The 6 Best Gaming Monitors Make Your Games Pop

Modern video games are incredibly demanding, especially on PC. They require a powerful computer to run smoothly on the highest settings. You also need a gaming monitor that can keep up with your PC’s performance; otherwise, you won’t see the nuanced details built into every image and movement.

With higher refresh rates, strong brightness, and gaming-specific features like variable refresh rate, great gaming monitors come in many sizes and resolutions to match every tier of gaming PC (or console, if you prefer to play your PS5 at your desk). After testing many of the most promising options on the market, we’ve highlighted the best gaming monitors across every price point and performance tier.

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• Best 24-Inch: Alienware AW2524HF 24.5-Inch Gaming Monitor​
• Best Budget: MSI MAG 255F E20 24.5-Inch Gaming Monitor​
• Best 27-Inch: Samsung Odyssey G8 27-Inch Gaming Monitor​
• Best 32-Inch: MSI MPG 322URX 32-Inch Gaming Monitor​​
• Best Ultrawide: Samsung Odyssey OLED G9 49-Inch Gaming Monitor​​
• Best Value Ultrawide: Alienware AW3425DWM 34-Inch Curved Gaming Monitor​

Chris Coke: I’ve been a PC gamer for more than 25 years, starting in the dark ages of floppy disks and dial-up internet. I began building computers in the early 2000s and have been on a constant pursuit to find the best gaming tech ever since. Professionally, I’ve covered tech for nearly a decade at publications like Tom’s Hardware, Reviewed, and Popular Science. More specifically, I’ve reviewed monitors extensively for IGN and MMORPG.com. I know what makes a great gaming monitor and how to cut through the industry buzzwords and hone in on what matters most.

Adam Doud: I've covered technology for over a dozen years with the likes of CNET, SlashGear, Forbes, and CNN. I have spent my entire adult life and, let’s be honest, a good portion of my adolescence, staring at computer screens. I've been playing PC games since the days when you had to swap out floppy disks mid-game to load more maps. Even when I'm not evaluating the latest bit of technology, I usually spend a lot of time consuming content at my computer, right up until my wife makes me go outside.

I started my search for the best gaming monitors with research. To find the most celebrated gaming monitors worth testing, I compiled a list of candidates based on in-depth reviews from leading tech publications like CNET, Rtings, and Tom's Guide, among others. I selected a shortlist of finalists recommended by multiple critics I trust.

Before proclaiming any of them the best, I had to test these monitors myself. I called in eight candidates: Some of them were the exact displays I found in my research. Others were new and improved versions of popular but aging models.

To test each monitor, I hooked them up to an Asus Strix Scar 16 laptop with 32 GB of RAM and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 laptop GPU using an HDMI cable. I used each monitor for three to five days, which included at least one hour of Microsoft Flight Simulator, normal eight-hour shifts at my day job, and video streaming. I also dug into each monitor's specs and extra features while exploring built-in menus and configurations.

If your system runs games best in 1080p, you want the highest refresh rate possible, or you don’t have much desk space, a 24-inch monitor often fits your life, even if it isn’t what you were initially looking for. Going small doesn’t necessarily mean going “budget,” though: The Alienware AW2524HF is a high-performance 24-inch IPS display with a high 500 Hz refresh rate.

For competitive players—whether you’re into shooters like Call of Duty and Fortnite, MOBAs, or fighting games—a high refresh rate delivers smooth motion, helping you see and react faster. In a quickdraw, even a millisecond of reaction time can make all the difference. I’m not that kind of gamer, but I can appreciate how smoothly games unfolded on this monitor.

You also get a plethora of ports on the bottom of the monitor, including four USB-A ports, a USB-B port, two DisplayPort 1.4 inputs, and an HDMI 2.1 slot. Not for nothing, this is also the only monitor in the list with a built-in headphone hook, which is a nice touch. While I wish it had a USB-C port for easy charging, it covers most of the bases and gives you the options you need to take advantage of its specs.

The big downside here is that, at over $400, this is an expensive 24-inch display. Moreover, as more OLED monitors hit the market, its esports-focused specs may not appeal to players who want to optimize for visual fidelity. (There aren’t many 24-inch OLED panels yet, but they’re coming.) If you’re looking for the best performance in a small monitor, though, this will make your games run smooth as butter.

If you don't have room for a larger monitor and are willing to compromise a bit on performance, Alienware makes a 360Hz version of the AW2524HF that still delivers esports-grade performance and costs substantially less.

If you’re gaming on a budget and don’t need high-end specs, MSI’s MAG 255F E20 delivers solid, basic performance on a 1080p, 24.5-inch display. I thought it delivered good color reproduction, especially for a sub-$200 display. I also appreciated its compact build–it had the smallest desk footprint of all the monitors I tested. I have a small desk and a big gaming laptop, so that was a huge plus for me.

Of course, even the best budget monitor comes with some caveats. This display offers the bare minimum in ports: two HDMI 2.0 and one DisplayPort 1.2. Without any USB ports for charging and only a couple of options for your gaming devices, it feels a bit threadbare.

One other thing to note: Several user reviews mention finding dead pixels, small permanent dots on the panel that don’t generate an image, within days of setting up the monitor. That's a huge problem and would warrant a return if it happens. We didn’t experience the issue, so it feels wrong to hold out from recommending a monitor we liked. However, we’d recommend reviewing the monitor’s warranty and your store’s return policy before investing, just to be safe.

At 27 to 28 inches, the “mid-sized” monitor, look for at least 1440p resolution, but there are great splurges if you have your heart set on 4K. For example, the Samsung Odyssey G8 gaming monitor looks and feels luxurious, and its price tag matches. Samsung is known for making excellent displays, and this monitor is no exception. It's bright and vibrant, particularly when streaming movies. The colors just pop off the screen.

If you're in the market for a high-quality, versatile panel that looks crisp and offers a high refresh rate, this is the monitor you're looking for.

The MSI MPG 322URX packs a 4K QD-OLED panel in a 32-inch frame, so colors pop, and blacks stay black because each pixel lights itself instead of relying on a backlight. Games run at 240Hz with a 0.03 millisecond response time, which keeps fast motion sharp instead of smearing. It’s certified for both Nvidia G-Sync and AMD FreeSync Premium Pro, so the monitor matches its refresh rate to your graphics card’s output and avoids the screen tearing you’d otherwise get.

The 322URX’s port selection is where it pulls ahead of older 4K OLEDs. Its DisplayPort 2.1a input carries up to 80Gbps, enough to run native 4K at 240Hz without the compression that older ports force on newer graphics cards. The USB-C port pushes 98 watts, so it charges a laptop while you game over one cable. To fight burn-in, the panel runs a periodic pixel-refresh cycle that blanks the screen for a few seconds.

It costs more than most 32-inch monitors, but the picture quality justifies it. We ran its nearly identical predecessor, the 321URX, for a week and kept coming back to how clean games looked at 240Hz. This version keeps that panel and upgrades the ports around it.

The Samsung Odyssey OLED G9 wraps a 49-inch, 32:9 QD-OLED panel around your field of view, filling your peripheral vision and replacing a two-monitor setup. If you play racing games or flight sims, the ultrawide monitor delivers a more immersive experience, extending beyond what you can see straight ahead. And for work, you can line up multiple documents at a readable size.

It has a QD-OLED panel, which changes how dark scenes look. Each pixel makes its own light, so a night sky stays black instead of the dim gray you get when backlight leaks through. Bright objects also stay separated from shadows, with no halo around them.

The G9 runs at 240Hz, so fast motion and camera pans stay sharp. At 5120 x 1440 resolution, it pushes fewer pixels than a dual-4K ultrawide, so a mid-range graphics card can run games at a high frame rate across the whole screen. Like other OLED monitors, though, this one has a pixel-refresh feature to help prevent burn-in.

If you’re looking for a more affordable curved ultrawide monitor, Alienware’s 34-inch AW3425DWM was one of our favorite monitors to test, and costs less than our high-end 24-inch pick. This 3440 x 1440p panel won’t fill every inch you can see (or take up your entire desk), but it still delivers the enhanced immersion you want from a curved ultrawide display in a smaller package.

Generally speaking, 3440 x 1440p (sometimes called “Ultrawide Quad HD”) is a pretty low resolution for a screen this size. It also has a lower refresh rate than any monitor we recommend, and is a bit light on ports. That said, it’s a fair compromise for this price point, and we weren’t particularly bothered by the lower resolution, even in first-person experiences. All of our caveats about curved ultrawides apply here as well, though this is a much safer option if you’re just trying the format sight unseen.

Panel Type

It’s easy to forget that the display panel, the screen that generates what’s happening on your PC, is only a part of your monitor. Different display types have unique strengths and weaknesses, each excelling in different areas. Every display type works with every machine, but choosing one based on your needs can help you optimize the visual performance of your games and beyond.

• In-Plane Switching (IPS) is the most common panel type used in gaming monitors. IPS monitors offer rich colors and wide viewing angles, but their prominent backlight often reduces contrast.
• Twisted Nematic (TN) panels showcase speed above all else. Their colors are comparatively dull, and their viewing angles are mediocre. They are still used occasionally in high-refresh-rate monitors for competitive esports, such as the Zowie XL2546X. I’d generally steer clear of them now.
• Vertical Alignment (VA) panels offer a middle ground between IPS and TN, featuring better contrast than IPS monitors and better colors than TN. Like IPS, they work best on lower frame rates. They're a popular choice in affordable gaming monitors.
• Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) technology is popular in high-end TVs, and is starting to make its way into top-of-the-line gaming monitors. OLED panels can adjust each pixel's brightness or turn it off entirely. This allows for better contrast, vivid colors, and responsive visual fidelity. OLED monitors are more susceptible to long-term “burn-in” damage, where ghost-like after-images get “stuck” on the screen, but manufacturers often include safeguards to prevent it.
• Mini-LED is a backlighting technology you may find in high-end monitors that enhances contrast and brightness on any panel. It uses an array of hundreds of tiny lights that can be controlled in groups. It makes games brighter and sharper while improving the impact of high dynamic range (HDR). On the other hand, it can cause blooming in some cases, creating a dim halo around bright objects in dark scenes.
• Quantum Dots (QD), like mini-LED, can enhance different display types. This technology adds a layer of microscopic dots inside the display to enhance brightness and color representation. (Like OLED displays, you may know quantum dots from their more prominent role in QLED TVs.) This enhancement often goes hand in hand with OLED monitors, though you may find it elsewhere. Regardless of the panel, it’s always worth it.

Screen Size and Resolution

Most gaming monitors range from 23 inches to 32 inches. While the right size ultimately comes down to taste, every setup has a sweet spot based on your PC's expected performance and how far you plan to sit from your monitor.

Keep in mind that you should be able to take in the whole screen without moving your head, to prevent neck and eye strain. You sit much closer to your monitor than you would a TV, so buying the largest possible monitor may be overkill.