lcd monitors price brands

Based in South Korea, Samsung has become one of the world"s leading electronic brands. Like many companies in this list, their monitors mainly focus on gaming. Their models are unique since they don"t primarily use IPS panels, as many have VA panels with a high contrast ratio and curved screen. Although VA panels look great in dark rooms, the main downside is that they have narrow viewing angles, which isn"t ideal for sharing your screen with others. They"ve even started including Mini LED backlighting on some models, which further improves the picture quality, peak brightness, and dark room performance. It helps that Samsung already produces TVs with this Mini LED technology, so they"ve become an industry leader for monitors with it.

You’ve probably seen terms like HD and Full HD on the boxes of monitors and TVs, but what does that mean? As you may have guessed, HD refers to “High Definition,” a quick way to refer to a high-quality video output. So if you see the term “Full HD” on a monitor box, that’s just a shorthand to denote its resolution, which would be 1920 by 1080, also called 1080p. The reason why it’s specified as “Full HD” is that there are also some TVs and monitors that output at 720p (high definition but not relatively as high as 1080p), which is 1280 by 720 pixels. 1080p is considered the current standard for monitors, and popular manufacturers, including Dell, Acer, Samsung, LG, BenQ and Viewsonic, offer a variety of 1080p monitors in their product lineups.

As you can imagine, the more pixels there are to display, the more critical it is that your monitor has a high refresh rate, especially when it comes to gaming. Typically, the standard has been a 120-hertz refresh rate in gaming monitors, but many features a 144-hertz refresh rate. The quicker a monitor can refresh the display, and the smoother the visual experience will be. This is because the refresh rate in the monitor works in tandem with a low response time (which specifies how quickly the monitor can send and receive new information) to make a seamless visual transition. Sometimes, if the response rate is not quick enough, some residual pixels can remain on the screen as the monitor is trying to refresh new ones. This is called ‘ghosting.’ Although it’s standard to have a four-millisecond response time on many gaming monitors, Samsung, LG, BenQ, Viewsonic, and more all offer 2k and 4k monitors with one-millisecond response times. It is also important to ensure refresh rates are identical if you plan to sync two monitors for your display.

Regarding the internal specs, response time and refresh rate are the main factors contributing to a smooth, immersive viewing experience. Still, the physical panel type of the monitor can also play into this. First, there’s the matter of how the monitor lights up: either with LCD or LED. The main difference lies in the material that is used to light the liquid crystals in the display. In LCD, it’s cold cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFLs), and in LEDs, it’s tiny light emitting and low-energy consuming diodes. This is the preferred type in most monitors because it consumes less power and produces less harsh light, so darker colors appear more vivid. Additionally, LED monitors can be much thinner than LCD ones.

Newer LCD monitors have improved with the implementation of IPS (In-Plane Switching) panels. For some, it’s a matter of preference, but where the IPS panels have shown their strength with accurate color reproduction, which is great for content creators who want to do photo editing or graphic design. The panel type you choose depends more on preference than anything else. Samsung is well known for championing the IPS panel in their monitors, and many people also enjoy using them for gaming.

For some people, it’s essential, not just the monitor specs. Having a monitor that is fast, intuitive, and also looks nice on their desk is a crucial part of a computer build designed to make a statement. Asus’ Predator X34 shows off with its 34-inch curved IPS panel that also features Nvidia’s Gsync technology, which matches the gaming framerates with the monitor’s native refresh rate to prevent screen tearing. For those who want the style without the price tag, Samsung offers a 29-inch curved monitor with a 4-millisecond response time.

Finally, another consideration is whether there are enough HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) ports. HDMI allows simultaneous digital video and audio transmission from one source to another. While HDMI ports are often standard, especially on gaming monitors, verifying that a monitor has enough HDMI compatibility for your setup before purchasing is essential.

Since monitors have to be lit in order for the viewer to see anything, the difference between the two types is in what is used to light up the crystals within the display. For LCD, that’s cold cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFL’s) and in LEDs, it’s tiny light emitting and low-energy consuming diodes. LED monitors tend to be thinner and more power-efficient, but improvements in the panel types have made LCDs more competitive.

Instead, we’ll cover the best-selling monitors by the most popular brands and briefly go over the company, what they do right, what could be improved, etc.

Additionally, these were the first monitors with an aggressive 1000R screen curvature that’s meant to match the natural curvature of the human eye for an improved viewing experience, but not everyone’s a fan of such steep screen curvature.

Another thing worth noting is Samsung’s firmware updates, which have on many occasions fixed or at least improved the performance and/or image quality of their monitors.

We mentioned brightness flickering. This issue is often associated with high refresh rate VA gaming monitors regardless of the panel manufacturer (Samsung, AUO, CSOT, etc.).

Samsung finally acknowledged the issue on their Odyssey models, and they’ll hopefully do the same with their other gaming monitors capable of firmware updates.

Keep in mind that this issue only affects some units of monitors. So, one unit of the S27R750, for instance, might have noticeable brightness flickering, but another unit may not suffer from this issue at all.

Since VA panels aren’t used for serious color-grading anyway due to gamma/saturation shifts, this is usually not deal-breaking to most users, but it can be if you’re buying one of Samsung’s wide gamut IPS monitors, such as the

The LG 27GL83A, for instance, is a 27″ 1440p 144Hz IPS gaming monitor with 1ms GtG that goes for ~$300. It has pretty much made all similar TN models obsolete as they go for around the same price yet offer inferior image quality and narrow viewing angles.

What LG does better than most manufacturers is the sRGB emulation mode. All of their newer wide-gamut monitors, usually with 98% DCI-P3 or 135% sRGB, have proper sRGB clamps that restrict the color output to ~100%.

ASUS also offers excellent monitors for color-critical work from their ProArt series, ranging from budget to high-end professional models, such as the ASUS PA248QV and the ASUS PA32UC.

When it comes to mid-range gaming monitors, their models are usually more expensive than the competing displays due to the ‘premium ASUS branding’, especially when it comes to the ROG variants with plenty of proprietary RGB lighting and other gimmicky features.

What’s more, their wide gamut monitors usually have a well-calibrated sRGB mode, but brightness is often not adjustable and it’s locked to a very high setting.

Some ASUS gaming monitors feature the exclusive ELMB-Sync technology. It’s one of the rare MBR (Motion Blur Reduction) implementations that can work at the same time as variable refresh rate.

Neither is clearly better than the other. They usually go for the same price, but depending on the region and availability, one can be more affordable than the other.

One thing we’d like to see improved on Acer monitors is their overdrive implementation. It usually has three modes: Off, Normal, and Extreme. On most of their monitors, you can’t change the overdrive mode when VRR is enabled as it’s locked to ‘Normal.’

AOC offers excellent budget gaming monitors. They’re affordable and offer excellent image quality and performance; further, AOC doesn’t skimp on design quality and features.

AOC’s popular budget monitors have strong build quality and even a good range of ergonomics, whereas the counterparts by other manufacturers usually just offer tilt-only and plastic stands for the same price.

The On-Screen Display of AOC’s monitors includes a well-calibrated sRGB mode, but just like with ASUS displays, it’s locked to a high brightness setting.

Further, navigation through the menu via the monitor’s usual clunky hotkeys isn’t a nice experience. We’d really like to see more AOC monitors with joysticks.

This adjusts the strobe length allowing you to find the best trade-off between picture brightness and motion clarity for you. Most monitors don’t have this much customization for backlight strobing, there are usually just two to three options, or just one.

In 2022, they’ve also joined ASUS in the high-end gaming monitor tier with their XG321UG 32″ 4K 144Hz IPS display boasting DisplayHDR 1400 and 1152-zone mini-LED FALD at a more affordable $2500 price.

BenQ’s ZOWIE line-up of monitors is usually the #1 choice for professional gamers and if there’s a competitive gaming tournament going on, you’ll most likely see BenQ’s ZOWIE displays – and there’s a good reason for that.

Gaming monitors such as the BenQ ZOWIE XL2546K don’t compromise on performance; they deliver impeccable input lag and response time performance, as well as the impressively tuned DyAc+ (Dynamic Accuracy) backlight strobing technology with minimal brightness penalty and strobe crosstalk.

Dell’s mostly known for their UltraSharp series monitors with excellent color accuracy and factory calibration, which makes them very popular among professional designers and photographers.

Their monitors are also often a bit more expensive, but you do get a better image quality out of the box as well as premium build quality and decent ergonomics in return.

Sadly, their wide gamut monitors don’t feature sRGB emulation modes, which is disappointing for a company known for being one of the top choices of professional colorists. Their latest model, the AW3423DW, does have an sRGB mode, so hopefully, all future models will follow suit!

MSI offers several gaming monitors we highly recommend, such as the MSI MAG274QRF-QD and the MPG321UR-QD. These monitors offer better image quality, performance and features than equally priced (or even more expensive) alternatives by other manufacturers.

We’re glad that they listened to their users and started implementing sRGB modes on their monitors. They also add other modes, such as Adobe RGB and DCI-P3, if the monitor has a wide enough coverage of those color spaces. Further, they don’t lock brightness settings!