To help you pick out the right one for you we’ve looked at monitors ranging from small to extra large, with resolutions from 1080p to 4K, and features like frame syncing and adjustable stands. We’ve tested them all, measuring everything from the color gamut and brightness to response times, so we can be confident when we tell you that one display is better than another. We’ve also identified specific use cases that make a monitor a better fit for one person or another. This is important because when you’re spending long hours focusing on work, school, gaming, or even professional graphics work, the right monitor can be the difference between comfort and awkward inconvenience. The best monitors provide a clear view of your work, improve the ergonomics of your desk and enhance your daily productivity. So whether you’re at home or on the road, tackling work, side projects, or the latest games, here are some of the best monitors you can buy. With November right around the corner we’re already rounding up the best Black Friday deals, too!
What are the best monitors?
For general use, we like the Dell SE2719HR. With a solid basic feature set and good performance, this 27-inch Dell 1080p computer monitor is an affordable option that will meet the needs of most users. For something with more of a gaming focus, the Acer XFA240 is a solid performer you can get for under $200, with 1920 x 1080 resolution, excellent color and speedy 144 Hz refresh rate, proving that you don’t need to spend a lot of money for high-quality gaming. The compact HP EliteDisplay S14 is the best portable monitor out there, giving you a second screen to use on the road. Thanks to an included USB-C cable, it’s easy to connect and the lightweight, compact design is easy to carry with a laptop in your bag. For a truly immersive experience, we like curved monitors, and the ViewSonic Elite XG270QC is the best of the bunch. The 27-inch display wraps around to provide perfect viewing angles from edge to edge, making it a great pick for gaming or just dealing with huge spreadsheets. If you want an external display for your MacBook, you’ll be well-served by the Apple Studio Display. It’s a bit pricey and the webcam isn’t great, but this 27-inch 5K display offers a killer sound system and a lot of handy functionality when connected to a Mac. Note that if you don’t connect it to a Mac, it’s basically an overly expensive 5K monitor with a lot of nonfunctional features, so it’s really only ideal for MacBook owners. For the best picture quality you can get, we love the Acer PEO Series ProDesigner PE320QK. Aimed at photographers, and graphic designers who need pixel-perfect images and exacting color, it’s the best monitor for professional users by a long shot. The Alienware AW5520QF is a giant 55-inch OLED gaming monitor that’s big enough to fit in alongside the best TVs. And keep an eye out for new monitors arriving in the next few months like LG’s DualUp monitor.
The best monitors you can buy today
For a monitor that’s great for everyday use and won’t cost an arm and a leg, the Dell SE2719HR is our pick. Sometimes you just need a reliable, inexpensive display, and based on user reviews, this is a great one to get. The 27-inch Dell boasts an IPS panel, so the display will look great from any angle. While it won’t match the resolution of a 4K monitor, the display is still sharp and clear, with vibrant color and deep black levels. With only HDMI and VGA inputs, it’s not ideal for gaming (DisplayPort is better suited to the higher frame rates of a GPU), but most any other use should be ably handled by the 27-inch display, thanks to its minimal lag times and 75Hz refresh rate. An adjustable stand lets you set the angle to your comfort and liking, while the bezels around the display are surprisingly slim. And with a relatively small stand, the footprint of the monitor is compact enough that you won’t have to give up much of your desk space. Heck, with the sleek design and affordable price, you just might pick up two for a dual-screen workspace. For our favorite monitor in terms of function and value, the Dell SE2719HR is the best monitor on our list. The Acer XFA240 demonstrates that excellent full HD monitors don’t need to cost a ton of money. For less than $200, this 1080p monitor delivers accurate colors and more extra features than you’d expect, including a full vertical mode that makes it invaluable as a second screen. The monitor works well for both gaming and productivity, with a 144 Hz refresh rate and a variety of ports, including a DVI input for older machines. The XFA240 has a few drawbacks, which are normal enough in its price range. Its built-in speakers aren’t worth using, its menus are confusing and its construction feels a little cheap. On the other hand, it’s more than worth its asking price, considering how well it displays games, and how pretty the colors are once you do a little tweaking. Read our full Acer XFA240 review. The 27-inch Studio Display ($1,599) is a great 5K monitor, one that delivers a lot of the value of Apple’s $5,000 Pro Display XDR in a much more affordable (though hardly cheap) package. Like the Pro Display XDR, the Studio Display offers useful features for creative professionals, including a range of reference modes and P3 wide color gamut support. But it also has unique features that any Mac user can enjoy, like a killer (for a monitor) six-speaker sound system and a 12MP ultrawide camera that supports Apple’s Center Stage feature, courtesy of an onboard A13 Bionic chip. With its ultrawide camera, fantastic speaker setup and gorgeous 27-inch 5K screen, this is easily one of the best monitors for MacBook Pro owners seeking an external display. Read our full Apple Studio Display review. The ViewSonic Elite XG270QC is a large curved monitor with an extremely bright screen. While it will take up a lot of your desk space with its tasteful triangular base, the tradeoff is well worth it. You get a vibrantly colored 27-inch 1440p screen, with a refresh rate of 165 Hz. For gamers with powerful GPUs, this means quad HD gaming with the potential for more than 100 frames per second in each game. Aside from the XG270QC’s price and size, there’s very little to recommend against. It has comprehensive menu options, plenty of ports and a variety of handy presets for many different types of games and applications. Whether you need to play the latest games or enjoy a large library of streaming media, the XG270QC’s bright, bold, beautiful screen is the right tool for the job. Read our full ViewSonic Elite XG270QC review. The Acer PEO Series ProDesigner PE320QK is a widescreen 4K monitor that’s made for professionals who demand the best color and accuracy they can get for working with images, video and graphics. One of the best monitors overall for serious work, the PE320QK comes calibrated from the factory, offering superb accuracy right out of the box, and comes with a matte display and built-in display hood that eliminates the glare and ambient light that might skew color perception. This excellent display is made with pros in mind, and also boasts a 100,000,000:1 contrast ratio plus support for HDR 10 and DCI-P3, along with AMD FreeSync. It checks all the right boxes for letting you do your best work, without the fuss of pro-grade displays that might require extensive calibration to dial in the color quality. Whether you’re a freelancer working from home or one of many in a studio or creative shop, the Acer PEO Series ProDesigner PE320QK is the best monitor for creative professionals. Read our full Acer PEO Series ProDesigner PE320QK review. The Alienware AW5520QF 55-Inch OLED gaming monitor puts a killer OLED display into a TV-like size that’s made for big screen gaming. With a size that toes the line between TV and monitor, the 55-inch display has a highly polished design, a cornucopia of great features and key gaming monitor features such as DisplayPort connectivity and fast 120Hz refresh rates. And while it’s technically not a TV, it also comes with a slick remote control to adjust the picture settings and navigate menus from the comfort of your couch. But it’s not just a TV-sized monitor, it’s also a superb OLED gaming display. The Alienware boasts a huge color gamut and accuracy that rivals some of the best TVs on the market. The AW5520QF’s price will probably scare off folks on a budget, but if you do your PC or console gaming in the living room or want a truly premium monitor, Alienware’s behemoth screen is well-suited to the job. And since a computer can stream almost anything, so you’ll be able to watch, listen to or play whatever you want. Read our full Alienware AW5520QF review. Samsung’s curved 49-inch Odyssey G9 Gaming Monitor is a strong overall performer, but its unwieldy design and sky-high price do not make it ideal for everyone. Boasting top-notch functionality and impressive performance along every metric, the Odyssey G9 is worthy of serious consideration from anyone who can make full use of it. So if you have a high-end graphics card, a spare $1,700 or so, an excess of desk space (or a sizable hunk of wall), a stuffed-to-bursting game library you want to apply a unique (and not always completely complementary) visual spin to, and not much desire to use the monitor for everything else, you probably won’t be disappointed. Plus the next generation of the Odyssey G9 Neo, which replaced the original G9, is tipped to be the world’s first 8K ultrawide curved monitor. Truly astonishing if it comes to fruition. Read our full Samsung Odyssey G9 review.
How to choose the best monitor for you
Finding the best monitor can be a confusing experience when you don’t know what to look for. There are a few key details to pay attention to for any monitor, and some specific advice for certain specialized uses. We evaluate every monitor on the same basic criteria, starting with size and resolution. In general, more is better here: the bigger the display and the higher the resolution, the more you can see. We also measure several aspects of picture quality as part of our review process, looking at how many colors the monitor can produce (reported as color gamut) and how accurately it displays each color (reported as a Delta-E rating). Better scores here make for a better display in every instance. Display brightness is another factor, but higher brightness doesn’t always translate into a better display, though it does suggest that a monitor will deliver more vibrant color and may offer HDR (high dynamic range) support. For some uses, like professional graphics work, you’ll need to watch for additional features, and refinements on the basics. If color quality is important in your work, you should look for factory calibrated displays, and pay close attention to the color accuracy and gamut portions of our reviews. You’ll also want to spring for matte-finish panels, displays with shade hoods and adjustable monitor stands that let you find the perfect viewing angle.
Things to consider
Size: A larger monitor is generally a better purchase simply because it offers the most visual real estate, which is better for both full-screen media consumption and split-screen multitasking. Higher resolution is also better, since it allows better detail and lets you see more information in the same screen size. The old phrase “bigger is better” applies to both here, and we recommend opting for larger screens and higher resolution whenever possible. Response time: If you care about playing the latest games under the most optimal conditions, you’ll want to look for a monitor with low response time. This measures how long it takes for the display to respond to what you’re doing, and it’s typically expressed as a measurement (in milliseconds) of how long it takes a pixel on the display to go from one color to another and back again. Unless you’re planning to play games that demand quick reflexes or pinpoint accuracy, you really don’t need to worry about response time. In general, anything under 10ms is good, though for gaming under 5ms is better. Many gaming monitors promise response times as low as 1ms, which is about as good as you can hope for. Refresh rate: Refresh rate measures how many times per second your monitor is able to to draw a new image. It’s measured in Hertz, and again if you’re not planning on doing a lot of intense gaming you probably don’t need to worry about this very much. Most monitor achieve refresh rates of 60Hz or less, and that’s plenty for watching videos or getting work done. However, if you want to play games at higher than 60 frames per second, or you’re planning on working with video at framerates higher than 60 fps, you’ll want a monitor with higher refresh rates. 120Hz is good, 144Hz is better, and there are even gaming monitors that offer refresh rates of 240Hz or higher.
Finding a good gaming monitor
Gaming also has its own unique concerns. When the difference between victory and defeat can come down to split second timing, you can’t afford long lag times. If you want one of the best gaming monitors, we recommend finding a display that offers response times of 15 milliseconds or less. Smoother gameplay is also part of what you pay for in a gaming monitor, so pay attention to what frame syncing technology a monitor supports. AMD FreeSync and Nvidia G-Sync both allow the monitor and the graphics card to coordinate the refresh rate of the screen with the output of the GPU, but they approach this problem in slightly different ways, and a given monitor will likely provide support for only one or the other format. If your gaming rig uses Nvidia cards, you’ll want a G-Sync capable monitor, while AMD-based systems will play nicely with a FreeSync display.
Choosing a secondary monitor
For a secondary monitor to use on the road, you’ll want something that’s small enough to carry with your laptop, and simple enough to set up and use within moments. For this, we recommend choosing one with a USB-C port for connectivity, as that allows the monitor to use a single cable for both video signal and power. While the basic advice of “bigger is better” does still have some application here, it’s also worth considering how well a portable monitor matches the size of your laptop display, since a larger display panel will have different dimensions than your laptop, and may not fit as easily into your backpack or laptop bag.
How we test the best monitors
When seeking out the best monitors, we test every display we review with our Klein K 10-A colorimeter, paired with testing software. We use this high-quality scope to measure the display’s brightness levels, color gamut and color accuracy. Brightness is measured in nits, or candela per square metre (cd/m2). More nits means a higher brightness, which translates into clearer picture, brighter color and usually a more realistic looking image. For basic monitors, we expect a display backlight to produce between 2-300 nits of brightness, though HDR (high dynamic range) displays will often exceed that with a higher maximum brightness. However, brightness alone doesn’t make for a great display, since some monitors will wash out colors or offer inconsistent backlight that varies in some portions of the display panel. HDR also presents its own testing challenges, as new capabilities and standards allow a monitor to offer higher peak luminance than our standard tests will register. When in doubt, read an individual review for a discussion of these issues, and how an individual product will handle each. Color is the other big concern for displays. Monitors that produce more colors have a larger color gamut, as measured under the sRGB or P3 color standards. This is presented as a percentage, with higher percentages indicating more colors. Color accuracy is the other aspect of color, which lets us measure how closely a monitor can reproduce a given shade. This is presented as a Delta-E rating, which indicates the level of deviation from perfect. Zero is a perfect score, while higher numbers indicate lower accuracy. We also test a display’s response time, using a Leo Bodnar input lag tester. This device measures how long it takes a signal to travel from a source device to the monitor and show up on the display. Measured in milliseconds, this number is most useful for gamers and anyone that needs immediate onscreen feedback from any input. Finally, every monitor we test is also used for web browsing, streaming video and gaming, as well as the writing of the review itself. Our anecdotal testing will often allow us to note the quirks of a display that lab testing might miss, whether it’s difficulty in scaling content or issues with backlight or color reproduction.
