MSI has nailed the best budget Prime Day gaming monitor with this $120 144Hz IPS display

MSI gaming monitor — (Image credit: MSI)

High refresh rate monitors at this price don't often come with response times as low as the MSI Optix G272. There are a lot of monitor deals popping up for this year's Prime Day, but few can beat the value of this $119 monitor on Walmart.

The MSI Optix G272 is an 1080p IPS panel with a mediocre contrast ratio of 1000:1, but those aren't dealbreakers given that this monitor can reach up to a 144Hz refresh rate and has a 1ms response time. Rtings tested it on the "Fast" response rate setting and found the pixels to swap colors, not just grey-to-grey, in 8.6 ms, which is significantly faster than most panels at this price. This means that there's very little blur on fast-moving objects, especially in FPS games.

The monitor doesn't come with AMD's FreeSync or Nvidia's G-Sync adaptive refresh rate technologies, but it does have Adaptive Sync. Adaptive Sync works on a DisplayPort connection with a lot of AMD cards and recent Nvidia cards. You can check if your Nvidia graphics card supports it here.

Walmart - a Prime Day alternative for affordable PC gear

For non-PC gaming uses, this monitor can also hit 120Hz for consoles over its HDMI 1.4 port, and it has a headphone jack if you need to keep your setup simple.

The MSI Optix G272 is an impressive monitor at a price that's under what you'd find other 1080p 144Hz panels at. It typically runs for about $155, which puts the current price around $36 below the norm, and right now, that makes it one of the best monitor deals available.

Tyler has covered videogames and PC hardware for 15 years. He regularly spends time playing and reporting on games like Diablo 4, Elden Ring, Overwatch 2, and Final Fantasy 14. While his specialty is in action RPGs and MMOs, he's driven to cover all sorts of games whether they're broken, beautiful, or bizarre.