Cyberpunk's moody urban scenes? They don't look like images of neon lights and signs. They look like actual light sources.

That's actually the point of HDR done right. To recreate the true dynamic range of reality and that means light sources that look like actual light sources.

The reality is that most supposedly HDR-capable screens can't really do HDR. Well, this one can, and it looks epic at its best. But what about at its worst? Brighter gaming scenes inevitably show up the limited full-screen punch.

Again, we're into subjective territory here. Do you really want the screen to light up at 500 nits and beyond across the whole screen? That wouldn't actually be comfortable for extended use. But it cannot be denied that 250 nits full-screen is not hugely punchy and there are moments when this monitor can look a bit, well, dull.

Overall, I'd definitely take this RGB panel over the RGWB alternative. Where the choice becomes more tricky is versus a QD-OLED. I think the latest QD-OLEDs are still a touch punchier in brighter scenes and on the Windows desktop.

If you disable uniform brightness in order to max out the visual pop in SDR mode, there's more apparent dimming according to how much bright content you are showing with this LG RGB-stripe panel than a Samsung QD-OLED.

That dimming, as more and more of the screen is lit up, is also apparent in HDR mode when the Adjustable HDR setting is maxed out. And that dimming is more significant than you'll see on the latest QD-OLED panels, including that MSI MPG 322UR X24, which is something to think about.

On the other hand, there's no purple tint to contend with and, like I said, the colour temperature is more natural. In the end, it's now a very close run thing between this LG panel and the QD-OLED alternative. That's a major step forward given I'd have taken QD-OLED easily, before.

Really twist my arm and I'd probably pick this panel. There, I've said it. Wait, can I take that back? I've just remembered this LG RGB-stripe dims a tiny bit more than I like. Argh. Ultimately, it's probably too close to call. Both of the current LG and Samsung options have their own slight shortcomings, but both are also great panels.

More to the point, however, 32-inch 4K OLEDs of any stripe—pun fully intended— make fantastic all rounders. They're big enough to be really immersive, in-game, but also have sufficient pixel density to look crisp and sharp for daily computing.

So, really the main problem for the Asus ROG Swift PG32UCWM is how the value proposition stacks up. At $1,299 or £1,099 this is a very expensive display. You can typically get a first-gen 32-inch 4K QD-OLED for somewhere in the $600 to $700 range, currently. Yes, this new RGB-stripe Tandem OLED is better by several metrics. But not that much better.

Then there's the comparison with that Alienware AW3926QW. That isn't quite on sale yet, but it's expected to come in at $1,100. Okay, it doesn't have USB-C connectivity. But it's not only brighter, but larger at 39 inches and offers that ultrawide 5K2K upgrade.

Of course, you're going to need one heck of a GPU to drive this display at its full 240 Hz refresh at 4K and that challenge is only going to be stiffer with a 5K2K panel. But perhaps that's a separate issue to the reality that you're paying more for less with this Asus compared to that upcoming Alienware. The choice is yours, but I'd want a look at that Alienware before pulling the trigger, that's for sure.

If you are unfamiliar with what that means, inkjet printing is a cheaper process than the traditional deposition process used by LG and Samsung. LG and Samsung produce almost every OLED screen for PC monitors right now, but TCL, the producers of this MSI panel, have been looking to burst into the market for some time.

The new MSI panel offers a 120 Hz refresh rate, up to 1,000 nits peak brightness, and an optimised RGB stripe subpixel layout that MSI claims "closely resembles the uniform RGB structure of traditional LCDs." This should eliminate colour fringing and enhance image clarity, and is something we've seen arrive on LG and Samsung-made OLED panels only recently.

As you might be able to guess from the 120 Hz refresh rate and 'Pro' moniker, this MSI panel is not traditionally intended for gaming. We don't yet have the response rate, but it's an OLED, so it's likely to be good. Yet the focus on colour precision over speed implies a use case for professionals. The monitor offers "99% of the DCI-P3 wide color gamut with an exceptional Delta E ≤ 2 accuracy."

In a way, this new monitor for MSI will be a good testing ground for what more OLEDs could look like in the future. If inkjet-printed screens get a foothold in the market, it could make for some more budget options, and a third option away from the duopoly of Samsung and LG.

Unfortunately, though, we are missing the two most pertinent bits of information about this monitor. We don't know when it's supposed to release or what pricing will look like. The MSI Pro Max 271UPXW12G, which appears to be the QD-OLED counterpart to the inkjet monitor, seems to sit around the $700 mark. If it can cut away substantially at that price, then the swap to inkjet will be well worth it.

Still, as it's an early model for inkjet tech, I'm not expecting too big of a price cut. And non-inkjet OLED monitors are becoming more and more budget-friendly. I check over our roundup of the best cheap gaming monitors every week, and regularly spot OLED panels around the $300-$400 price point.

Even Alienware put out a $350 OLED gaming monitor as recently as this year, so here's hoping OLED only gets more competitive in the pricing arena.

Predator X32 Xbmiipphuzx: was $999.99 now $629.99
With only 250 nits to play with, this isn't the brightest OLED money can buy. Still, if your hardware can handle 4K gaming, this curved screen may well be the finishing touch for your setup that you've been looking for.

Key specs: 32-inch | 240 Hz | 0.03 ms response | QD-OLED

Price check: Acer $699.99View Deal

For most, a 4K gaming monitor is overkill. Trust me (or feel free to judge me), I have a 4K OLED at home and most of the indie darlings I play look just as stunning at 1440p. But if you're serious about 4K gaming and have the kit inside your rig to make a serious go of it—well, I'm guessing your funds are feeling a little depleted, and you'd probably appreciate a good deal on a gaming monitor.

To be upfront, the Acer Predator X32 is a curved, older generation OLED. Typically, that means you're looking at a slightly less face-melting brightness of around 250 nits for this type of QD-OLED in terms of full-screen brightness. This particular bad boy boasts up to 1,000 nits within a 3% window, so solitary points of in-game brightness—like a light bulb in a dark room or a far off bonfire—will still be faithfully rendered, which is what makes this an excellent HDR panel. Besides, the headline here is that you're getting a 32-inch 4K OLED for only $630 from Amazon.

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On top of a 0.03 ms response time, the Acer Predator X32 also enjoys a 240 Hz refresh rate. So, if your gaming PC can keep up with 4K gaming, then you're also looking at a fairly responsive screen to go along with it. Esports fiends may cry out for something speedier still, but that's why the sickos tend to go with much lower resolution TN panels. If competitive esports is not the name of your game, the Acer Predator X32 has plenty to offer.

As the X32 is an older OLED, you won't be getting the new RGB stripe subpixel layout enjoyed by Samsung and LG's latest panels. Though font-fringing isn't so much of an issue at the pixel pitch of a 32-inch 4K display, so it's not something you will hugely miss. Many modern gaming OLEDs tend to feature some font fringing because they use the subpixel layout of TVs, but characters in and out of game are crisply rendered here. That's good news should you need to spend just as much of time staring at documents as you do blasting back the demon horde.

The older generation of QD-OLED, however, does mean colour accuracy may be smidge off, with this older generation of OLEDs known for being a bit warm in terms of colour temperature. QD-OLEDs specifically are also known for having a slight purple tinge to them under brightly lit environments. Mind you, if you struggle to tell the difference between a duck egg blue and a maritime teal, then maybe the disappointing colour precision will be neither here nor there for you. Even as an older OLED, you're still getting those deep, true blacks thanks to HDR Black 400.

Mind you, with only 250 nits to play with, the fiery pits of hell will tend to look a little dull all the same. The problem can be exacerbated should you set this OLED in an uncharacteristically well lit gamer den; unfortunately, the finish on this screen tends to reflect a lot of ambient light, creating some unsightly glare and sapping the depth of those true blacks.

But let's talk about that 1700R curve. It won't be for everyone—much less all desk set ups—but for some, it offers an immersive gaming experience. If you've got the space for it, it's also meant to be fairly easy to adjust in terms of tilt angle and height. If you're in a side-by-side gamer arrangement, it's also easy enough to swivel this screen around for your player two. Any movement on my cluttered desk would absolutely take down about five different Miku Hatsune figurines, though.

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Our Jeremy adores the M27T6S and its eye-popping mini-LED performance. It's not the cheapest 1440p gaming monitor out there, but it is budget-friendly for a mini-LED one. It looks truly phenomenal, is genuinely bright, and has solid specs all around. Make sure to use code EDF37346 at checkout to get the discount.

Key specs: 27-inch | 200 Hz | 1 ms | IPS | mini-LED

Price check: KTC $300 (exc. shipping)View Deal

The memory crisis may be continuing to rage, and taking much of the internals of your PC with it, but gaming monitors have become some of the very best deals around.

If you're looking to get yourself the best budget mini-LED gaming monitor right now, KTC's M26T6S is $270 at Newegg with promo code 'EDF37346'.

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I have the honor of looking after both our picks for the best cheap gaming monitor deals and our picks for the best gaming monitors, and this little KTC wonder is in both right now. It's just that good.

With it, you're getting a 1440p 27-inch panel capable of a brightness of 1,000 nits, a response time of 1 ms and a refresh rate of 200 Hz. That's to say, even without that panel technology, it's no slouch in the specs department.

And, being mini-LED, you are getting absolutely sizzling HDR performance. As our Jeremy said in his 90% review, "where the KTC M27T6S really delivers is with HDR content."

KTC has done a wonder on its built-in algorithm to look great without zone popping, and it performs excellently in Cyberpunk 2077 in the areas where OLEDs tend to fail. Brightly lit desert scenes pop, and the in-game sun looks superb in action.

Now, just because it beats out an OLED in some ways doesn't make it the superior technology. Its lighting isn't as precise as an OLED, and OLEDs still take the win in their super wide viewing angles and true blacks. But then again, mini-LEDs don't have the risk of burn-in, which is certainly a concern for OLEDs in and around this price point.

Still, if you've been thinking of making the upgrade, this KTC panel is excellent, and downright budget thanks to its $80 discount.

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Can it really be well over four years since Alienware rolled out the AW3423DW, the first mainstream OLED gaming monitor? The AW3423DW wasn't perfect, but by many important gaming metrics, it absolutely monstered every LCD-based display. That model, of course, was a 34-inch ultrawide and now Alienware has released its most significant update yet for that form factor, the Alienware 34 AW3426DW.

So, what does four years of OLED gaming monitor development buy you? In really simple terms, some new threads, a bit more brightness, and a higher refresh rate. But when you dig down into the details, there's way more going on here.

Most importantly, Alienware has upgraded to Samsung's very latest QD-OLED panel tech, known as Penta Tandem. In terms of headline specs, that means a bump from 250 nits full-screen and 1,000 nits peak HDR brightness of that OG Alienware OLED, to 300 nits and 1,300 nits respectively. You also get an upgrade from VESA DisplayHDR 400 True Black to 500 True Black certification, again highlighting the punchier panel.

The refresh rate is up, too, from 175 Hz four years ago to 280 Hz today, albeit there was an interim Alienware 34-inch ultrawide OLED, the Alienware 34 AW3425DW, that upped the refresh to 240 Hz while keeping most of the other specs the same.

It's also worth noting that there are versions of this Samsung-sourced new-gen 34-inch QD-OLED panel with yet higher refresh, most obviously the MSI MPG 341CQR QD-OLED X36 which I reviewed earlier this year. Apart from the higher refresh, the MSI's panel specs are largely the same.

The MSI kicked off at $1,099 when I reviewed it back in January. Now it's available for $899. So, it's still $100 more expensive than the Alienware's $799 launch price. But let's park that value comparison for now and come back to the Alienware's overall value proposition later.

As with the MSI, the new-gen QD-OLED panel used here has plenty going for it beyond the simple brightness upgrade. The Penta Tandem emissive layer doesn't just produce more light. It makes the panel more resistant to burn-in. On that note, you get the usual Alienware three-year warranty including burn-in cover. So, you at least know burn-in isn't a worry for three years.

Next up is the RGB-stripe subpixel structure. Previous Samsung 34-inch ultrawide QD-OLED panels have used variations of a triangular subpixel structure. That can cause problems when the rendering pipeline is assuming the presence of a standard LCD-type RGB subpixel structure, where each pixel is composed of red, green and then blue vertical stripe subpixels.

The most obvious example is font smoothing technology like Microsoft's ClearType. The coloured text fringing that triangular subpixel structures can result in with ClearType enabled is most obvious with relatively low pixel density panels like this monitor, which comes in at 110 DPI. It's never really been an issue for gaming and, honestly, it was never that bad on the Windows desktop. But, in any case, it's now effectively a solved problem with the introduction of a true RGB-stripe subpixel structure.

Arguably more important are a couple of other panel tweaks. First, the characteristic purple tint that QD-OLEDs suffer from in bright ambient light has been reduced, albeit not actually removed entirely. That's welcome if, for instance, you position your monitor near a large window. In that scenario, this generation of QD-OLED maintains better contrast and black levels.

The glossy panel surface has also been revised with a tougher, more scratch-resistant surface. Owners of earlier QD-OLEDs with glossy coatings, which was nearly all of them, often reported that the screen scratched easily and extensively, for instance when cleaning the panel. This new gen panel should be more durable in that regard.

Elsewhere, this new Alienware AW3426DW looks pretty similar to its interim update sibling, the Alienware 34 AW3425DW. It uses the same AW30 design ethic with its rounded forms and deep-blue plastics. It's well enough slung together, though I actually preferred the slightly retro "Storm Trooper" vibe of the AW3423DW and its swooping white and black plastics.

Whatever, as with previous 34-inch Alienware OLEDs, connectivity is decent but not comprehensive. Along with a couple of HDMI 2.1 ports and a DisplayPort 1.4 interface, there's a USB hub that includes USB-A and USB-C data ports on the lower bezel.

However, there's no primary USB-C input and thus no option for single-cable connectivity to a laptop and likewise no KVM switch. Notably, the more expensive MSI MPG 341CQR QD-OLED X36 includes both of those features. So, you'd want to factor that in with the higher refresh into your value calculations.

Of course, what really matters is image quality and here the news is almost all good. Out of the box, the new Alienware 34 AW3426DW immediately has that little bit more pop that the OG Alienware OLED. It's not a life-changing difference in terms of full-screen brightness. But as with the MSI MPG 341CQR X36, it's getting awfully close to the point where it's hard to imagine anyone demanding more day-to-day punch from an OLED panel.

The reduced purple tint in bright ambient light is really welcome, too. This is a somewhat subjective call. But I'd say it will no longer be a nuisance for most users. It's also likely that whatever changes Samsung made to reduce the purple tint also contribute to improved colour balance. Previously generations of QD-OLED panels suffered a pretty obviously overly warm colour temp. This new panel is better, though again it still tilts a little warm.

If that all applies to regular SDR running, the HDR sizzle on offer is something special. On paper, LG's latest Tandem WOLED panel tech is brighter. But only because it includes an extra white subpixel to boost brightness. In terms of colour brightness and the subjective look of the panel, this new QD-OLED generation is absolutely competitive. It may even look more vibrant in some scenarios.

Alienware has also included just about every HDR mode you could wish for. Along with the standard VESA True Black 500 mode and the panel's Peak 1300 mode, there's a Peak 1300 Bright mode.

It's essentially the same idea as MSI's EOTF Boost mode. In both cases, it's an attempt to combine maximum full screen brightness, as per the True Black 500 mode, with the highest peak HDR brightness for small details. For the most part, it's very successful.

The monitor looks absolutely superb in contrasty HDR game scenes, the type where there's a mix of small bright details punctuating a dark overall vista. Nighttime sequences in Cyberpunk 2077 is the obvious example, here, and this panel absolutely rocks for that kind of play. It's so much better than any LCD monitor, it's not even funny. Once you're used to the vibrant, contrasty OLED experience, going back to the watery, light-bleedy LCD look is a bit of a bummer, that's for sure.

It's pretty darn good for daytime game scenes, too. I only hesitate slightly because full-screen brightness is still a slight limitation, even with this latest Penta Tandem QD-OLED generation. Would you really want the desert sun brighter than this panel can render it? It would feel a bit more realistic, but then you'd also be flirting with an uncomfortable level of brightness.

One thing that's for sure is that the SDR calibration in the Peak 1300 Bright mode is a little off. That's a pity, because it's very good in the other two main HDR modes and were it as good in Peak 1300 Bright, you could plausibly leave the panel in that mode for all kinds of content, all the time, rather than having to switch modes between SDR and HDR.

Unusually, Alienware has also included support for Dolby Vision. That's an HDR standard distinct from the HDR10 used by default by Windows. In truth, Dolby Vision is more relevant for video and movies than games, but it's a nice little extra.

Overall, the HDR implementation is really very good. But the deeper we get into these latest OLED panels, the more complicated the HDR proposition becomes in practical usage terms. Should most PC gamers really have to worry about things like multiple HDR modes, EOTF curves and all that stuff? Having options is great, but it's about time one of the major monitor brands had the confidence to work out an optimal HDR setup and make that a very clear default. And then perhaps bury all the other options in a submenu.

What else can I tell you? Well, there's good panel uniformity and none of the banding or "dirty screen" effect that some LG-based OLED monitors can suffer from. And as with pretty much every OLED, the pixel speed is fairly ludicrous. It's easy to gloss over pixel response given all OLEDs are so fast, but as the quoted 0.03ms response time implies, this panel is getting on for two orders of magnitude faster than any LCD monitor. It's a huge advantage in terms of in-game motion clarity.

While we're talking speed, Alienware has included an "Esports Mode" that will compress whatever signal you're sending to the display into a 25-inch 16:9 window. Obviously, the idea here is to mimic the typical 24-inch to 25-inch panels favoured for serious online shooter play.

LG offers a similar feature on its own monitors and while it works okay in both cases, I do struggle to entirely believe that anyone who is truly serious about esports is going to choose an ultrawide like this. Pretty obviously for the $800 launch price, you could have something running at well, well beyond the 280 Hz this Alienware offers, too.

More broadly, with this category of gaming monitor, you are making a trade off. The 110 DPI pixel density is relatively low. Even with the RGB-stripe subpixel technology, you're not getting super-sharp image detail and nice, crispy fonts. You could very much argue that a 32-inch 4K panel, like the Asus ROG Strix XG32UQWMS and its LG Tandem OLED panel, is a better overall compromise between gaming and general-purpose computing. It's certainly a lot sharper and clearer.

But then the immersion of a 34-inch ultrawide is something special, while the added pixel density of 4K comes with a lot more GPU load. For pure gaming, 34-inch ultrawide would be my pick. For a broader remit, it's a very close call, it really is.

So, this new Alienware is undoubtedly a very nice implementation of Samsung's new Penta Tandem QD-OLED tech. It's also cheaper than the 360 Hz versions of essentially the same panel, such as the MSI MPG 341CQR X36.

Personally, were I buying today, I'd still try to find the extra $100 for the MSI. The superior 360 Hz refresh isn't exactly critical, but it wouldn't hurt. And I'd want the USB-C connectivity and KVM switch for maximum utility and flexibility.

The thing is, the gap is only $100 because the MSI has dropped substantially from its $1,099 launch price to $899 of late. I doubt it will be very long before the new AW3426DW is offered at some kind of discount over its $799 launch price by Alienware. And it wouldn't take much of a haircut before it looked like the better deal versus the slightly better specified MSI.

Then again, if you think 280 Hz is plenty, and it probably is for most gamers, most of the time, and you don't care about USB-C, why pay more? Right now, and without any kind of discount, this is easily one of the most compelling gaming monitors on the market. It's seriously good.

Odyssey G50SF: was $549.99 now $299.99
Even reasonably good value at full price, over $200 off an OLED panel with 1440p resolution and a snappy 180 Hz refresh rate makes this a contender for one of the best-priced QD-OLED monitors out there.

Key specs: 27-inch | 1440p | 180 Hz | 0.03 ms | QD-OLED

Price check: Best Buy $349.54View Deal

The gaming PC market is in a truly horrible place. The memory crisis is sucking up tons of hardware, and causing memory, SSDs, and even graphics cards to surge in price as a result. Yet, the one single positive of the last six months of PC gaming is that monitors have only gotten cheaper.

If you fancy making an upgrade to an OLED gaming monitor, you can pick up a 27-inch 1440p Samsung one for just $300, almost half of its retail price.

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Though we'll get to its downsides, the upside of OLED gaming monitors is evident the second you turn them on. They offer great color reproduction, excellent contrasts with true blacks, and superb image quality. In fact, swapping to an OLED gaming monitor is arguably the greatest upgrade I've made to my gaming setup, making all my games look so much better.

And you aren't lacking on other specs either. 180 Hz is a strong refresh rate, and the 0.03 ms response time is super snappy too. Though you can technically get a 4K gaming monitor for less cash (like this Acer Nitro IPS one for $180), my money would be spent on this OLED here. A 4K resolution requires beefy graphics hardware, and even if you can run it, I'd often take 1440p on the lush OLED screen and enjoy superior frame rates instead.

OLEDs can suffer from burn-in (that and the price are the biggest downsides), but this display has got some built-in burn-in safeguarding tech and a three-year warranty if you're anxious it won't last you very long. We've also seen independent testing that suggests, while not a 10)% solved issue, you have to work pretty hard to burn in a modern OLED gaming monitor. Treat it right and you should get years and years without a hint of it.

You also get G-Sync and FreeSync here, so the Samsung is offering pretty much everything you want out of a modern gaming monitor, and at a price that genuinely shocked me a little when I saw it this morning.

I watch over our best cheap gaming monitor deals page every single week, so I'm used to checking the OLED market, but this is the cheapest I can remember seeing all year. This monitor is even cheaper than it was at the last Prime Day, and it was already an excellent deal back then.

If you want your games to really pop, and have a few hundred spare, I simply couldn't recommend the swap to OLED enough, and at 27 inches, it's also perfect as part of a dual monitor setup. I'd know, as that's exactly what I'm running at home.

The short version: that KTC panel is currently going for AU$177.64on Amazon, down from AU$208.99. It's much better than the AU$216.50 it was going for during Prime Day.

This, by the way, is our favourite budget 1440p monitor. It has a silky smooth 210Hz refresh rate, which is very good value in this price range. It has an IPS display, Freesync and G-sync compatibility, a 1 ms response time and 450 nits of peak brightness.

Honestly, it's above and beyond what you should expect in this price range.

Do keep in mind that this model seems to have received a cut to its RRP between now and early July: it used to be AU$289.99 at full price on Amazon, now that's dropped to AU$208.99.

In his review, Jeremy Laird praised this monitor's "punchy IPS panel" and the 200Hz refresh rate, while criticising its "limited" HDR capability and tilt-only stand. It's well worth reading the review if you want a fuller picture, but the H27T22C-3 is also a bit lacking when it comes to connectivity.

"The fear with a low cost monitor from a less familiar brand is that it might suffer from some or other really obvious flaw," Laird wrote. "Maybe the calibration is a mess, the overdrive doesn't work or the backlight is horribly dim. But none of that applies here. This isn't a perfect display, but it is pretty nice by any reasonable metric. And in the context of the price, it's pretty darn brilliant."

If that's not what you're after, check out our list of the best gaming monitors.

Asus isn't the immediately obvious pick when it comes to value-orientated PC hardware. But its mainstream Strix sub-brand does occasionally deliver some pretty sweet deals. Enter, therefore, the new Asus ROG Strix OLED XG32UQWMS.

It's a 32-inch, 4K gaming monitor based on LG's latest Tandem Primary RGB OLED panel tech, the specifics of which we'll come to shortly. And it's yours for $899, which is a pretty punchy price for a 32-inch 4K OLED with the very newest panel tech.

However, as a Strix model, the XG32UQWMS doesn't throw everything at the wall when it comes to features. Well, that's the theory. In practice, the XG32UQWMS has an awful lot of the stuff you'd want from a gaming display.

The one obvious omission is USB-C connectivity. But then that's not an unambiguously gaming-adjacent feature, albeit it is desirable for use with a gaming laptop and likewise if you're planning on sharing this monitor between a gaming rig and, perhaps, a work laptop.

Anyway, apart from the LG-supplied OLED panel itself, there's one little extra that's worth mentioning first. Along with the 240 Hz available at the OLED panel's native 4K resolution, there's also a 1080p dual mode running at fully 480 Hz.

Yes, these kinds of dual mode features are increasingly common on 4K gaming monitors. But given the Strix branding and relatively competitive pricing, not to mention the fact that not many OLED 4K monitors have yet offered it, you still might not have expected it on this particular model.

As for other specifications, this Asus represents a step up in terms of brightness compared with previous 32-inch 4K monitors with LG OLED models. The full-screen rating is now 330 nits, up from 275 nits on earlier models.

Asus is also quoting fully 1,500 nits for peak HDR brightness in a small window. Notably, both of those figures are well up on the 300 nits and 1,000 nits, respectively, that MSI claims for the MPG 322UR X24.

That MSI model uses the latest QD-OLED 32-inch 4K panel from Samsung. So, on paper at least, this new LG panel tech seems to have the edge over Samsung. For what it's worth, both this new Asus and the MSI get VESA DisplayHDR True Black 500 certification. Despite all that, the MSI is quite a bit more expensive, at $1,099.

There are a few other upsides beyond mere brightness that come with this latest LG Tandem OLED generation. First, there's a glossy panel coating. That's not to everyone's taste, but it certainly heightens one of the main strengths of OLED tech, namely contrast.

There's also more colour performance, now up to 99.5% of the DCI-P3 gamut and much more competitive in that regard with Samsung QD-OLED. Asus also says this generation of LG OLED panel tech is 60% more durable in terms of light-emitting lifespan and so should resist burn-in even more robustly, an issue which is covered in any case by the three-year warranty.

What you don't get, however, is true RGB-stripe sub-pixel structure. Confusingly, the "Primary RGB" nomenclature LG applies to this new panel tech refers to the layers of emissive material actually within each subpixel.

The sub-pixel structure itself remains the RGWB or red, green, white, and blue layout seen in many recent OLED panels. Strictly speaking, pure RGB and without the white sub pixel LG adds to boost brightness offers both better rendering precision and superior colour fidelity. For the record, Asus has announced a monitor with LG's new Tandem OLED panel that does have pure RGB-stripe subpixels, the ROG Swift OLED PG32UCWM. But that monitor is not this monitor, and the Swift models always command a much higher price.

Whatever, as is usual for all these OLED panels, response is rated at a startlingly scant 0.03 ms. In short, pixel response is essentially a solved problem with modern OLED panel tech. Rounding out the main features are dual HDMI 2.1 inputs, DisplayPort 1.4, a USB hub and support for G-Sync adaptive refresh technology on Nvidia GPUs and FreeSync on AMD GPUs.

Incidentally, this may be an Asus Strix model and therefore not its most premium offering, but the build quality is still decent. Okay, you miss out on pivoting the panel into portrait mode. But all the other adjustments, including tilt, height and swivel are included and, frankly, it's every bit as well put together as an 8K Asus monitor I happen to have in at the moment that sells for an incredible $8,800.

With all those details covered off, well, it's time to get to the main event. How good does this new LG Tandem OLED panel tech look in 32-inch 4K format and, likewise, how does it stack up against the Samsung QD-OLED competition as represented by the MSI MPG 322UR X24?

Out of the box, it's immediately apparent that this new panel has both more punch and more colour vibrancy that the previous LG-sourced 32-inch 4K OLED panel. But there are caveats.

Subjectively, the full screen brightness is a little disappointing. With a large proportion of the panel being driven hard, it's definitely duller looking, subjectively, than the MSI. If that seems to contradict the paper specs, well, this Asus monitor has to rely on LG's additional white subpixel to hit that 330 nits full-screen figure.

In practice, the white subpixel doesn't automatically boost brightness for colours as opposed to pure white. So, much of the time, that 330 nits rating is a bit notional. As with most OLEDs, you can boost the brightness by disabling the ABL or automatic brightness limiter, which Asus refers to as the Uniform Brightness setting.

However, more than with QD-OLED panels, the overall panel brightness varies substantially depending on how much of the panel is being lit up. It only requires a disappointingly small application window, such as a web browser, showing a predominantly white image, to have the panel dimming quite noticeably.

Even using dark mode for most apps, the panel will quite often dim in a manner that the QD-OLED competition doesn't, not quite. That said, this monitor can still deliver some spectacular visuals for HDR content.

It's at its best when rendering small bright details on a dark background. That's when you'll get the full 1,500 nits and a truly eye-popping experience. That's not the reality for most games, most of the time of course. And for day-to-day gaming I'd give the subjective edge to the MSI monitor and its Samsung panel. It's that little bit more vibrant, that little bit more immersive.

Of course one thing the MSI lacks is a 1080p dual mode. So, how does that factor into the equation? Certainly, this Asus Strix is lightning fast running at 480 Hz. The motion clarity is pretty stupendous ripping your mouse around in an online shooter like Counter-Strike 2, ditto the lack of latency.

The image quality at 1080p is also among the best I've seen in terms of pixel definition on a 32-inch 4K panel running in dual mode. But the thing is, if you're really serious about esports, do you really want to be playing on a 32-inch monitor?

I suppose you could mimic the apparent size of the preferred 24-inch monitor by pushing this thing further away. But I'm not totally convinced that's a satisfactory solution for someone who plays loads of online shooters. And if you don't, I can't see you using the dual mode much.

What I can say for sure is that I still give the slight edge to Samsung's QD-OLED tech. Yes, even the latest QD-OLEDs have a slight purple tint in bright ambient light that you entirely sidestep with LG's Tandem OLED panels.

But, overall, QD-OLED still feels noticeably more vibrant and colour rich. Moreover, the variable brightness on this Asus's LG panel when you disable uniform brightness in order to get the best performance is also more noticeable and more distracting.

All that said, there's a price differential to take into account. This Asus goes for $899 to the MSI's $1,099. Personally, I think the MSI is worth the extra $200 for a bit more subjective pop and USB-C connectivity. But the value proposition is certainly very tight between the two. And if you don't care about USB-C but would like the 1080p 480 Hz dual-mode feature, well, the Asus ROG Strix OLED XG32UQWMS is pretty compelling.

Is this the monitor cashed-up PC gamers have been waiting for? At last, a 39-inch ultrawide with decent pixel density thanks to its 5K2K resolution, plus the latest LG OLED panel knowhow? The new LG UltraGear Evo GX9 39GX950B certainly sounds pretty sweet, even if it also costs a pretty penny at $1,799 or £1,549.

The sordid matter of money aside, there's just one snag. The Ultragear 39GX950B does indeed offer LG's hot new Tandem OLED technology. But there's another otherwise almost identical 39-inch 5K2K panel from LG Display that has one notable advantage over this monitor, the inclusion of true RGB-stripe subpixel structure.

It turns out Alienware has announced a monitor using that LG panel, the Alienware AW3926QW, and, to be frank, it looms large over this new model from LG itself. However good it is, you'd really want to see how that Alienware shapes up before pulling the trigger.

Still, the LG Ultragear Evo 39GX950B does look epic on paper. We're talking 5,120 by 2,160 pixels across that 39-inch diagonal. To provide a little context and to define this panel in terms of pixel density and vertical screen size, this is essentially a 32-inch 4K 16:9 monitor taken out to 21:9 aspect and 39 inches.

For many fans of high-end gaming displays, the basic proposition here is just about perfect. The 143 DPI pixel density is enough for crisp fonts and lots of space for day-to-day computing and multitasking while also delivering oodles of in-game image detail.

At the same time, the ultrawide aspect and huge 39-inch panel size makes for epic immersion. Then add in the latest LG Tandem OLED panel tech and, well, you get the idea. This thing promises to be a bit special.

Beyond the basic form factor, of course, there are plenty of other details to absorb. In terms of brightness, ever a key OLED metric, LG claims 335 nits full screen and 1,500 peak HDR in a small window. Those figures are as good as PC OLED monitors currently get.

Speaking of HDR, the 39GX950B has VESA DisplayHDR True Black 500 certification, which is a hallmark of the latest LG Tandem OLED panels. Response comes in at 0.03 ms, which is standard for pretty much all current OLED panels and miles faster than any LCD-based monitor.

As for refresh, at the 5K2K native the 39GX950B tops out at 165 Hz. However, it supports various dual-mode alternative resolutions, the fastest of which can achieve 330 Hz. That's fairly nippy by any sensible measure, though it's pretty hard to imagine anyone really serious about esports and online shooters going for a huge ultrawide like this.

Having said that, the 39GX950B does offer the option of running at 1080p and 330 Hz in a 24.5-inch window, which pretty neatly mimics the preferred form factor for esports. The image quality is pretty clunky and pixellated, as it is in all of the dual modes. And I'm not totally convinced that many esports fans will actually want to play like that.

It certainly looks pretty odd to have a small 24.5-inch section of the huge panel active and rest fully blacked out. But there's no question it works and means this monitor is a thoroughly versatile gaming tool.

If the downscaling support is comprehensive with this panel, so too is the upscaling. Obviously, some kind of upscaling is now pretty much standard with any remotely recent graphics card, in the form of Nvidia's DLSS, AMD's FSR or even Intel's XeSS. But LG has included its own "AI" upscaling functionality with the 39GX950B via an integrated image processor. But hold that thought, we'll come back to how effective it is and how it might compare with GPU scaling in a moment.

Rounding out the speeds and feeds, you get HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 2.1 and USB-C connectivity, the latter with 90 W of power delivery for single-cable connectivity to a laptop, albeit a gaming laptop will typically need rather more than that.

Last and certainly not least on the specs, the panel has a matte anti-glare coating rather than glossy and a mercifully gentle 1500R curve. Most people know if they are glossy or matte fans, but suffice to say that the heavy majority of current OLED gaming monitors are glossy.

One further detail involves the warranty. Where most big monitor brands offer three-year cover, including burn-in, LG is only offering two years. That's disappointing on several levels. For starters, LG Display, the subsidiary of the sprawling LG empire that makes the actual OLED panel (as opposed to LG Electronics, which makes this monitor), says its new Tandem OLED panel tech is more durable than previous generations. So, why not back it with a three-year warranty?

Moreover, given the hefty asking price of around $1,799 or £1,549, the thought of being on your own when it comes to burn-in after just two years is pretty off putting. That alone makes this monitor tricky to recommend.

But let's park that caveat for a moment and consider this monitor's performance. What's it actually like? Well, it's definitely punchier than monitors based on LG's previous WOLED panel generations. Oddly, it's also a more consistent performer than the Asus ROG Strix XG32UQWMS I reviewed recently.

I say "odd" because that Asus uses essentially a 32-inch 4K version of the same LG Tandem OLED panel tech. But I found the brightness variability on the Asus to be awfully distracting if you disabled the uniform brightness feature in order to maximise performance.

The Ultragear 39GX950B does still suffer from that issue, and probably more than comparable OLED monitors based on Samsung QD-OLED tech. But not enough for it to be a major flaw. Overall, the full-screen brightness is pretty decent and this panel can actually be too bright if, for instance, you tend to run most applications in dark mode and then have a third of the screen lit up by a bright browser window.

Of course, that's a good problem to have. Turning brightness down is simple. There's not much you can do, on the other hand, if max brightness isn't good enough.

So, as a desktop general computing panel running in SDR mode, this LG is pretty sweet. Fonts are sharp and crisp, there's loads of desktop space for multitasking, and the panel is plenty bright enough. If you really want to split hairs, I think the latest Samsung QD-OLED panels still look a touch more vibrant and saturated. But it's not a huge delta.

For HDR content, meanwhile, it's likewise mostly good news. LG's OSD menu is a bit baffling, but once you've got everything properly set up, the results can be spectacular, especially on a panel this size.

As ever with an OLED panel, it's at its best showing small bright details on a dark background. Neon lights in a nightclub scene, fireworks in the night sky, a large flame burning in the inky darkness, that kind of thing. Then the full impact of the 1,500 nit peak HDR brightness really hits home.

It's a touch less impressive for outdoor daytime video and game scenes, where the full-screen brightness limitations can leave it looking just a tiny bit underwhelming. To be clear, it's far better than earlier LG OLED panel generations in that regard. But, again, my preference for that kind of rendering remains Samsung QD-OLED.

That said, it's an open question just how good LG's new RGB-stripe panel as used by the aforementioned Alienware will be by comparison. In theory, and because it doesn't rely on an additional white subpixel to boost brightness, that RGB-stripe panel should have superior colour saturation and look more vibrant. Exactly how that pans out, well, we'll have to wait and see.

While we're talking HDR visuals, the SDR calibration in the best HDR mode is pretty wonky to the point where you'd never leave it in that mode, day-to-day. You can actually get decent SDR visuals in one of the other HDR modes. But then that compromises HDR performance. Long story short, you're going to have to switch monitor modes depending on the kind of content you are viewing, which is a bit of an annoyance.

As for the AI upscaling feature, it's awfully hit and miss. For instance, it doesn't work at all at 3,440 by 1,440, which you'd think would be the ideal alternative setting to 5,120 by 2,160 native in terms of knocking the res down to release some performance.

At other resolutions like 1080p, meanwhile, it only works at certain refresh rates. Once enabled, yes it does make things a bit crisper, but it's really not comparable to DLSS or FSR. In short, in its current form the built-in AI upscaling feels pretty underbaked.

Still, if you add panel speed to this monitor's other qualities, the overall experience is frankly epic. It's so huge and so super sharp and so immersive and just so awesome. And yet I can't help having a few reservations.

First, I'd love to see the latest Samsung QD-OLED tech applied to a panel this size and resolution. I'd likewise like to see this monitor with a glossy coating. That could be fantastic in terms of heightening the sense of visual pop and contrast.

And, again, I'd really want to see that upcoming Alienware with its LG Tandem OLED RGB-stripe panel before pulling the trigger, especially as the Alienware looks like it could be as much as $600 cheaper.

Then there's the disappointing two-year warranty. It really is hard to look past that at this price point. All of which leaves me in a state of cognitive dissonance with this monitor. In some ways, it's the best gaming monitor I've ever seen. And yet it's ultimately impossible to issue a strong buy recommendation. At the very least, anyone considering the LG UltraGear Evo GX9 39GX950B really has to wait and see how that cheaper RGB-stirpe Alienware turns out.

The plant will produce 10 million OLED panels this year alone, according to FlatpanelsHD, and significantly more in the second year of its operation. The plant took just over two years to build, cost roughly 63 million RMB (around $9.3 billion) and resides in Chengdu.

Representatives from Lenovo, Asus, MSI, Oppo, Vivo, Honor, ZTE, Transsion, Xiaomi and Nothing reportedly attended the opening ceremony, indicating that each will be using the OLED panels produced.

One of the first is said to be a 14-inch OLED panel for Asus, Acer, and Lenovo laptops. The high-end products (being 8.6-gen offerings) will feature stacked tandem panel layers utilising Low-Temperature Polycrystalline Oxide (LTPO), and support 240 Hz VRR refresh rates.

At first, the focus will be on small to medium-sized OLED panels, with no timelines currently announced for TV-sized variants. The plant will also have competition, as Samsung Display booted up a similar 8.6-gen facility in South Korea earlier this year. TCL and Visionox also have 8.6-gen OLED panel plants in the works, so it looks like it won't be long before we're flooded with even more OLED displays from a variety of sources.

This is likely a very good thing for those of us with a tasty new OLED in mind, particularly in our next gaming laptops. Vast numbers of new, high-specced panels entering the market will hopefully lead to some very competitive pricing, and we've already seen some smaller OLED gaming monitors dropping to much more reasonable money over the last few months.

Bring on the OLED pricing revolution, that's what I say. It's been long enough coming, at the very least.

And for this sort of cash, I think it's time those of you on 1080p displays start thinking about an upgrade. Yes, it'll be slightly more taxing on your graphics card, so that's worth taking into account. But otherwise, the leap from an old 1080p panel to a shiny new 1440p model can be surprisingly significant in terms of your gaming experience.

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I've tried to make this a wide-ranging selection, so I've found a 100 Hz MSI IPS display for $130, a 180 Hz 27-inch Acer Nitro model for $160, and even a speedy 200 Hz Gigabyte panel for $180, among others.

Each of these gaming monitors represents fantastic value right now, and means you can pick up a relatively cheap upgrade for your gaming setup in 2026. Which, let's face it, is something of a rarity these days. To the pixelmobile!

Cheap 1440p gaming monitor deals

Nearly, that is, but not quite. The glimmer of hope in the barren wasteland that used to be affordable PC gaming? That'll be monitors. They keep getting cheaper and better at the same time, a bit like computer chips used to. In fact, in the last few months I've reviewed the most affordable examples yet of two cutting-edge display technologies, mini-LED and OLED.

Both can now be had for under $350 in 27-inch 1440p format. Representing mini-LED is the remarkable KTC M27T6S, a monitor so good it actually shifted my view on mini-LED technology in general.

Stepping up for OLED is the Alienware AW2726DM. Alienware has form when it comes to bringing OLED display technology in at a lower price than the competition and the AW2726DM makes what many gamers see as the ultimate display technology more accessible than ever before.

We're not quite at price parity, of course. The mini-LED KTC monitor comes in around $290 to the Alienware OLED's $350. But they're close enough for cross shopping to be pretty plausible. So the question is, should you make budget mini-LED or budget OLED your PC gaming panel of choice?

What are OLED and mini-LED?

First up, it's worth understanding just how dramatically different these two display technologies are despite the fact that they both exist for essentially the same reason. The name of the game for both mini-LED and OLED, after all, is improved lighting control.

What you might call traditional PC monitors in the flat-panel era have typically used LCD technology with a big, dumb monolithic backlight. OK, you could vary the brightness of that backlight. But that isn't much help if you want to display both bright and dark image elements at the same time.

Mini-LED is actually still an LCD-based display tech. But it attempts to fix the lighting issue courtesy of an array of individually addressable backlight zones allowing different brightness levels across the screen. Current mini-LED monitors usually have in the order of 1,000 to 2,000 such zones, enabling much better lighting control.

Of course, the ultimate in lighting control would be on a literally per-pixel basis, with each pixel acting as its own light source. And that's exactly what OLED panels deliver. Indeed, it's worth noting just how much more precise OLED is than mini-LED in that regard.

While the KTC M27T6S's 1,152 mini-LED dimming zones might sound like a lot, the fundamental resolution of the backlight is extremely low, something in the order of 40 by 25 zones. With a native image resolution of 2,560 by 1,440, the result is over 3,000 pixels in each zone. But with OLED, each of a 1440p panel's 3.7 million pixels has individual lighting control. That's a huge difference.

OLED panel tech comes with other fringe benefits, too. They have much faster pixel response, not far off two orders of magnitude faster. LCD panels generally come in at about 1 ms claimed response, while OLED is typically rated at 0.03 ms. OLED also has better viewing angles.

Not everything goes OLEDs way, however. Full-screen brightness is a notable weakness and it just so happens that's something mini-LED does very well. Even the very latest OLED monitors top out under 350 nits full-screen, while some mini-LED monitors can exceed 1,000 nits.

OLED also comes with the worry of burn-in. The evidence is building that OLED burn-in is something that the vast majority of users won't have to worry about for many years. But it is a real problem and something you don't have to think about at all with mini-LED.

What's better for gaming, budget mini-LED or budget OLED?

On paper, the Alienware AW2726DM looks like the faster, more responsive monitor. It's got a slight edge when it comes to refresh, hitting 240 Hz to the KTC M27T6S's 200 Hz, or 210 Hz if you want to use the slightly silly "overclocking" feature.

The Alienware's Samsung-supplied QD-OLED panel also offers massively faster 0.03 ms claimed pixel response. The KTC's IPS panel is only good for 1 ms, and even that's only for the less demanding MPRT metric as opposed to the Alienware's grey-to-grey rating.

In practice, the subjective gap isn't nearly as big as the objective specifications. Yes, the Alienware is faster. But the difference isn't nearly as dramatic as 1 ms versus 0.03 ms would have you expect. That says a lot about how far IPS panel tech has come and the fact that the KTC has sourced a pretty nippy example of the IPS panel breed.

Put it this way. If the KTC M27T6S was superior in most other ways, you wouldn't take the Alienware AW2726DM just for its speed. It is faster, but that speed isn't a killer blow. A possible exception here is esports, where refresh is king in terms of latency. But then if competitive online shooters are your absolute priority, you don't want either of these monitors. You're better off with the fastest 1080p panel you can find for this kind of money, and it's probably going to be a TN.

Instead, where the Alienware really delivers is HDR visuals, albeit with some caveats. The Alienware AW2726DM is actually only rated at 400 nits for peak HDR brightness, where the KTC will hit 1,000 nits. But the way we dumb humans perceive brightness isn't as simple as comparing specs.

Contrast matters just as much for perceived brightness as outright brightness. And the Alienware absolutely nails contrast. It can do a single pixel hitting 400 nits right next to another putting out basically zero nits. That means it's far, far better at achieving precision lighting across the whole image and a subjective sense of contrast. Small, bright details actually look brighter because they are surrounded by greater contrast.

In other words, OLED black levels are actually, well, black. The go-to test that really emphasises the difference here is a starfield panning across the display. The Alienware's OLED panel has no problem perfectly lighting individual stars as they scan across the sky.

Mini-LED monitors always involve some kind of compromise with that kind of image. The KTC M27T6S actually does the starfield test better than any other mini-LED monitor I've seen, which is pretty remarkable when you consider it's a budget model. KTC has done a really nice job on the M27T6S's backlight algorithm, that's for sure. But it's still nowhere near as good as OLED.

If all that seems a little abstract, what this all translates into is a much more natural and immersive game world using an OLED panel. There's no backlight bleed, no glowing at the edges of the screen, just what feels like a window into a stunning game world.

The Alienware's glossy panel coating actually heightens that sense, it's so clear and crisp. KTC has gone for a fairly coarse matte anti-glare coating and it both slightly softens the image and further compromises perceived black levels and contrast. In darker game scenes, the Alienware QD-OLED therefore absolutely hammers the KTC mini-LED.

However, ramp up the brightness and the tables are somewhat turned. There are some desert scenes in Cyberpunk 2077 that really show what mini-LED can do with HDR enabled. The KTC M27T6S absolutely pops, it renders the afternoon so bright that it almost hurts your eyes.

Running the two monitors side-by-side, the Alienware OLED looks awfully dull by comparison, it simply runs out of pop when you try to light up a large proportion of the panel. Meanwhile, the KTC never looks anything but retina-searingly bright.

The thing is, however, the QD-OLED panel's deficiencies are much less obvious in isolation than they are when you've got the super-bright mini-LED monitor sitting right next to it. Your eyes adjust to the light levels, to at least some degree cancelling out the objective brightness advantage of the KTC. On the other hand, you never stop seeing the washed out black tones, the lack of contrast, the glow at the edges of the panel, with an IPS panel, even one with a mini-LED backlight.

What's better for daily computing?

First, let's square away something that is often overstated. Just as OLED's speed isn't quite as massive an advantage in the real world as you might expect, the mini-LED KTC M27T6S's font rendering is not, in truth, dramatically better than the QD-OLED Alienware AW2726DM.

Yes, that QD-OLED panel has a suboptimal triangular subpixel structure, as opposed to conventional RGB-stripe. And yes the KTC's fonts are clearer, but only marginally. The bottom line is that neither monitor has particularly good pixel density and even the KTC doesn't render terribly nice fonts. If that's what you care about, you need something like a 27-inch 4K panel or even a 5K model.

For daily computing, both monitors are likewise plenty fast enough. So, it's more the static image quality where the differences lie. As ever, the QD-OLED Alienware has much better black levels and contrast, the mini-LED KTC can run brighter.

There are caveats to all that, however. For starters, there's the question of how bright you actually want a monitor, day-to-day. Arguably, the KTC is too bright for daily comfort in SDR content when set to full reheat.

But what if you do tend to prefer a really punchy looking monitor? Does the QD-OLED Alienware fall short? The simple answer is yes, but it can be mitigated. In SDR mode, the Alienware only hits 200 nits. However, if you switch to HDR mode and then max out the SDR content brightness in the Windows Display Settings menu, you can get pretty good results.

It works best if you prefer to run apps and view websites in dark mode. As with pretty much all OLEDs, the more of the screen you light up in HDR mode, the lower the peak brightness you can achieve. With both monitors running Windows in dark mode, HDR enabled and SDR brightness maxed out, the brightness gap is substantially closed and the Alienware feels really very punchy. And at the same time, it retains its contrast and black level advantage.

The exception to that involves the characteristic purple tint of QD-OLED panels in bright ambient light. This can be problematic during the day, if you, for instance, situate the Alienware right near a big window that lets in lots of natural light. In that scenario, the QD-OLED will also look a little overly warm in terms of colour temperature, while the KTC's IPS panel looks more neutral.

So, what's the best budget panel technology overall?

This is going to sound like a massive cop out, but much of this comes down to personal preference. No question, there are some objective pros and cons. The Alienware and its QD-OLED panel is definitely faster, it has better black levels and contrast, plus superior viewing angles.

The mini-LED KTC, on the other hand, is clearly the brighter of the two and renders fonts more precisely thanks to its RGB-stripe subpixel structure. But what you, personally, make of those pros and cons will be another matter.

The fact that it's not an absolute slam dunk for one or other of the two options is in itself telling. But if you absolutely twisted my arm for a verdict, it would go something like this. It all comes down to brightness.

The QD-OLED option is better in almost every other way, so the question is what you make of its outright brightness. In standard SDR mode, I'd say the brightness of the Alienware AW2726DM is problematic. If I had to use it in that mode all the time, I'd still take it over the KTC M27T6S because of the far superior contrast, black levels, speed and viewing angles. But it would be a close run thing.

On the other hand, if I am allowed to switch on HDR mode, ramp up the SDR brightness in Windows and view basically all my apps in dark mode, then it's a much clearer win for the Alienware and thus for cheap OLED tech. But there would be times in games when it looked just a little bit dull and I'd know, deep down, the KTC and its sizzling mini-LED backlight would have given a more vibrant experience in that moment. As ever, you pays your money and you takes your choice. Good luck!