The Best Gaming Monitors (2024)

The monitors we recommend in this guide are geared toward PC gamers who have a graphics card powerful enough to run their games at a minimum 1080p resolution and a frame rate of 120 fps, on low graphics settings or higher. Our upgrade and best for picks also require a faster graphics card capable of higher resolutions and frame rates. We don’t currently recommend graphics cards, but Tom’s Hardware has a comprehensive accounting of the graphics card market.

If your graphics card is older, or you don’t have a computer with a graphics card, then you would be better served looking at some of our other monitor recommendations. A gaming monitor can be more responsive than the non-gaming competition, but only if a computer can generate high-resolution graphics quickly enough to maximize that speed.

We tried to use price as a guiding light for this guide, as it’s extremely easy to spend more money to get more features that don’t fundamentally improve how your games look or play, or on outdated technology that’s still sold at a premium. We think our picks provide the best image and most modern gaming features for the lowest reasonable price, so they could be bought individually to complete a gaming setup, in a pair for dual screens, or as a gift.

I’m a senior staff writer at Wirecutter covering computer monitors, laptops, tablets, and 3D printers. I’m a certified display calibrator through the Imaging Science Foundation, and I am responsible for all of Wirecutter’s computer monitor coverage. My first display was the 160×144 pixel screen on the Gameboy Color, and I’m happy to report that the state of the art has improved over the past 25 years.

For this guide:

• I spent a week researching 102 gaming monitors, then narrowed that list down to 10 monitors, which I spent two weeks testing. I had previously tested nine gaming monitors for consideration in other guides, including to assess the best 4K monitors.
• This research included looking at other expert sources online, like DisplaySpecifications, the Monitors Unboxed YouTube channel, RTings, and websites that collate professional gamers’ gear like ProSettings.net.
• I also attended the 2024 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to get a preview of upcoming technology and saw many of the year’s most anticipated OLED monitors.
• Like all Wirecutter journalists, I review and test products with complete editorial independence. Most of the monitors we test are sent by the manufacturer for review consideration, but I return every monitor that’s not purchased by Wirecutter. I’m also never made aware of any business implications of my editorial recommendations. Read more about our editorial standards.

We researched the gaming monitor market by compiling a list of 102 monitors from 16 companies, including Acer, AOC, Asus, BenQ, Dell, Gigabyte, HP, LG, MSI, Samsung, Sony, and ViewSonic. From that list, we eliminated models that didn’t fit our criteria due to:

• Stock and product age: Monitors need to be in stock and cannot be nearing the end of their life on the market. Once the list is narrowed down from other criteria, we return to this and confirm with manufacturers that specific models aren’t being replaced by new versions (as far as they will tell us) or will be available for at least six months.
• Display type: We think IPS displays, and variants like Fast IPS and IPS Black, generally have the best balance of color reproduction, response time, and viewing experience for the price. But OLED displays, and variants like QD-OLED, offer nearly infinite contrast since they can turn off individual pixels to create black tones, compared with traditional IPS displays with a constant backlight. We’ve also seen OLEDs produce very little ghosting or motion artifacts compared with IPS displays. However, they’re currently much more expensive than IPS displays, and often not as bright.
• Screen size and resolution: A screen’s size, and the distance from which you’re viewing it, has a huge impact on how sharp you perceive images and text on the screen. We think 1080p resolution on a 27- or 32-inch monitor looks stretched and, frankly, a bit gross, so we recommend 1080p on 24-inch monitors, 1440p on 27-inch monitors, and 4K on 32-inch monitors.
• Contrast: Contrast is the measure between the brightest and darkest colors a display can produce. Having high contrast is one of the most important factors in whether your display looks good, and it typically can’t be adjusted like color accuracy. Standard IPS displays have a backlight to illuminate their image and give good-enough contrast around 1000:1. But that backlight always is going to produce some light, even when it’s illuminating a “black” tone. OLED monitors can turn individual pixels off to create true black tones, so shadows actually look inky-black, and there’s more definition in darker scenes.
• Price: Gaming monitors generally are grouped around a few price points: Midrange consumer displays costs $300 to $500, while budget options span $100 to $300, and 4K can range from $500 to $1,100. The 1440p QD-OLEDs we considered were mostly around $700.
• Refresh rate: Refresh rate is a measure of how many times per second a monitor updates its screen. A faster refresh rate means the monitor updates what’s on its display more times per second and helps make motion seem smoother. Game performance can be limited by a monitor’s refresh rate, since it cannot output more frames per second to your monitor than your monitor can display per second, and the more frames per second, also known as FPS or frame rate, the more responsive your games should feel. The standard for gaming monitors currently is about 144 Hz to 180 Hz, though you find higher refresh rates as you spend more, or switch to a different display technology. Most QD-OLED displays are 240 Hz or higher.
• Brightness: Brightness tells us a lot about the display, from gauging the quality of the monitor to deciding where it would look best in your home. For low-quality consumer displays, we think you should look for a brightness at or above 300 nits. When we’ve tested IPS displays with lower brightnesses, they often have poor contrast to match the weak backlight. Modern OLED displays advertise and should hit 250 nits, and we’ve disqualified a few for testing closer to 200, which is noticeable at those low brightnesses. Brightness also determines how the monitor’s picture will stand up against getting washed out by other bright lights, like a sunny room or brightly lit office. OLED displays have to balance their brightness with the potential for burning and imprinting an image onto the LEDs, causing permanent damage. For that reason, OLEDs also typically come with features to reduce burn-in.
• Bit depth: A monitor’s bit depth determines how many colors it can show. Many cheaper monitors are 8-bit, meaning they can show 16.7 million colors, but we prefer 10-bit monitors that show 1.07 billion colors. Many 8-bit monitors also use a technology called frame rate control to try to show those same 1.07 billion colors, by flashing different 8-bit colors in succession to trick your brain into perceiving a color the monitor can’t actually display. It’s called temporal dithering, which sounds extremely rad.
• Ports: Most gaming monitors have HDMI 2.0 (or 2.1) and DisplayPort 1.4 outputs, depending on resolution and how much data they transmit. We made sure our picks have ports with enough bandwidth to pass all the display and USB-C hub data from your computer. Some monitors have a USB-C port with power delivery to charge a laptop, like our top pick, but whether a monitor had a USB-C port didn’t factor into our final pick decision.

We narrowed that list down to about 10 monitors to test, which we compared against six gaming monitors we had also tested earlier in 2024 for consideration in other guides.

To test each gaming monitor, we set it up as our primary monitor, connected it to a desktop PC, and used it for a few hours. Once it was warmed up, we ran a basic suite of tests on Calman Ultimate to gauge maximum brightness, contrast, and basic color accuracy. If the monitor had good enough contrast and brightness, we then passed it along for gaming performance tests.

We played a variety of games, but specifically Fortnite and Cyberpunk 2077 to test performance and visual clarity in first-person shooters, Baldur’s Gate 3 to test the kinds of textures and shadows found in RPGs, and Slay the Spire as a control game that we’ve spent hundreds of hours playing on various screens. We also used testUFO.com to help confirm our visual assessments and narrow in on a display’s specific weaknesses.

We recommend the MSI MAG 274GRF QD E2 because games look great on it, with sharp, smooth motion and natural colors. There’s a lot to like about the monitor: It’s brighter than the competition, has good contrast, has a good selection of ports including USB-C for gaming laptops, and has relatively easy controls compared to other monitors.

While it wasn’t part of the primary gaming testing and consideration, we also like the 274GRF QD E2’s versatility. This monitor has a lot of the same base features of the other top monitors we recommend across our other monitor guides, like 1440p resolution and a USB-C port with 65 W of power delivery, so it’d work equally well in a home office, kid’s bedroom, or college dorm. It also gets bright enough to look good in a room with a lot of sunlight.

The 274GRF QD E2 has sharp, smooth motion in games. The monitor has a 180 Hz refresh rate, which is standard for a midrange gaming monitor but a huge upgrade and immediately noticeable compared with a traditional 60 Hz display. We saw a small amount of ghosting, or a faint trailing image, while testing first-person shooters, but it wasn’t noticeable unless we really looked, and it was far less apparent than with the competition. With the 274GRF QD E2, we saw just a trailing edge of an object, like the left edge of a Test UFO. When testing other monitors, especially less expensive models, more of the image would trail and for a longer distance on screen. The monitor also supports AMD FreeSync, which can talk to supported AMD graphics cards and vary its frame rate for less jagged motion.

It’s bright and has good contrast. We like when monitors overperform, and the MSI gets about 30 nits brighter than its advertised 400 nits. This brightness makes your games look better during the day, when the screen has to battle the sun’s light, which can overpower a less bright monitor and wash out their colors. We also measured a contrast ratio of 1200:1 for the 274GRF QD E2, which is respectable for an IPS display.

It connects to nearly any PC or modern game console. The 274GRF QD E2 has two HDMI 2.0 ports and a DisplayPort 1.4 for connecting a PC or game console. It also has a USB-C port with 65 W of power delivery to charge a laptop. You’ll have to keep a gaming laptop’s power cable plugged in, as the 65 W likely won’t be enough to satiate a power-hungry graphics card, but a regular work or personal laptop like an Apple MacBook or HP EliteBook with USB-C should keep charged when it’s plugged in.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

The default color settings aren’t great (but they’re easy to change). We strongly recommend changing the 274GRF QD E2’s color temperature to “Customization,” without making any changes to the RGB values. The monitor’s “Normal” color temperature is ever so slightly red, which is most noticeable on white backgrounds like webpages and text documents. (On the monitor, click the joystick in, go to Image>Color Temperature>Customizable, and just keep the default values at 50.)

We’re not huge fans of the stand. The 274GRF QD E2’s stand is fine, but we dislike that it takes two screws to attach it to the monitor. Almost every other monitor we tested snaps into place with a locking mechanism. The monitor’s back plate also isn’t compatible with standard 100x100 VESA mounting plates for use with monitor arms or other mounting accessories and requires a 75x75 VESA adapter.

If you’re looking to spend more to get the best gaming experience, we think the MSI MAG 271QPX QD-OLED E2 delivers a fantastic picture, with a competitive balance of sharp gaming performance, brightness, and price.

It’s among the first affordable OLED computer monitors on the market. You might have seen OLED technology in expensive TVs, and this is the same basic technology. OLEDs can turn their individual pixels on and off, resulting in a truly black portion of the image. This means the dark shadows in Act II of Baldur’s Gate look more like an inky void than a gray cloud. You’ll also notice the difference immediately upon turning the display on: Some parts of the screen will light up with the MSI logo, but most of it will stay black. It’s striking in comparison to a typical IPS monitor, which will look like it has a light gray filter on it.

The 271QPX makes games look great, with vibrant color and sharp motion. The OLED display has a refresh rate of 240 Hz, which was standard among the 2024 OLED monitors we tested. The gaming performance among the 2024 OLED models we tested was also very similar. The 271QPX QD-OLED E2 and its cohort all showed motion in sharp, discrete frames with almost no discernable color fringing or ghosting. We saw the most difference between models in how much brightness they could produce, a key weakness of OLED displays. The 271QPX reached 254 nits of brightness, compared with other OLEDs like the Gigabyte Aorus FO27Q2, which measured at 219 nits. At these relatively low brightnesses, even 30 nits of brightness is noticeable.

It has a reasonable 1440p resolution. In 2024, you have two main options for OLED gaming monitors: a 27-inch screen and 1440p resolution for $600 to $1,000, or a 32-inch, 4K version for more than $1,000. MSI does sell two 32-inch, 4K monitors for less than $1,000, as we mention in the Competition section, but they haven’t been stocked reliably enough for us to recommend them. For dedicated PC gamers, a good middle-ground resolution for games is 1440p, which leads games to look sharp and detailed while allowing for popular graphics cards to push high frame rates. In comparison, 32-inch OLED models cost twice as much as our 1440p recommendation and require a behemoth of a graphics card to run games in 4K. If you have the money and the kit to drive it, the Asus ROG Strix PG32UCDM is our pick in this guide for best 4K performance, but only if you’re willing to spend more to be first on a new technology.

It can connect to PCs, laptops, and game systems. The 271QPX QD-OLED E2 has two HDMI 2.0 ports, one DisplayPort 1.4, and a USB-C port with 15W of power delivery. It’s easy to switch between inputs, and there’s also a USB hub for peripherals if that’s your bag.

It has a 3-year warranty and automatic maintenance features. MSI offers a 3-year warranty for OLED displays, as previous versions of the technology were known for overheating and having images burned into the display. We haven’t seen reports of that with the latest OLEDs, but MSI has added maintenance features into the monitor that will periodically run to prevent burn-in.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

It’s a little less bright than our other recommendations. This isn’t a huge deal unless you game during the day in a brightly-lit room, but brightness is the Achilles heel of these initial OLED computer monitors. The 271QPX QD-OLED E2 was the brightest 27-inch OLED we tested, and can reach a reasonable 250 nits. This can seem quite bright, especially in darker conditions due to the monitor’s contrast, but in a sunny office or otherwise brightly-lit room the monitor’s color and contrast would get washed out.

It’s more expensive than non-OLED options. OLED monitors are still relatively new, and the $650 price is otherwise high for a 1440p display. But for most PC gamers, we think no other technology offers such a visual upgrade without additional processing power required by your graphics card.

If you’re looking for a simple gaming monitor for 1080p gaming, we recommend the MSI G255PF 2E. It is a 24.5-inch monitor that can run at 180 Hz and doesn’t have the common flaws we find in most cheap gaming displays like low contrast and brightness, or horrendous motion artifacts. And it’s only $125, one of the least expensive monitors we recommend.

It’s a great dedicated gaming monitor for a PC or game console. We’d recommend a higher resolution monitor for doing work or staring at small letters all day, but for gaming, 1080p is still the most common resolution according to PC gaming storefront Steam’s hardware surveys. Its 24.5-inch size means games running in 1080p won’t look stretched or blurry like on larger monitors, and it’s also easier to fit on smaller desks.

Games looked sharp, with only a small amount of blur. We saw a small amount of ghosting, a display error when parts of the image in motion show visible trail, but only when specifically looking for it. The monitor also supports AMD FreeSync, which can talk to supported AMD graphics cards and vary its frame rate for less jagged motion.

It’s bright and has good contrast for a budget display. Budget displays typically have weak backlights or poor contrast, but we were happy to see the G255PF gets a bit brighter than its rated 300 nits of brightness, and measured at the standard 1000:1 contrast for IPS displays.

It has simple, modern ports. The G255PF has two HDMI 2.0b ports and one DisplayPort 1.4, as well as a headphone jack. The HDMI ports are best for a game console or gaming laptop, while DisplayPort is supported by PC gaming graphics cards.

It has an understated design. We liked the monitor’s thin bezels and simple design, which don’t include any loud colors or RGB lighting. You have to secure the monitor to its base with four screws, unlike more expensive monitors that snap and lock into their stands, but it’s a small setup issue that we mention for those who might have mobility issues.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

It’s not as good for work or school. Games pretty much always look great at a monitor’s native resolution, but images and the small text in documents can look blurry and hard to read on larger monitors with comparatively lower resolutions. Stretching a 1080p image onto a 24-inch monitor, especially when you’re likely sitting only a foot or two away, will make Windows or MacOS look unnaturally big and text not as sharp.

If you’re looking for the highest-resolution, highest-quality gaming monitor we’ve tested, we recommend the Asus ROG Swift OLED PG32UCDM. It’s a 31.5-inch, 4K gaming monitor with an OLED display and a host of features like a USB-C port with 90 W of charging.

Its OLED display is larger, brighter, and higher resolution than our other picks. The PG32UCDM has a large 31.5-inch screen with a 4K resolution of 3840×2160, and a fast refresh rate of 240 Hz for smooth motion in games. But it gets significantly brighter than other OLEDs we tested, reaching 396 nits. This means the monitor is less likely to get washed out in a sunny or brightly lit room.

It’s great for using with multiple computers. With 90 W of charging over USB-C, plus HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4 connections, the PG32UCDM is a great hub if you use both a gaming PC and laptop during the course of the day. It also has a USB hub to automatically switch your peripherals to the correct computer.

Read more about this monitor in our guide to the best 4K monitors.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

OLED is still an expensive new technology. The PG32UCDM is a fantastic monitor, but like with many first-generation technologies, it’s very expensive. We expect the prices for OLEDs to drop in coming years, but for now it’s still a hefty outlay.

We still don’t know how long OLED monitors will last. Previous versions of OLED technology, especially TVs, were prone to pixels overheating and “burning in,” where parts of the image that had been shown on-screen for hundreds of hours would leave permanent translucent artifacts on the screen. We don’t have much information about the longevity of these modern OLED monitors, but the ones we recommend have the best protections companies currently offer. The PG32UCDM (and our upgrade pick, the MSI MAG 271QPX QD-OLED E2) have three-year warranties that cover OLED burn-in. These monitors also have automated features to “clean” their pixels to reduce the potential for burn-in.

If you want a cheaper 4K gaming monitor: We recommend the Asus ROG Strix XG27UCG. It’s a 27-inch, 4K gaming monitor that has a 160 Hz refresh rate, but also has a setting where the display can reach 320 Hz if limited to a 1080p resolution in the monitor’s menu. It’s a neat idea with a noticeable improvement in motion clarity, but we think 1080p looks stretched on a 27-inch display. The XG27UCG’s 4K display is otherwise sharp, and it reached 426 nits of brightness and 1026:1 contrast in our tests. Unlike our picks, it’s also Nvidia G-Sync Compatible, which means it can communicate with Nvidia graphics cards to prevent the image from stuttering at high frame rates.

We are always looking for new gaming monitors, and we’re currently testing some that didn’t arrive in time for our first round of tests. This includes the Asus ROG Strix XG259CMS and XG27WCS, as well as two gaming ultrawides, the Dell Alienware AW3423DWF and Gigabyte MO34WQC2.

The Asus ROG Strix XG27ACS was a contender for our top pick but fell short of the MAG274QRF QD E2 in a few key areas, including contrast and motion clarity. Our tests of the XG27ACS showed contrast of 913:1, below our threshold for acceptable contrast on monitors that use IPS technology. Also, when gaming and testing for motion clarity, the XG27ACS had more noticeable ghosting than our top pick. These motion artifacts were present on both monitors, especially when bright objects move around the screen, but we found them less noticeable on the MSI. The MSI also gets about 100 nits brighter, and has 65 W of power delivery over USB-C (though that wasn’t part of our gaming criteria).

The Gigabyte Aorus FO32U2P is a 32-inch 4K gaming monitor we tested earlier this year, but found that the Asus ROG Strix PG32UCDM had a brighter display and is more consistently in stock.

The MSI MPG 321URX is a great 4K, 32-inch OLED gaming monitor that would have been our 4K pick if it hadn’t had persistent stock issues throughout the year. MSI has also released the MSI MPG 321UPX, a less expensive version with a lower refresh rate and only 15 W of USB-C power delivery, which has also been chronically out of stock. We’ll test that monitor in an upcoming version of this guide and make an update if stock becomes steadily available for both monitors.

The Dell Alienware AW3225QF was one of the first available 32-inch 4K OLED monitors, and it’s oriented toward PC gamers who want a curved OLED display. The Asus ROG Strix PG32UCDM is brighter and has more features, including a USB-C port with power delivery.

The Sony Inzone M10S is a sharp, desk-worthy 27-inch 1440p OLED display that has a fast 480 Hz refresh rate. The monitor’s image quality is fantastic, and it’s perhaps the nicest-looking monitor we tested, but it’s too expensive for most people and couldn’t reach 250 nits of brightness in our testing.

The Sony Inzone M9 II is a 4K monitor that uses MiniLED technology, instead of IPS or OLED. This offered better contrast and color than IPS in our tests. But for gamers, we think that $800 would be better spent on a lower-resolution OLED display, which offers a better image than even MiniLED, without the additional tax on your graphics card from the increased 4K resolution.

The Gigabyte Aorus FO27Q2 is another competitively priced 27-inch, 1440p OLED gaming monitor that was a contender for the upgrade pick spot. The MSI MAG 271QPX QD-OLED E2 got about 40 nits brighter, which is noticeable at these low brightnesses, and was also slightly cheaper. Gigabyte has also released a FO27Q3 model, which has a 360 Hz refresh rate and is slightly more expensive, but we thought 240 Hz with a better price was a better value.

We tested the Titan Army P24H2P, P27A2R, and P32H2U gaming monitors and would not recommend monitors from the company based on our tests. All the monitors had poor contrast and brightness, with the P24H2P measuring the worst with a contrast of just 366:1.

This article was edited by Arthur Gies and Signe Brewster.