A New Monitor Is Your Best PC Upgrade!

Technology is always improving, and there’s no place that’s more evident than in the latest monitors. Our Monitor Buyer’s Guide continues to feature the best offerings, a total of a dozen models in all, many of them launched in the past year.

The reality is that intense competition and innovation is making it harder to navigate the monitor market, especially for gaming, but even productivity monitors are increasingly laden with specs. From mainstream to 4K to super-ultra-wide, 24″ to 49″, 60Hz to 240Hz, IPS to OLED, and various flavors of HDR, there’s a lot to take in. You might even need to consider whether a monitor can charge your laptop over USB Type-C, effectively adding power supply functionality. The big question is, which features do you want, because you can’t have them all!

All the Best Picks for Fall 2024!

In this guide, we try to find the best overall pick for each user in each product category, from budget home office to extreme gaming. That’s a lot of ground to cover, so we’ve broken down our picks into two main categories:

• Home- and Small-Office Monitors: The first six monitors on our list fit into this category, offering prices, features, and designs for any office environment. They start at under $100 and go up to around $1,200. These are differentiated based on size of course, but also stand adjustability, USB charging, and color quality.
• Gaming Monitors: The last six monitors on our list are gaming-specific monitors, which at this point must feature both frame syncing technology (AMD FreeSync or Nvidia G-Sync) and high refresh rates (at minimum we recommend 144Hz, but our picks now go up to 240Hz). There’s no reason to buy a “gaming monitor” that doesn’t have both of these features today. While Acer and Asus used to dominate the gaming monitor market, they now have a lot of competition from the big names in the TV industry, Samsung and LG. Other brands are leading the way on value, like monitor-specialist Sceptre. This is pushing innovation forward and bringing prices down. It’s an exciting time to be a gamer! Interestingly, like our productivity monitor picks, our gaming picks also run from under $150 to around $1,200!

A Quick Primer on Frame Syncing Technology

Gamers who have been out of the market for a while may want to learn more about the concept of frame syncing. This method of displaying images on screen matches a monitor’s refresh rate to frames rendered, rather than refreshing at a locked 60Hz. Sounds simple, but it makes a big difference. By eliminating lag and screen tearing caused by too many or too few frames being displayed, frame syncing provides truly fluid images.

There are two types: Nvidia’s G-Sync, which requires additional hardware in the monitor along with a licensing fee that drives up the price, as well as AMD’s FreeSync, which uses capabilities built into the DisplayPort standard. While this led to confusion among gamers for years, Nvidia finally relented in early 2020 and unlocked FreeSync compatibility in its modern GPUs via drivers. Today, any monitor marketed as “G-Sync Compatible” actually works on either Nvidia or AMD GPUs! With that said, “G-Sync” monitors still only work on Nvidia GPUs, and we typically only recommend those to gamers using ultra-high-end Nvidia GPUs. To see our recommend video cards, definitely check out our Video Card Buyer’s Guide.

Final Thoughts

As always, links to Amazon are provided for our US readers, which will auto-convert for readers in Canada, the UK, and parts of the EU, with automatic substitutions made where necessary. If you decide to purchase any of the models we profile, please support this site by using the links we provide.