7 Tips to buy the perfect computer monitor

I have been on the market for a new monitor for some time now. With so many options and so many price ranges to choose from, I have gathered this handy list of tips that will help me and you decide on the perfect monitor.

1 Tn, ips, or va

Technical details aside, the main differences from an end-user perspective are as follows. TN panels are cheaper, and have a faster response time, making them good for gaming. IPS panels have better color reproduction and better viewing angles. The VA, MVA, PVA panels are a recent compromise between TN and IPS panels which look good on paper, but are not recommended for gaming or color work as they are not the best for anything.

2 Response times

Response times indicate how fast the color of a pixel can change from black to white. Naturally, faster response times are to be preferred and are usually reported in terms of 1-10 ms. TN panels have faster response times than IPS panels. However, refresh rate is considered to be a more important consideration for gaming.

3 Refresh rate

Refresh rate indicates the number of frames a monitor can deliver per second. For any task, be it gaming, programming, watching movies, you need at least 60 Hz. If you can afford a monitor with higher refresh rate, which go all the way up to 144 Hz, that is highly recommended instead. But note that you will need an equally capable graphics card to be able to generate the higher FPS. Check this video to view a comparion of refresh rates.

4 Adaptive sync: freesync and g-sync

If you have monitors with lower refresh rates, then you can make up for the synchronization issues by utilizing adaptive sync, which is included in some of the latest monitors. Be aware that the technology is proprietary and tied to the graphics card manufacturer. So, if you have a NVidia GPU, then adaptive sync will only work with a monitor that has G-sync. In the case of AMD, it has to be FreeSync. If you have a capable GPU, such as the Nvidia GTX 1080, and a monitor capable of rendering higher refresh rates of 120+ Hz, then you do not really need adaptive sync and you can ignore the technology.

5 Ultrawide or dual-monitors

While dual-monitors have been a staple of the industry for a while, there is a flood of ultrawide monitors with aspect ratios of 21:9 available today. Some of these monitors also provide picture-in-picture for splitting screens from multiple sources, if need be. But note that viewing a ultra-wide monitor from end to end can be cumbersome, unless you purchase one with a curved screen, which are still expensive. Moreover, not all games and applications support or look good on the 21:9 aspect ratio. But for some games, Ultrawide monitors offer much wider field of view than regular monitors. If you are concerned about productivity, check out this article on lifehacker which sheds some light on the comparison of the two.

6 Resolution

Today you have HD, QHD, and UHD resolutions available which are just fancy speak for 1080p, 1440p, and 4K. Higher resolution costs more money. Higher resolution means more densely packed pixels on the monitor and better viewing experience. It also means you can have more lines of code visible simultaneously. But because we are packing a lot of information, the text can become extremely small and you might have to scale it to compensate for better legibility. Consequently, people recommend larger monitor sizes, of the order of 34+" if you want to purchase a 4K monitor.

7 Monitor size

Really depends on your usage and setup. If you have limited room, and need something to primarily watch movies, videos or play slow games with, buy a large 4K monitor. Even good 40" 4K monitors sometimes sell for less than $500. If on the other hand you need faster response times with accurate color reproduction, get a smaller screen, with 1440p and faster refresh rates of 144Hz, and put the extra cash towards a strong graphics card. Finally, if you are into programming, get two 24" or 27" monitors to multi-task better and to use one for reference, while the other for working.

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