Have you ever asked a friend, “How do I buy a monitor?” What was your friend’s response like? To be honest with you, asking ‘’what monitor should I buy” is a very broad question with no definite answer, but that shouldn’t leave you disappointed.
Monitor buying is a task with so many angles. With the right information, you are sure to make the best choices.
For professional purposes like graphics and logo designing, you will need to be particular about the colors your monitor can produce, its ability to be tilted and mounted, clarity, sharpness and contrasts your monitor offers and many other factors.
Choosing a gaming monitor compatible with the weight of your purse could also cause you a headache. Gamers need good resolutions, refresh rates and matching frame rates, good color reproduction, and many other factors to make their gaming experiences fascinating and the least frustrating.
For general purposes and coding, you will definitely not be needing as much monitor specs as a gamer or a graphics designer, so it’ll be excessive for you to get a 4k resolution monitor when you could have saved some cash with a 1080p monitor.
As there may not be a single affordable monitor with all the spec choices you desire, you need to evaluate critically to get best monitor for you. Keep in mind that the best monitor you can buy is not one with all the best specs but one that satisfactorily serves your purpose.
Instead of looking for a website for choosing monitors for sale first, you should take your time to get informed about the ‘’quality’’ of the monitor you should buy. It may not be that easy, but with the information in this monitor buying guide, I hope your search is eased!
When choosing a PC monitor, you should consider the following:
RESOLUTION
Resolution is the number of pixels you can divide your screen into. A pixel of an image is the smallest portion into which you can divide an image.
A good illustration of pixels is what you get when you zoom in an image totally; each block representation you see after zooming represents a pixel.
Your choice of resolution should be determined by your Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), the type of game you will be playing, and what you will like your gaming experience to look like.
You should also ensure your resolution choice matches the refresh rate of your monitor. The higher the resolution of your monitor, the more detailed your activity on the screen becomes as more pixels on your screen mean more portions of the original image will appear on your screen.
For Gaming, the most common resolution rates are 1080p, 1440p, and 4k.The ‘P’ refers to the progressive scan technique indicating the screen refreshes across on all lines from top to bottom causing all display content to be refreshed in a single step simultaneously.
If you play story games and role-playing games like Witcher 3, Fallout 4, Outward, your choice of resolution should be 1440 (2560 × 1440).
For multiplayer games and first-person shooter games like Call of Duty, Battlefield, PUBG, you should get a monitor with 1080P Resolution (1920 × 1080).
For Coding and General Uses, you should get a 1080P monitor. If you wish to take things up a notch, a 2k resolution will provide you with a better cinematic experience.
For Professional purposes: if you will be using your monitor for video editing, photoshopping, image editing, you should definitely go for a 4k monitor as it offer 4 times the clarity and sharpness you will get from a full HD monitor.
Aspect Ratio
This is the ratio of the width to the height of your monitor screen. Widescreen monitors make multi-tasking easy on your monitor screen.
If you are torn between getting multiple monitors and a single monitor due to reasons like costs, buying a monitor with a large aspect ratio will suffice.
16:9, 16:10, and 15:9 are the most common aspect ratios associated with widescreen monitors.
16:9 is the aspect ratio you should go for if you will be using your monitor for gaming.
A 16:9 aspect ratio can accommodate the 4:3 and 2.35:1 aspect ratios.
However, larger aspect ratios do not translate to a better resolution. It is important for you to make sure your aspect ratio matches with the resolution of your monitor.
For video editing, programming, and spreadsheets creation, these specifications are suitable:
1080P - 21:9 Ultrawide
1440 - 21:9 Ultrawide
1080P - 16:10
1440P - 16:10
Refresh Rates
Refresh Rates, measured in hertz, is the number of times your screen image is updated every second. The refresh rate of your monitor is very important if you will be getting a gaming monitor. The higher the frame per second rate of your monitor, the more up-to-date the visual information you will be getting.
With high refresh rates, moving images become clearer quickly. Your refresh rate is, however, dependent on the number of frames your GPU is producing.
The 60Hz and the 144Hz Refresh rates are the most commonly used. For slowly-paced games, RPGs and story-driven games, you should get a monitor with a refresh rate of 60Hz. For fast paced and First-person shooter games, you should go for a 144Hz monitor.
For Coding and Professional uses of your monitor like photoshopping, a 60Hz refresh rate monitor will be just fine.
Brightness
Brightness aids visibility of your screen elements. It is measured in Nits or candela per square meter. 1 nit is equivalent to one candela per square meter.
If you will be using your monitor for general purpose tasks, 250 to 350nits is fine. You will need a monitor with a brighter luminance if you will be using your monitor for viewing movies. 500 nits is just fine for your movies.
Whichever monitor you will be buying, you should choose a monitor with brightness level as high as 250nits. For HDR monitors, certain levels of brightness, called Peak Brightness, must be attained before you can get the quality of imagery a HDR monitor promises.
For some HDR monitors, the peak brightness is 1000 Nits. Yes, a thousand nits is going to be too bright for your eyes. However, this brightness level is self-emissive, and it only comes up when it needs to.
Response Time
Response time refers to how long it takes a pixel to change from black to white or from one shade of grey to another.
It is measured in milliseconds. Different shades of grey are used to measure response times as they represent how intense a given color will appear on your monitor through a filter. The darker the grey, the less light will pass through the color filter and hit your eyes. The longer it takes pixels to switch between shades of grey, the longer the response time.
Longer response times cause you to see remains of trails from a moving objection which is known as ghosting. Ghosting occurs when objects across 2 or more images appear on the screen as one. Low refresh rates will cause ghosting which will in turn shatter your gaming experience and reduce your accuracy and success rates.
You wouldn’t want that to happen, so it’s quite important you prioritize refresh rates among the factors you will be considering if you want to buy a monitor for gaming.
Manufacturers view response times differently. You should search for independently conducted measurements of response time on websites and read reviews.
For Gaming, you should go for a monitor with a response time as low as 1ms. However, the difference between a 1ms response time and a 5ms response is not so easy to tell, even though some gamers claim to be able to spot the difference. You should only be very selective of your monitor’s response time if you will be using your monitor for fast-action activities.
You shouldn’t confuse response time with Input Lag. Input lag is experienced when a monitor takes longer in displaying an instruction from let’s say your mouse. This could really affect your gaming experience by slowing down your responsiveness to opponents. You should ensure your monitor has a low input lag before you purchase it.
Color Accuracy, Color Gamut, Color Saturation, Color Reproduction
Color Accuracy: to explain color accuracy, you need to understand what color space is about.
A Color Space refers to the available colours in specific subsets of color models. The default color space peculiar to modern monitors is the sRGB color space. Color space can be likened to a crayon box. The more crayons you have in your crayon box, the more detailed drawings you can produce with it.
Color space is very useful to web designers. More expensive monitors permit other color spaces such as the Adobe RGB color Space.
The Adobe SGB color space is a bit more distributed than the sRGB color space, making it more useful to designers who work with heavily saturated colours.
You should also note the varying native contrasts among monitors. Native contrast explains how well your monitor can differentiate between different shades of black. You should not go for monitors with low contrast levels. Varying backlight levels also affect color accuracy. There is also the NTSC color gamut.
Color gamut is all about how many colours a monitor can produce. A color gamut clarifies differences in colours. When you walk into a monitor store, you will notice a difference in the colours displayed by monitors.
Monitors are unable to reproduce all the colours the human eye can see, so they display a fraction of those colours which is known as color gamut.
A color gamut is a fraction of colours within a color space which makes it likely for you to have an image with a SRGB color space with colours absent in the color gamut of your monitor.
RGB are three primary colours- Red, Green, and Blue. The mentioned Color Gamuts (sRGB, Adobe RGB, NTSC) are depicted using triangles. The triangle is enclosed by the color coordinates of color gamut.
An LCD monitor with a wider triangular color gamut area means the LCD monitor will be able to display a wide range of colours. You should choose your color gamut based on what tasks you will be using your system for.
You should go for an Adobe RGB Color gamut if you will be working with images in hardcopy prints. If you will be dealing with soft copy images, you should edit your photos in Adobe RGB color gamut then covert to sRGB before you post the images on the internet because internet browsers only support sRGB as the only color gamut at the moment.
Other color gamuts apart from the sRGB color gamuts are considered too wide. Posting your Adobe RGB pictures on the internet without converting them to sRGB color gamuts will cause your images to be desaturated (or to be dulled down) and look pale.
If you will be using your monitor for professional purposes, a color gamut with 72% of sRGB is not a good option. You should go for a monitor having as high as 99% of sRGB color space.
Color Saturation: as Hue describes the actuality of an image’s appearance, saturation describes the purity of the hue. The higher the saturation, the more pure the hue becomes.
Paleness increases with lower saturation levels. The quantity of white in the hue determines the brightness in the color. A decrease in saturation causes images to look like they have been bleached.
To check the color saturation of the monitor you have in mind to buy, if it’s an LCD monitor, you may compare its color accuracy with test images on websites like www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/.
Low Color Gamut monitors make it impossible for your monitor to reach full color saturation.
Color Reproduction: refers to how well your monitor can reproduce colours on its screen from let’s say a photograph you took with your camera. There will be a difference in colours between images from your printer and the image displayed on your LCD monitor because your LCD Monitor uses light to recreate the images you seem while printers use dyes and inks to create images.
While your printer uses as many as four to five colours to reproduce an image, your monitor might just use little quantities of Red, Green and Blue to reproduce the colours of your image.
The color gamut of your monitor is also a factor affecting color reproduction. Color reproduction is affected by brightness, contrast ratio, viewing angle, and color constancy.
You should go for a monitor with a large viewing angle to ensure good color reproduction. Other factors will be discussed later in this guide.
Display Technology: Which is better? LCD or LED?
Liquid Crystal Display (LCD): With a LCD monitor, you can not alter the resolution of your monitor to display information (an image): it will have a negative impact on the image’s quality.
Native resolutions are what you should operate with. Some native resolutions include 17-inch (1024×768), 19-inch (1280×1024), and 20-inch (1600×1200). LCD monitors have been designed to have wide viewing angles.
Wide viewing angles help to improve color reproduction and prevent disappearance of images. Measured in degrees, you should go for an LCD monitor with a viewing angle between 120 and 170 degrees.
Also, you should test the viewing angle of the monitor you wish to buy yourself by checking the angles from the top, the bottom and the sides of the monitor.
Keep in mind how you will use your monitor as you check the angles. LCD monitors should have a brightness range of 250 to 350 nits. If you will be using your LCD monitor to watch movies, its brightness should be as high as 500nits.
The contrast ratio of your LCD monitor should range from 450:1 to 600:1. Contrast ratios help you understand how differently your LCD Monitor produces bright whites and bright darks.
An LCD monitor with a high contrast ratio will provide you with a very detailed display, an important element you’ll need while gaming and carrying out professional tasks with your monitor.
You can swivel, tilt upwards and downwards, and rotate your LCD monitor from landscape to portrait: it is quite flexible. You can also mount it on your wall as its light-weight and thinness permit you to.
An LCD monitor uses florescent lights evenly placed behind the screen to supply lighting across the monitor undisturbed. With this, all regions of your image become equally illuminated.
LIGHT EMITTING DIODE (LED) Display: is a ‘subset’ of LCD displays and is sometimes referred to as LED LCD Display.
Unlike LCD displays, LED displays use light-emitting diodes for backlights. LED displays have varying backlight configurations which enable them to create images with better image quality than LCD displays.
Backlights, Sheet 1, Liquid crystal, sheet 2 with color filters, then the screen are the elements of an LED display from the front of the display facing you to the back.
Even though LED and LCD displays both use liquid crystals, the backlights of both displays are different. The light-emitting diodes in an LED monitor are placed across the whole display just light the arrangement in a LCD monitor, but these diodes are arranged in zones that can be dimmed. his is known as a full-array LED display.
Dimming of the light-emitting emitting diodes is referred to as local dimming, and it is responsible for the improved picture quality in LED monitors. Local dimming enables the best pictures to have very bright and very dark pixels at the same time.
You can darken parts of an image you wish to darken with an LED monitor to create a truer black. LCD monitors, however, do not support local dimming. Rearrangement of the light-emitting diodes in LED monitors produces Edge Lighting.
In Edge lighting displays, the diodes could be at the bottom, the bottom and the top, or the left and right sides of the screen. The diodes are not placed behind the screen, and so local dimming cannot be achieved with Edge Lighting. This in turn reduces improvements you can make to picture quality with an Edge-Lighting Display.
In making your display choice, you should go for not just any LED monitor but a full-array LED Monitor if you will be using your monitor for professional tasks relating to image quality like image editing. For gaming monitors, you should go for a full-array LED monitor.
Visibility becomes poorer the farther you move go the center viewing angle when you use Edge-Lighting LED monitors. Poor visibility will shatter your gaming experience.
If you will be going for an Edge-Lighting LED monitor, then it will either be to save costs as it is cheaper or because of work-space constraint as it thinner.
What will your answer be If I ask you what brand monitor does everyone like between the LCD and LED displays?
Panel Types:
Twisted Nematic (TN) Panel Type: are the most widely used panels. You will find them affordable and also enjoy the good response time (1ms to 2ms), but you may not be satisfied with its poor color accuracy.
You will enjoy playing fast-paced games on a monitor with a TN Panel. However, color reproduction, contrast ratios and viewing angles of a TN panel are not very good.
If you’re limited in terms of cost and you need a gaming monitor, a TN Monitor is still okay because of its low response time. You should also note that TN panels also have low input lag.
Vertical Alignment Panel Type: lies between the TN and IPS panels. It offers better color reproduction and wider viewing angles than a TN panel, but its response time is slower than those of the other panels.
If you will be playing fast-paced games, a VA monitor is not what you should go for. However, it offers a better contrast ratio than the TN panel. You should also note that VA panels suffer from color shifting. Color shifting occurs when an image viewed from one angle looks differently when viewed from a different angle.
This causes unequal brightness levels across displays. Color shifting causes a lot of shadow detail and detailed dark scenes when viewed directly from the center of the screen.
If you will be using your monitor for only general purposes, a VA Panel is a good fit for you.
In-plane Switching Panel Type: offers excellent image quality, color accuracy and viewing angles as wide as 178 degrees. You will find it suitable for your graphics works and other professional tasks needing color reproduction.
However, IPS Panels are expensive and have higher response times than TN panels. Response times could be as high as 4ms to 6ms, making it slower than a TN panel. You should go for a TN Panel if you will be using your monitor for gaming due to the TN Panel’s faster response time.
On the other hand, gaming on an IPS panel is, however, superior to a TN panel as the response time is negligible, and you are very unlikely to tell the difference for non-gaming purposes. Some gamers think motion blur occurs on all IPS panels. You should only be really be concerned about motion blurring when response times are at 7ms or higher.
The types of IPS panels include S-IPS, E-IPS, AH-IPS, P-IPS. S-IPS panels are expensive. AH-IPS panels have slightly different pixel structure from the other IPS panel types.
E-IPS only offers 6-bit depth. P-IPS is a variation of S-IPS, offering a pixel structure capable of improving contrast ratio. P-IPS is regarded as the high-end of IPS panels.
You should choose your choice very carefully based on what you will be needing your monitor for. Some manufacturers also refer to IPS Panels as Plane to Line Switching Panels (PLS).
OLED Panel Type: is the most expensive of all panel types. It does not use an active backlight. It allows each pixel to light up independently and function as its own light source.
You will get superior contrast from an OLED monitor because each pixel is illuminated separately. Superior contrast means it can display truer black.
Since OLED monitors do not use active backlights, you will not experience backlight bleeding. Backlight bleeding occurs when a part of the screen is brighter than other parts, causing inconsistent blacks.
OLED monitors give better viewing angles than other panel types. You will find an OLED monitor’s ability to reproduce colors satisfactory for whatever you will be using your monitor for.
OLED monitor are excellent at reproducing like-like images. They have high refresh rates and response time as low as 0.1ms.
Monitor Gaming Technologies
To get the concept of Monitor gaming technologies, you need to understand what screen tearing is. Screen tearing results when your GPU sends a frame to your monitor for display while another frame is being currently displayed.
This in turn causes two different frames to appear on the upper and lower parts of the screen with a line dividing them. Screen tearing is apparent when you move from left to right.
You can only observe screen tearing at low frame per second rates. To solve this, Vertical Sync (V- Sync) compels your graphics card to wait on your monitor for refresh before sending a new frame.
The downside of using the V-Sync is that you will experience increased input latency. Also, its frame requirements are rigid. You can just turn V-Sync on in the settings of your monitor. In response to screen bleeding, NVIDIA G-Sync was developed.
It requires a NVIDIA-made module in your monitor with a GTX 650 Ti Graphics card or better before it works. You will also need a display port connection.
G-Sync helps in reconciling your GPU’s frame rate with your monitor’s refresh rate. AMD’s Freesync also works like the NVIDIA’s G-Sync. Freesync requires a GCN 1.1 AMD Graphics card or later before you can use it. G-Sync and Free Sync make monitors adapt their refresh rates to your GPU’s frame rate which is known as Adaptive Sync.
Adaptive sync allows your GPU to control your display’s refresh rate. Adaptive sync works between 30-144Hz. To use Freesync, you need a compatible monitor.
For a monitor to be compatible with FreeSync, it needs a Display Port Revision 1.2A Input or HDMI 1.4. Even though G-Sync and FreeSync solve the same challenge, FreeSync uses open Adaptive Sync Standard while G-Sync works only on NVIDIA built scaler module.
Because FreeSync is cheaper than G-Sync, FreeSync is more widely used. You should understand that FreeSync AMD Graphics card will not work with a G-Sync Monitor, and a NVIDIA Graphics card will not work on a FreeSync monitor.
However, NVIDIA permitted G-Sync support for some selected AMD monitors in early 2019. You should note that you do not need an adaptive technology if your GPU frame-per-second (fps) and your monitor’s refresh rate are compatible.
Contrast: explains the difference between the whitest white and the darkest dark of you monitor’s display.
Having the correct brightness on different areas of the screen is critical for making dark areas look sufficiently dark without losing details.
A contrast ratio of 1000:1 means the brightest pixel will be a thousand times brighter to the dimmest pixel. Contrast ratios are better in OLED monitors because each pixel in an OLED Monitor illuminates itself independently.
This is why some OLED monitors have contrast ratios as high as 10,000,000:1. Available light in your environment affects how conscious you are to the contrast of your monitor.
The more external light is available on your monitor’s screen, the less visible the contrast. You should go for a monitor with a contrast ratio from 1000:1 to 3000:1.
The former is peculiar to IPS and improved TN panels while the latter is peculiar to VA panels.
In-Built Speakers: If you have limited working, then an inbuilt speaker is a good option for you. Some monitors have dual or single inbuilt speakers.
You should go for whichever suits your purpose. If you will be using your monitor for graphics designing and less gaming, you should not really bother about speakers.
Inbuilt speakers does not translate to having the best audio experience, so you may need to get better speakers or a good headphone if you will be using your monitor for music-related purposes.
Color Bit-Depth: explains the number of bits in a single pixel. Bit refers to the stored color information. Bit depth relates the number of colours that can be displayed on your monitor at a time.
The Most available color bit depths are the 8-bit, 16-bit, and the 24-bit color depths. The human eye can see discern 10 million colors.
If you will be using your monitor for video editing, animations, and playing video games, a24-bit color depth is just fine. A 32-bit color depth may seem too excessive as your eyes will not be able to discern more than 10 million of the 16 million+ colors.
In 24-bit color depth, there are eight bits of each of the three colors present. You should prioritize your choice of colour bit if you will be using your monitor for professional graphic works.
You should be more concerned about the speed of color displays if you will be using your monitor for gaming and watching movies.
The available color depths are: Bit-Depth 1 (monochrome as it has just 2 colors)
Bit-Depth 2 (4 colors available. Also referred to as CGA)
Bit-Depth 4 (16 colors available. Also referred to as EGA)
Bit-Depth 8 (256 colors available. Also referred to as VGA)
Bit-Depth 16 (65,536 colors available. Also referred to as VGA)
Bit-Depth 24 (16,777,216 colors available. Also referred to as SVGA
Bit-Depth 32 (16,777,261+ transparency colors available)
Bit-Depth 48 (281 trillion colors).
Curved Monitors vs. Flat Monitors
Apart from the fact that you will find curved monitors more physically attractive, you will also not be missing out on color saturation and color contrasts of your curved monitor when you’re not directly in front of it unlike in flat monitors.
With curved monitors, visibility can be achieved from different angles and varying distances, a necessary element to spice up your gaming experience.
Curved monitors have wider viewing angles which help in improving color reproduction on your monitor. You will find images, movies and games more realistic when you use a curved monitor.
Curved monitors also minimize reflections. With curved monitors, your chances of experiencing eye strain are quite low. Your gaming experience will be detailed as curved monitors employ the concept of the eye’s design to provide you will a great viewing experience.
Research has shown that with a curved monitor, you will find information on your screen 24% faster than when you’re using a flat monitor. If you want to take things up a notch, you can choose to go for a triple-curved monitor setup.
However, you won’t enjoy using your curved monitor if you wish to suspend it on a wall.
HDR Monitors: even though you’ll find HDR monitors to be pricey, you will still get back the value of your money. HDR monitors excellently recreate realness on your screen without missing out on details.
A DisplayHDR 500 is a suitable choice if you will be getting your monitor for general purposes. You should go for a DisplayHDR 600 or better if you need a gaming HDR monitor.
For video editing, photoshopping, creating animations, a DisplayHDR 1000 will suffice.
With a DisplayHDR500, you’ll be getting at least Edge-lit dimming. HDR monitors have great contrast ratios.
While gaming on HDR monitors, deep black levels allow you to see more details in dark situations.
For video professionals, color fidelity is a top priority. Wider color gamuts improve your experience with HDR monitors. Monitors claiming a ‘HDR400’ instead of ‘DisplayHDR400’ have not been tested by VESA, and you shouldn’t buy them.
There are three backlight dimming technologies associated with HDR Monitors: FALD, Edge-Dim lighting, and Global Dimming.
With Full Array Local Dimming (FALD), you can dim some zones over some other zones on the panel, varying brightness levels across the panel to provide a dynamic range of greatly bright patches in some parts of the screen and darker blacks in the rest part of your image.
This makes your gaming experience very detailed. FALD HDR monitors are high-end HDR monitors. With Edge-Lit Dimming, there is less zoning so you won’t be able to control dimming as much as you can do with FLAD.
The areas you can dim with Edge-Lit Dimming are limited to the bottom, the bottom and top, and the left and right sides of your monitor’s screen. Hence, less contrast ratio resulting into less image quality.
It is, however, cheaper than FLAD. Global Dimming has just one dimming zone. Its contrast ratio is poor and never goes beyond 1000:1, similarly rating it with some good SDR monitors.
HDR Monitors with global dimming are only suitable if you will be using them for purposes where the difference between the darkest and lightest tones (also known as Dynamic range) of your image isn’t of great concern to you.
VESA Stand: If you want to hang your monitor on a wall, there are some things you need to keep in mind and in place before you can.
Before you mount your monitor, you need to know the width and height between the holes behind your monitor, and measure them in millimetres. The measurements are regarded as VESA PATTERN.
VESA patterns are written as 200 ×100 mm, meaning the horizontal distance between the holes is 200mm and the vertical distance between them is 100m.
If you wish to mount your monitor, you should also ensure your monitor is VESA compatible before you buy it. If your monitor is not compatible with VESA standards, you should not attempt to mount it on a VESA stand.
Using the VESA pattern behind your monitor, you will be able to get a suitable stand to fix your monitor to a wall.
Calibration Options: there are several options available for you if you wish to calibrate your monitor. The most available option is the built-in tools provided by Mac and Windows to their consumers.
These tools will you help in adjusting Gamma, a setting which affects brightness, color ratio, contrasts and color levels of your monitor.
If you find the tools unsatisfactory, you may download a color profile for your display. Color profiles include sRGB and Adobe RGB.
Color profiles help you map color information in files in UI elements stored in numbers to actual colors your monitor can understand. In addition to those options, you could also try getting a color calibrator.
To use a color calibrator, you will need to place it on your screen. It helps to tell how much your color balance, luminance, and other related factors need adjustment. You may rent or buy one.
Bezel is the frame housing your monitor’s screen and the other component responsible for the functioning of your monitor.
Bezels are actually limitations to your monitor if you wish to have a very smooth multi-monitor setup display.
To resolve this issue, you should go for monitors with thin bezels. Some monitors also come with bezel-free kits. With these kits, you don’t need to take off the bezel of your monitors.
You only need to fix the bezel between the bezels of the monitors you want to setup together. This bezel-free kit it stretches the edges of the screens of both monitors causing the bezels to disappear.
Pivoting a monitor is all about tilting it from landscape to portrait mode. Before you do this, it is important for you to check if your monitor of choice supports pivoting before you purchase it.
Monitor pivoting makes it easy for you to view lengthy documents and websites with vertical orientations. If your monitor has an in-built G Sensor, images will be automatically tilted whenever you pivot your monitor.
One of the downsides to pivoting your monitor is that it may affect the viewing angle of your monitor. Pivoting offers flexibility to photographers who work on landscape and portrait modes.
However, you may not enjoy your gaming and movie experiences with a tilted monitor.
Frame Rate Control: is about increasing your picture quality on low-quality panels like TN+film LCD. Since TN panels do not support the 24-bit truecolor, they combine adjacent pixels to imitate the shades they were unable to produce.
There is really so much to consider before you buy your (first) monitor. These factors shouldn’t leave you overwhelmed but equipped with information!
As some of these factors are variably available in monitors, it may appear as though you are trying to eat your cake and have it at the same time by trying to get a monitor with the best options yet cost-friendly.
If you weigh your options very carefully, you are sure to find a monitor that suits your choice very satisfactorily. I hope you found this article not good as a gaming monitor guide, but also an article that incorporates different monitor specs. Goodluck getting that (first) monitor!
Monitor buying is a task with so many angles. With the right information, you are sure to make the best choices.
For professional purposes like graphics and logo designing, you will need to be particular about the colors your monitor can produce, its ability to be tilted and mounted, clarity, sharpness and contrasts your monitor offers and many other factors.
Choosing a gaming monitor compatible with the weight of your purse could also cause you a headache. Gamers need good resolutions, refresh rates and matching frame rates, good color reproduction, and many other factors to make their gaming experiences fascinating and the least frustrating.
For general purposes and coding, you will definitely not be needing as much monitor specs as a gamer or a graphics designer, so it’ll be excessive for you to get a 4k resolution monitor when you could have saved some cash with a 1080p monitor.
As there may not be a single affordable monitor with all the spec choices you desire, you need to evaluate critically to get best monitor for you. Keep in mind that the best monitor you can buy is not one with all the best specs but one that satisfactorily serves your purpose.
Instead of looking for a website for choosing monitors for sale first, you should take your time to get informed about the ‘’quality’’ of the monitor you should buy. It may not be that easy, but with the information in this monitor buying guide, I hope your search is eased!
When choosing a PC monitor, you should consider the following:
RESOLUTION
Resolution is the number of pixels you can divide your screen into. A pixel of an image is the smallest portion into which you can divide an image.
A good illustration of pixels is what you get when you zoom in an image totally; each block representation you see after zooming represents a pixel.
Your choice of resolution should be determined by your Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), the type of game you will be playing, and what you will like your gaming experience to look like.
You should also ensure your resolution choice matches the refresh rate of your monitor. The higher the resolution of your monitor, the more detailed your activity on the screen becomes as more pixels on your screen mean more portions of the original image will appear on your screen.
For Gaming, the most common resolution rates are 1080p, 1440p, and 4k.The ‘P’ refers to the progressive scan technique indicating the screen refreshes across on all lines from top to bottom causing all display content to be refreshed in a single step simultaneously.
If you play story games and role-playing games like Witcher 3, Fallout 4, Outward, your choice of resolution should be 1440 (2560 × 1440).
For multiplayer games and first-person shooter games like Call of Duty, Battlefield, PUBG, you should get a monitor with 1080P Resolution (1920 × 1080).
For Coding and General Uses, you should get a 1080P monitor. If you wish to take things up a notch, a 2k resolution will provide you with a better cinematic experience.
For Professional purposes: if you will be using your monitor for video editing, photoshopping, image editing, you should definitely go for a 4k monitor as it offer 4 times the clarity and sharpness you will get from a full HD monitor.
Aspect Ratio
This is the ratio of the width to the height of your monitor screen. Widescreen monitors make multi-tasking easy on your monitor screen.
If you are torn between getting multiple monitors and a single monitor due to reasons like costs, buying a monitor with a large aspect ratio will suffice.
16:9, 16:10, and 15:9 are the most common aspect ratios associated with widescreen monitors.
16:9 is the aspect ratio you should go for if you will be using your monitor for gaming.
A 16:9 aspect ratio can accommodate the 4:3 and 2.35:1 aspect ratios.
However, larger aspect ratios do not translate to a better resolution. It is important for you to make sure your aspect ratio matches with the resolution of your monitor.
For video editing, programming, and spreadsheets creation, these specifications are suitable:
1080P - 21:9 Ultrawide
1440 - 21:9 Ultrawide
1080P - 16:10
1440P - 16:10
Refresh Rates
Refresh Rates, measured in hertz, is the number of times your screen image is updated every second. The refresh rate of your monitor is very important if you will be getting a gaming monitor. The higher the frame per second rate of your monitor, the more up-to-date the visual information you will be getting.
With high refresh rates, moving images become clearer quickly. Your refresh rate is, however, dependent on the number of frames your GPU is producing.
The 60Hz and the 144Hz Refresh rates are the most commonly used. For slowly-paced games, RPGs and story-driven games, you should get a monitor with a refresh rate of 60Hz. For fast paced and First-person shooter games, you should go for a 144Hz monitor.
For Coding and Professional uses of your monitor like photoshopping, a 60Hz refresh rate monitor will be just fine.
Brightness
Brightness aids visibility of your screen elements. It is measured in Nits or candela per square meter. 1 nit is equivalent to one candela per square meter.
If you will be using your monitor for general purpose tasks, 250 to 350nits is fine. You will need a monitor with a brighter luminance if you will be using your monitor for viewing movies. 500 nits is just fine for your movies.
Whichever monitor you will be buying, you should choose a monitor with brightness level as high as 250nits. For HDR monitors, certain levels of brightness, called Peak Brightness, must be attained before you can get the quality of imagery a HDR monitor promises.
For some HDR monitors, the peak brightness is 1000 Nits. Yes, a thousand nits is going to be too bright for your eyes. However, this brightness level is self-emissive, and it only comes up when it needs to.
Response Time
Response time refers to how long it takes a pixel to change from black to white or from one shade of grey to another.
It is measured in milliseconds. Different shades of grey are used to measure response times as they represent how intense a given color will appear on your monitor through a filter. The darker the grey, the less light will pass through the color filter and hit your eyes. The longer it takes pixels to switch between shades of grey, the longer the response time.
Longer response times cause you to see remains of trails from a moving objection which is known as ghosting. Ghosting occurs when objects across 2 or more images appear on the screen as one. Low refresh rates will cause ghosting which will in turn shatter your gaming experience and reduce your accuracy and success rates.
You wouldn’t want that to happen, so it’s quite important you prioritize refresh rates among the factors you will be considering if you want to buy a monitor for gaming.
Manufacturers view response times differently. You should search for independently conducted measurements of response time on websites and read reviews.
For Gaming, you should go for a monitor with a response time as low as 1ms. However, the difference between a 1ms response time and a 5ms response is not so easy to tell, even though some gamers claim to be able to spot the difference. You should only be very selective of your monitor’s response time if you will be using your monitor for fast-action activities.
You shouldn’t confuse response time with Input Lag. Input lag is experienced when a monitor takes longer in displaying an instruction from let’s say your mouse. This could really affect your gaming experience by slowing down your responsiveness to opponents. You should ensure your monitor has a low input lag before you purchase it.
Color Accuracy, Color Gamut, Color Saturation, Color Reproduction
Color Accuracy: to explain color accuracy, you need to understand what color space is about.
A Color Space refers to the available colours in specific subsets of color models. The default color space peculiar to modern monitors is the sRGB color space. Color space can be likened to a crayon box. The more crayons you have in your crayon box, the more detailed drawings you can produce with it.
Color space is very useful to web designers. More expensive monitors permit other color spaces such as the Adobe RGB color Space.
The Adobe SGB color space is a bit more distributed than the sRGB color space, making it more useful to designers who work with heavily saturated colours.
You should also note the varying native contrasts among monitors. Native contrast explains how well your monitor can differentiate between different shades of black. You should not go for monitors with low contrast levels. Varying backlight levels also affect color accuracy. There is also the NTSC color gamut.
Color gamut is all about how many colours a monitor can produce. A color gamut clarifies differences in colours. When you walk into a monitor store, you will notice a difference in the colours displayed by monitors.
Monitors are unable to reproduce all the colours the human eye can see, so they display a fraction of those colours which is known as color gamut.
A color gamut is a fraction of colours within a color space which makes it likely for you to have an image with a SRGB color space with colours absent in the color gamut of your monitor.
RGB are three primary colours- Red, Green, and Blue. The mentioned Color Gamuts (sRGB, Adobe RGB, NTSC) are depicted using triangles. The triangle is enclosed by the color coordinates of color gamut.
An LCD monitor with a wider triangular color gamut area means the LCD monitor will be able to display a wide range of colours. You should choose your color gamut based on what tasks you will be using your system for.
You should go for an Adobe RGB Color gamut if you will be working with images in hardcopy prints. If you will be dealing with soft copy images, you should edit your photos in Adobe RGB color gamut then covert to sRGB before you post the images on the internet because internet browsers only support sRGB as the only color gamut at the moment.
Other color gamuts apart from the sRGB color gamuts are considered too wide. Posting your Adobe RGB pictures on the internet without converting them to sRGB color gamuts will cause your images to be desaturated (or to be dulled down) and look pale.
If you will be using your monitor for professional purposes, a color gamut with 72% of sRGB is not a good option. You should go for a monitor having as high as 99% of sRGB color space.
Color Saturation: as Hue describes the actuality of an image’s appearance, saturation describes the purity of the hue. The higher the saturation, the more pure the hue becomes.
Paleness increases with lower saturation levels. The quantity of white in the hue determines the brightness in the color. A decrease in saturation causes images to look like they have been bleached.
To check the color saturation of the monitor you have in mind to buy, if it’s an LCD monitor, you may compare its color accuracy with test images on websites like www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/.
Low Color Gamut monitors make it impossible for your monitor to reach full color saturation.
Color Reproduction: refers to how well your monitor can reproduce colours on its screen from let’s say a photograph you took with your camera. There will be a difference in colours between images from your printer and the image displayed on your LCD monitor because your LCD Monitor uses light to recreate the images you seem while printers use dyes and inks to create images.
While your printer uses as many as four to five colours to reproduce an image, your monitor might just use little quantities of Red, Green and Blue to reproduce the colours of your image.
The color gamut of your monitor is also a factor affecting color reproduction. Color reproduction is affected by brightness, contrast ratio, viewing angle, and color constancy.
You should go for a monitor with a large viewing angle to ensure good color reproduction. Other factors will be discussed later in this guide.
Display Technology: Which is better? LCD or LED?
Liquid Crystal Display (LCD): With a LCD monitor, you can not alter the resolution of your monitor to display information (an image): it will have a negative impact on the image’s quality.
Native resolutions are what you should operate with. Some native resolutions include 17-inch (1024×768), 19-inch (1280×1024), and 20-inch (1600×1200). LCD monitors have been designed to have wide viewing angles.
Wide viewing angles help to improve color reproduction and prevent disappearance of images. Measured in degrees, you should go for an LCD monitor with a viewing angle between 120 and 170 degrees.
Also, you should test the viewing angle of the monitor you wish to buy yourself by checking the angles from the top, the bottom and the sides of the monitor.
Keep in mind how you will use your monitor as you check the angles. LCD monitors should have a brightness range of 250 to 350 nits. If you will be using your LCD monitor to watch movies, its brightness should be as high as 500nits.
The contrast ratio of your LCD monitor should range from 450:1 to 600:1. Contrast ratios help you understand how differently your LCD Monitor produces bright whites and bright darks.
An LCD monitor with a high contrast ratio will provide you with a very detailed display, an important element you’ll need while gaming and carrying out professional tasks with your monitor.
You can swivel, tilt upwards and downwards, and rotate your LCD monitor from landscape to portrait: it is quite flexible. You can also mount it on your wall as its light-weight and thinness permit you to.
An LCD monitor uses florescent lights evenly placed behind the screen to supply lighting across the monitor undisturbed. With this, all regions of your image become equally illuminated.
LIGHT EMITTING DIODE (LED) Display: is a ‘subset’ of LCD displays and is sometimes referred to as LED LCD Display.
Unlike LCD displays, LED displays use light-emitting diodes for backlights. LED displays have varying backlight configurations which enable them to create images with better image quality than LCD displays.
Backlights, Sheet 1, Liquid crystal, sheet 2 with color filters, then the screen are the elements of an LED display from the front of the display facing you to the back.
Even though LED and LCD displays both use liquid crystals, the backlights of both displays are different. The light-emitting diodes in an LED monitor are placed across the whole display just light the arrangement in a LCD monitor, but these diodes are arranged in zones that can be dimmed. his is known as a full-array LED display.
Dimming of the light-emitting emitting diodes is referred to as local dimming, and it is responsible for the improved picture quality in LED monitors. Local dimming enables the best pictures to have very bright and very dark pixels at the same time.
You can darken parts of an image you wish to darken with an LED monitor to create a truer black. LCD monitors, however, do not support local dimming. Rearrangement of the light-emitting diodes in LED monitors produces Edge Lighting.
In Edge lighting displays, the diodes could be at the bottom, the bottom and the top, or the left and right sides of the screen. The diodes are not placed behind the screen, and so local dimming cannot be achieved with Edge Lighting. This in turn reduces improvements you can make to picture quality with an Edge-Lighting Display.
In making your display choice, you should go for not just any LED monitor but a full-array LED Monitor if you will be using your monitor for professional tasks relating to image quality like image editing. For gaming monitors, you should go for a full-array LED monitor.
Visibility becomes poorer the farther you move go the center viewing angle when you use Edge-Lighting LED monitors. Poor visibility will shatter your gaming experience.
If you will be going for an Edge-Lighting LED monitor, then it will either be to save costs as it is cheaper or because of work-space constraint as it thinner.
What will your answer be If I ask you what brand monitor does everyone like between the LCD and LED displays?
Panel Types:
Twisted Nematic (TN) Panel Type: are the most widely used panels. You will find them affordable and also enjoy the good response time (1ms to 2ms), but you may not be satisfied with its poor color accuracy.
You will enjoy playing fast-paced games on a monitor with a TN Panel. However, color reproduction, contrast ratios and viewing angles of a TN panel are not very good.
If you’re limited in terms of cost and you need a gaming monitor, a TN Monitor is still okay because of its low response time. You should also note that TN panels also have low input lag.
Vertical Alignment Panel Type: lies between the TN and IPS panels. It offers better color reproduction and wider viewing angles than a TN panel, but its response time is slower than those of the other panels.
If you will be playing fast-paced games, a VA monitor is not what you should go for. However, it offers a better contrast ratio than the TN panel. You should also note that VA panels suffer from color shifting. Color shifting occurs when an image viewed from one angle looks differently when viewed from a different angle.
This causes unequal brightness levels across displays. Color shifting causes a lot of shadow detail and detailed dark scenes when viewed directly from the center of the screen.
If you will be using your monitor for only general purposes, a VA Panel is a good fit for you.
In-plane Switching Panel Type: offers excellent image quality, color accuracy and viewing angles as wide as 178 degrees. You will find it suitable for your graphics works and other professional tasks needing color reproduction.
However, IPS Panels are expensive and have higher response times than TN panels. Response times could be as high as 4ms to 6ms, making it slower than a TN panel. You should go for a TN Panel if you will be using your monitor for gaming due to the TN Panel’s faster response time.
On the other hand, gaming on an IPS panel is, however, superior to a TN panel as the response time is negligible, and you are very unlikely to tell the difference for non-gaming purposes. Some gamers think motion blur occurs on all IPS panels. You should only be really be concerned about motion blurring when response times are at 7ms or higher.
The types of IPS panels include S-IPS, E-IPS, AH-IPS, P-IPS. S-IPS panels are expensive. AH-IPS panels have slightly different pixel structure from the other IPS panel types.
E-IPS only offers 6-bit depth. P-IPS is a variation of S-IPS, offering a pixel structure capable of improving contrast ratio. P-IPS is regarded as the high-end of IPS panels.
You should choose your choice very carefully based on what you will be needing your monitor for. Some manufacturers also refer to IPS Panels as Plane to Line Switching Panels (PLS).
OLED Panel Type: is the most expensive of all panel types. It does not use an active backlight. It allows each pixel to light up independently and function as its own light source.
You will get superior contrast from an OLED monitor because each pixel is illuminated separately. Superior contrast means it can display truer black.
Since OLED monitors do not use active backlights, you will not experience backlight bleeding. Backlight bleeding occurs when a part of the screen is brighter than other parts, causing inconsistent blacks.
OLED monitors give better viewing angles than other panel types. You will find an OLED monitor’s ability to reproduce colors satisfactory for whatever you will be using your monitor for.
OLED monitor are excellent at reproducing like-like images. They have high refresh rates and response time as low as 0.1ms.
Monitor Gaming Technologies
To get the concept of Monitor gaming technologies, you need to understand what screen tearing is. Screen tearing results when your GPU sends a frame to your monitor for display while another frame is being currently displayed.
This in turn causes two different frames to appear on the upper and lower parts of the screen with a line dividing them. Screen tearing is apparent when you move from left to right.
You can only observe screen tearing at low frame per second rates. To solve this, Vertical Sync (V- Sync) compels your graphics card to wait on your monitor for refresh before sending a new frame.
The downside of using the V-Sync is that you will experience increased input latency. Also, its frame requirements are rigid. You can just turn V-Sync on in the settings of your monitor. In response to screen bleeding, NVIDIA G-Sync was developed.
It requires a NVIDIA-made module in your monitor with a GTX 650 Ti Graphics card or better before it works. You will also need a display port connection.
G-Sync helps in reconciling your GPU’s frame rate with your monitor’s refresh rate. AMD’s Freesync also works like the NVIDIA’s G-Sync. Freesync requires a GCN 1.1 AMD Graphics card or later before you can use it. G-Sync and Free Sync make monitors adapt their refresh rates to your GPU’s frame rate which is known as Adaptive Sync.
Adaptive sync allows your GPU to control your display’s refresh rate. Adaptive sync works between 30-144Hz. To use Freesync, you need a compatible monitor.
For a monitor to be compatible with FreeSync, it needs a Display Port Revision 1.2A Input or HDMI 1.4. Even though G-Sync and FreeSync solve the same challenge, FreeSync uses open Adaptive Sync Standard while G-Sync works only on NVIDIA built scaler module.
Because FreeSync is cheaper than G-Sync, FreeSync is more widely used. You should understand that FreeSync AMD Graphics card will not work with a G-Sync Monitor, and a NVIDIA Graphics card will not work on a FreeSync monitor.
However, NVIDIA permitted G-Sync support for some selected AMD monitors in early 2019. You should note that you do not need an adaptive technology if your GPU frame-per-second (fps) and your monitor’s refresh rate are compatible.
Contrast: explains the difference between the whitest white and the darkest dark of you monitor’s display.
Having the correct brightness on different areas of the screen is critical for making dark areas look sufficiently dark without losing details.
A contrast ratio of 1000:1 means the brightest pixel will be a thousand times brighter to the dimmest pixel. Contrast ratios are better in OLED monitors because each pixel in an OLED Monitor illuminates itself independently.
This is why some OLED monitors have contrast ratios as high as 10,000,000:1. Available light in your environment affects how conscious you are to the contrast of your monitor.
The more external light is available on your monitor’s screen, the less visible the contrast. You should go for a monitor with a contrast ratio from 1000:1 to 3000:1.
The former is peculiar to IPS and improved TN panels while the latter is peculiar to VA panels.
In-Built Speakers: If you have limited working, then an inbuilt speaker is a good option for you. Some monitors have dual or single inbuilt speakers.
You should go for whichever suits your purpose. If you will be using your monitor for graphics designing and less gaming, you should not really bother about speakers.
Inbuilt speakers does not translate to having the best audio experience, so you may need to get better speakers or a good headphone if you will be using your monitor for music-related purposes.
Color Bit-Depth: explains the number of bits in a single pixel. Bit refers to the stored color information. Bit depth relates the number of colours that can be displayed on your monitor at a time.
The Most available color bit depths are the 8-bit, 16-bit, and the 24-bit color depths. The human eye can see discern 10 million colors.
If you will be using your monitor for video editing, animations, and playing video games, a24-bit color depth is just fine. A 32-bit color depth may seem too excessive as your eyes will not be able to discern more than 10 million of the 16 million+ colors.
In 24-bit color depth, there are eight bits of each of the three colors present. You should prioritize your choice of colour bit if you will be using your monitor for professional graphic works.
You should be more concerned about the speed of color displays if you will be using your monitor for gaming and watching movies.
The available color depths are: Bit-Depth 1 (monochrome as it has just 2 colors)
Bit-Depth 2 (4 colors available. Also referred to as CGA)
Bit-Depth 4 (16 colors available. Also referred to as EGA)
Bit-Depth 8 (256 colors available. Also referred to as VGA)
Bit-Depth 16 (65,536 colors available. Also referred to as VGA)
Bit-Depth 24 (16,777,216 colors available. Also referred to as SVGA
Bit-Depth 32 (16,777,261+ transparency colors available)
Bit-Depth 48 (281 trillion colors).
Curved Monitors vs. Flat Monitors
Apart from the fact that you will find curved monitors more physically attractive, you will also not be missing out on color saturation and color contrasts of your curved monitor when you’re not directly in front of it unlike in flat monitors.
With curved monitors, visibility can be achieved from different angles and varying distances, a necessary element to spice up your gaming experience.
Curved monitors have wider viewing angles which help in improving color reproduction on your monitor. You will find images, movies and games more realistic when you use a curved monitor.
Curved monitors also minimize reflections. With curved monitors, your chances of experiencing eye strain are quite low. Your gaming experience will be detailed as curved monitors employ the concept of the eye’s design to provide you will a great viewing experience.
Research has shown that with a curved monitor, you will find information on your screen 24% faster than when you’re using a flat monitor. If you want to take things up a notch, you can choose to go for a triple-curved monitor setup.
However, you won’t enjoy using your curved monitor if you wish to suspend it on a wall.
HDR Monitors: even though you’ll find HDR monitors to be pricey, you will still get back the value of your money. HDR monitors excellently recreate realness on your screen without missing out on details.
A DisplayHDR 500 is a suitable choice if you will be getting your monitor for general purposes. You should go for a DisplayHDR 600 or better if you need a gaming HDR monitor.
For video editing, photoshopping, creating animations, a DisplayHDR 1000 will suffice.
With a DisplayHDR500, you’ll be getting at least Edge-lit dimming. HDR monitors have great contrast ratios.
While gaming on HDR monitors, deep black levels allow you to see more details in dark situations.
For video professionals, color fidelity is a top priority. Wider color gamuts improve your experience with HDR monitors. Monitors claiming a ‘HDR400’ instead of ‘DisplayHDR400’ have not been tested by VESA, and you shouldn’t buy them.
There are three backlight dimming technologies associated with HDR Monitors: FALD, Edge-Dim lighting, and Global Dimming.
With Full Array Local Dimming (FALD), you can dim some zones over some other zones on the panel, varying brightness levels across the panel to provide a dynamic range of greatly bright patches in some parts of the screen and darker blacks in the rest part of your image.
This makes your gaming experience very detailed. FALD HDR monitors are high-end HDR monitors. With Edge-Lit Dimming, there is less zoning so you won’t be able to control dimming as much as you can do with FLAD.
The areas you can dim with Edge-Lit Dimming are limited to the bottom, the bottom and top, and the left and right sides of your monitor’s screen. Hence, less contrast ratio resulting into less image quality.
It is, however, cheaper than FLAD. Global Dimming has just one dimming zone. Its contrast ratio is poor and never goes beyond 1000:1, similarly rating it with some good SDR monitors.
HDR Monitors with global dimming are only suitable if you will be using them for purposes where the difference between the darkest and lightest tones (also known as Dynamic range) of your image isn’t of great concern to you.
VESA Stand: If you want to hang your monitor on a wall, there are some things you need to keep in mind and in place before you can.
Before you mount your monitor, you need to know the width and height between the holes behind your monitor, and measure them in millimetres. The measurements are regarded as VESA PATTERN.
VESA patterns are written as 200 ×100 mm, meaning the horizontal distance between the holes is 200mm and the vertical distance between them is 100m.
If you wish to mount your monitor, you should also ensure your monitor is VESA compatible before you buy it. If your monitor is not compatible with VESA standards, you should not attempt to mount it on a VESA stand.
Using the VESA pattern behind your monitor, you will be able to get a suitable stand to fix your monitor to a wall.
Calibration Options: there are several options available for you if you wish to calibrate your monitor. The most available option is the built-in tools provided by Mac and Windows to their consumers.
These tools will you help in adjusting Gamma, a setting which affects brightness, color ratio, contrasts and color levels of your monitor.
If you find the tools unsatisfactory, you may download a color profile for your display. Color profiles include sRGB and Adobe RGB.
Color profiles help you map color information in files in UI elements stored in numbers to actual colors your monitor can understand. In addition to those options, you could also try getting a color calibrator.
To use a color calibrator, you will need to place it on your screen. It helps to tell how much your color balance, luminance, and other related factors need adjustment. You may rent or buy one.
Bezel is the frame housing your monitor’s screen and the other component responsible for the functioning of your monitor.
Bezels are actually limitations to your monitor if you wish to have a very smooth multi-monitor setup display.
To resolve this issue, you should go for monitors with thin bezels. Some monitors also come with bezel-free kits. With these kits, you don’t need to take off the bezel of your monitors.
You only need to fix the bezel between the bezels of the monitors you want to setup together. This bezel-free kit it stretches the edges of the screens of both monitors causing the bezels to disappear.
Pivoting a monitor is all about tilting it from landscape to portrait mode. Before you do this, it is important for you to check if your monitor of choice supports pivoting before you purchase it.
Monitor pivoting makes it easy for you to view lengthy documents and websites with vertical orientations. If your monitor has an in-built G Sensor, images will be automatically tilted whenever you pivot your monitor.
One of the downsides to pivoting your monitor is that it may affect the viewing angle of your monitor. Pivoting offers flexibility to photographers who work on landscape and portrait modes.
However, you may not enjoy your gaming and movie experiences with a tilted monitor.
Frame Rate Control: is about increasing your picture quality on low-quality panels like TN+film LCD. Since TN panels do not support the 24-bit truecolor, they combine adjacent pixels to imitate the shades they were unable to produce.
There is really so much to consider before you buy your (first) monitor. These factors shouldn’t leave you overwhelmed but equipped with information!
As some of these factors are variably available in monitors, it may appear as though you are trying to eat your cake and have it at the same time by trying to get a monitor with the best options yet cost-friendly.
If you weigh your options very carefully, you are sure to find a monitor that suits your choice very satisfactorily. I hope you found this article not good as a gaming monitor guide, but also an article that incorporates different monitor specs. Goodluck getting that (first) monitor!