Gadgetory

welcome back to hard Rome box today it's time to talk about the best monitors you can buy right now we last updated you guys on the best monitors at the start of 2018 well after a year's worth of testing and plenty of new product launches it's about time we give our recommendations once again for the best displays out there we've tailored these picks specifically for the hard Rome boxed audience so across most categories we're focusing on gaming great displays and products that provide the best bang for your buck it's quite hard to determine which monitors will give the best value out there as there are so many competing options and prices can fluctuate a fair bit but I reckon these are some really solid picks our focus is also primarily on the US market considering the United States is by far our biggest audience on the channel so we've worked out pricing based on what's available at retailers like Amazon and Newegg usually these picks are also good value in other regions like Australia and Europe but it's worth exploring options locally if you do happen to find any ripping deals feel free to leave them in the comments below anyway let's get on with our picks we're starting here with 1080p displays which remained the best pic for those on a budget there are loads of excellent options below $200 these days everything from your dirt-cheap $80 1080p 60 hertz displays to a collection of high refresh monitors sorting out the good from the bad in this price category is certainly a bit of a challenge what we settled on here is the viola Tec GN 24c which at $199 is one of the best value monitors on the market right now it's a 24 inch 1080p 144 hertz curved va display and since we reviewed it a couple of months ago it's actually come down in price to now compete strongly with TN options offering similar specs so there's a few reasons we've chosen this particular display for 124 inches is the perfect size for 1080p 27-inch options are also a good value but 1080 P pixel density isn't really in your favor secondly 144 Hertz is the sweet spot for value sure you can save around $50 opting for a 75 Hertz display instead but for gaming the difference between 75 and 144 Hertz is large enough to justify the price difference and it gives you room to grow as you upgrade your PC's hardware down the track the big choice comes between VA and TN panel quality the AOC g2 460 PF is a good choice at $180 offering a TN panel with similar specs to the vo-tech tree and 24 C but it's definitely worth spending the extra $20 to get the GN 24 CSV a panel you'll get deeper blacks a much better contrast ratio better color performance and superior viewing angles response times aren't typically the strongest aspect to a VA panel but the GN 24 C is one of the fastest videos we've tested the only major downside to budgetary pay displays is factory calibration the GN 24 C isn't amazing in this regard and neither are most other sub $200 monitors however it's not bad enough to significantly affect gaming and can be corrected through calibration it's also worth mentioning the June 24 C has free sync with low framerate compensation and an attractive design making it our go-to choice in this product category another tricky category to make a recommendation in is the 1440p category this year in particular because there's been a lot of new releases and especially a lot of price reductions for certain types of monitors in fact this year is really the first year that high refresh 1440p monitors have become affordable and easy to recommend with some great options around the 300 dollar market depending on the size I'm going to make two recommendations here because I think 1440p is well suited to both the 27-inch and 32 inch sizes and which size you're after is probably going to be a personal preference thing so 27 inches I'm recommending the new Samsung JG 50 and then at 32 inches the pic Co px 3 to 9 both of these are 1440p high refresh VA monitors with high refresh VA once again providing the best bang for your buck the Samsung JG 50 can often be found at $300 as a 144 Hertz curved monitor at 27 inches with free sync while the pic Co px 3 to 9 is a steal at just $350 for a 32 inch 165 Hertz flat monitor also with free sync support like with the 1080p category for gamers these days it's really not worth getting a 1440p 60 Hertz monitor you only be saving around 50 dollars even if you don't have the GPU horsepower to hit high frame rates at 1440p getting a high refresh monitor now will last you for years and will make it easier to justify GPU upgrades if you're like most people and won't upgrade your monitor for five years at this point it would just be silly not to go high refresh especially with prices having dropped several hundred dollars in the last year and a half in our testing we found the px 3 to 9 to be a strong contender across our performance metrics and right now having come down in price by nearly a hundred bucks in just a few months since we reviewed it it's the best bang for your buck monitor on the entire market in our opinion the Samsung JG 50 is also a great buy for those after a tweet 7 inch panel with both the Samsung and pixel options offering the usual benefits of VA panels like deep blacks great viewing angles good contrast ratios and vibrant colors ultra wide monitors are another category that has seen significant price reductions across 2018 for some of the best options in fact right now it's possible to get a 34 inch 34 40 by 1440 21:9 ultra-wide monitor with free sync support and a 100 Hertz refresh rate for less than $500 which is such a great price for those specs the monitor available at that price is the vo-tech GN 34 C which comes in a few dollars under $500 u.s. offering almost the complete package for a 21-9 display right now it's got a 1440p class resolution a fast hundred hertz refresh rate it uses VA technology so you're getting all the usual VA benefits like great colors and great contrast and with an 1800 eye curvature it's curved nicely for gaming we've tested the VA panel the GN 34 seat uses in the past and found it to hold up well across our metrics these days you can get 120 Hertz IPS panels and a similar size and resolution but the price increase for an extra 20 Hertz simply isn't worth it and in many respects the VA pound used in the GN 34c is better anyway so really it's very hard to pass on the screaming value of the GN 34c offers one thing I will note is the GN 34 seat is set to be replaced shortly by the Newark GN 34 C X however the specifications are almost identical and the June 34 c x will also be available for $500 so really once again biotech is giving by some of the best value displays on the market right now my recommendation in the 4k monitor category is very different the other three categories we've just covered the reason for this is I don't think 4k monitors are a great option for gamers right now most gamers will be better off with a 1440p high refresh display the resolution won't be quite as good but the high refresh rate will make a much bigger impact your gaming than the slight quality improvement moving to 4k would provide yeah you can get 4k 144 Hertz monitors these days but they're simply too expensive for most people so right now 4k monitors are better suited to professionals and content creators that don't really require high refresh rates and the best 4k professional monitor on the market right now is the dell ultrasharp you p27 18q this monitor seriously has everything it's a 27 inch 4k IPS display with true 10-bit color support not 8-bit plus frc it supports 100% coverage of both srgb and Adobe RGB gamuts plus 97.7% coverage of DCI p3 which places it among the best monitors for gamut coverage and because it's part of Dells premier color line it's factory calibrated to a delta 8 of less than 2.0 and it supports custom color profiles you can create yourself but wait there's more the UPP 27:18 cue is a proper hgr monitor it supports up to a thousand nits of peak brightness and has a 384 zone F Ald backlight for excellent HDR contrast ratios when you combine that with a wide color gamut and true tempered support it's one of the best hgr monitors on the market right now and allows creators to work not only with accurate srgb colors but with accurate HDR as well of course it doesn't come cheap with an MSRP of $2000 and a current price on Dells website of around fifteen hundred and fifty US dollars but good professional monitors don't come cheap and this is one of the best I'd also recommend the a sous Pro art PA 32 you see - K as a 32 inch 4k true HDR monitor for professionals it's a bit larger than the U P 27:18 Q but it's also more expensive selling for about $500 more if you need the extra size it could be a good option but my preference right now would be to save 500 doors and get the smaller dough monitor instead this final category is really only for those that have money to burn or we're specifically looking for my recommendation for HDR monitors unfortunately the state of the HDR monitor ecosystem at the moment isn't great there are lots of monitors that claim to be actually are compatible but ultimately don't deliver a great HDR experience this is either because brightness is too low contrast isn't good enough or color gamut isn't higher than SDR there are a surprising number of monitors where all three factors are issues and even more monitors where at least one of the three factors doesn't reach the required standard for HDR this makes shopping for an HDR monitor extremely difficult because it's often unclear which will deliver a good HDR experience or which merely have fake HDR considering the HJ monitor ecosystem is not nearly as mature as the HDR TV ecosystem chances are a monitor advertised as supporting HDR will only deliver a fake HD I experience even popular models like Samsung's see HD 70 aren't really up to scratch as far as HDR is concerned so my advice for most people interested in HDR monitors is don't bother the risk of fake HDR is too high and within a year weird likely to have much better HDR offerings on the market it's simply too early to jump into the HDR ecosystem and I'd hate for anyone to buy an expensive HDR monitor only to discover later that they got something with fake HDR if a monitor says it supports HDR make sure it's a good SDR monitor at a good price first and then treat any HDR support as a free bonus and don't pay extra for HDR either I've seen plenty of monitors where they offer HDR and an added price but the HDR mode isn't really any better than SDR with all that crucial information out of the way there are some monitors that deliver true HDR the del u P 27:18 Q I mentioned earlier is one but if you're specifically after HDR for gaming there is basically only one monitor on the market I'd be comfortable recommending at the moment and that's the ace of Predator X 27 the predator X 27 is a 4k 144 Hertz panel with true HDR so it supports up to 1000 nits of brightness it has a 384 zone F Ald backlight and it as a wider color gamut it also has g-sync HDR and comes factory calibrated with excellent performance across most metrics it's basically the best gaming monitor on the market but it's also not cheap at seventeen hundred dollars through Amazon the only time I'd recommend the printed x27 is if you really want a top-end HDR monitor right now and you have a ton of money to burn honestly those 350 or 1440p 165 Hertz monitors are recommended earlier are much much better value there's also the risk that the predator x27 will be superseded with a better more affordable version shortly so you run into the typical concerns of an early adopter with this product but right now it is the best HDR gaming monitor it's just not something I think is worth it for everyone so that basically sums up my current monitor recommendations the options at 1080p and 1440p are particularly great buyers at the moment I reckon and it's nice to see prices coming down across many categories one thing you might be asking at this point is why we haven't recommended many g-sync monitors what if I'm an NVIDIA GPU owner and I want to get adaptive sync and that's a fair question considering NVIDIA GPUs are by far the most popular and most recommendations here were for free sync models however my opinion is that for most buyers spending an extra two hundred dollars or more for g-sync just isn't worth it take our 27-inch 1440p 144 Hertz monitor recommendation the Samsung JG 50 at 300 bucks for a g-sync equivalent you're looking at the Acer predator xB 271 hu as the cheapest but not only is this monitor $500 so $200 more than the JJ fifty or sixty six percent more expensive it's also a TN display not VA so image quality will be worse dao c a.g 27 1q g gets you an IPS panel for five hundred and fifty dollars but then we're looking at a price that's more than eighty percent higher is it worth spending eighty percent more just to get adaptive sync absolutely not it's a nice feature to have but that kind of price hike is just insane especially when the difference between adaptive sync on and off isn't that significant at higher frame rates it make a difference in the 40 to 70 FPS range but with these high refresh monitors if your gaming above 70 FPS the difference is negligible and at no stage is the improvement worth such a massive price increase so that's it for this video you can find links to current prices for the monitors we've recommended in the description below consider subscribing for more monitor content as we have a few reviews coming up to close out 2019 at least hopefully also consider supporting us on patreon to get access to our monthly live streams and exclusive discord chat among a number of other perks and I'll catch you in the next one