New monitor up to £500 recommendations please

fastwunz

fastwunz

fastwunz

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Joined
12 Jul 2005
Posts
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Hi folks,

Ive got a voucher for £1500 to spend - i want to spend a max of £500 on a new monitor.

Currently i run:

B450
3600x
Vega 56
16 GB 3600MHZ Ram

Not a bad setup but ill likely upgrade to a 550 motherboard soon and get a 3070 or AMD equivalent.

In the mean time, my current Samsung monitor is starting to display some issues and so ill get shot.

Could someone kindly advise as to what the best might be?

I may aswel push things to 1440p - i currently game at 1080p 144mhz.

thanks
 
probably need a bit more info on what you are looking for. Size? I am going with 1440p? Is high frame rate important if so how high? what do you do with the monitor, games if so what games, colour work, etc? All of those are really important before people can really give you a recommendation as the gamut (forgive the pun) is so wide there.
 
Double07 said:
probably need a bit more info on what you are looking for. Size? I am going with 1440p? Is high frame rate important if so how high? what do you do with the monitor, games if so what games, colour work, etc? All of those are really important before people can really give you a recommendation as the gamut (forgive the pun) is so wide there.
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thank you.

games really - 60fps plus. 100 FPS desirable. Although that will be achieved with a new GPU to replace my vega 56 shortly
 
fastwunz said:
thank you.

games really - 60fps plus. 100 FPS desirable. Although that will be achieved with a new GPU to replace my vega 56 shortly
Click to expand...

Is 27" the sweet spot for you or do you want to look at 32"? 27" you'll get higher specs but obviously 32" you get more real estate. You can get 34" ultrawide for sub £500 if thats a consideration.
 
thenewoc said:
Personally I'd blow most of it on an ultrawide like the LG 38WN95C then wait for RDNA3 and AM5 socket generation to release.
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Sadly even on the top-end LG monitors there are some really bad quality control issues.

The PC monitor space is not very good for QC in general.

Been reading reviews and ratings for the 34GN850 and 34GP83A (etc).
 
FoxEye said:
Sadly even on the top-end LG monitors there are some really bad quality control issues.

The PC monitor space is not very good for QC in general.

Been reading reviews and ratings for the 34GN850 and 34GP83A (etc).
Click to expand...

Yeah I didn't find it at all pleasurable wading through so much dross in the monitor market to get to some shortlisted options.

The other one I think is worth a look is the Alienware AW3821DW for the longer Dell warranty if the USB-C isn't an issue. You could pair it with a laptop dock for similar functionality. You could combine a usb switch perhaps with a laptop dock to switch between one set of KB and mouse.
 
Last edited:
fastwunz said:
Hi folks,

Ive got a voucher for £1500 to spend - i want to spend a max of £500 on a new monitor.

Currently i run:

B450
3600x
Vega 56
16 GB 3600MHZ Ram

Not a bad setup but ill likely upgrade to a 550 motherboard soon and get a 3070 or AMD equivalent.

In the mean time, my current Samsung monitor is starting to display some issues and so ill get shot.

Could someone kindly advise as to what the best might be?

I may aswel push things to 1440p - i currently game at 1080p 144mhz.

thanks
Click to expand...

I've just got the Gigabyte G34WQC - curved 21:9 1440p VA 144Hz and £400. I'm really pleased so far: in games there is little noticeable VA smear so far, I have noticed it in some videos where there was panning in large scenes with high contrasts but not whilst gaming (ghost recon breakpoint and minecraft mostly). I've turned off freesync as I did notice some very subtle flicker which disappeared when it was off. I'm an instant convert to ultrawide though and 34" is the sweet spot for me at least, I was hesitant with the curve but it is excellent for gaming in terms of increasing immersion - I wouldn't go back now.
 
I went with the pixio/illayama px275h - up to 90hz (bonus over 60), 1440p, looks great, amazing angles, 0 issues at all and not hugely expensive.
 
thenewoc said:
The other one I think is worth a look is the Alienware AW3821DW for the longer Dell warranty if the USB-C isn't an issue. You could pair it with a laptop dock for similar functionality. You could combine a usb switch perhaps with a laptop dock to switch between one set of KB and mouse.
Click to expand...
At £1300 I'll pass on the Alienware :p Res is a bit too much for my peasant GPU, plus it's a G-sync only screen as far as I can tell, and I mostly use AMD GPUs.

All the IPS UW 1440p screens from all the vendors (LG, Acer, etc) are all bang-on £1000. Seems to be no competition on pricing between the vendors at all.

Then you drop down to VA and pricing starts to vary a tad. Cheapest being £400 and ranging up to about £700.

It's just uncanny how all the 34" IPS UW are bang on £1000. Every. single. one :p

Damn, wading through the monitor market is such a chore. Vendors that release a billion screens with minor differences don't help (LG and co).

I've poured hours into this now and haven't found really a single damn screen to shortlist, let alone one I want to buy. Unless I triple my budget probably stay that way, too :p The amount of sheer crap for <£500 is excruciating.
 
FoxEye said:
At £1300 I'll pass on the Alienware :p Res is a bit too much for my peasant GPU, plus it's a G-sync only screen as far as I can tell, and I mostly use AMD GPUs.

All the IPS UW 1440p screens from all the vendors (LG, Acer, etc) are all bang-on £1000. Seems to be no competition on pricing between the vendors at all.

Then you drop down to VA and pricing starts to vary a tad. Cheapest being £400 and ranging up to about £700.

It's just uncanny how all the 34" IPS UW are bang on £1000. Every. single. one :p

Damn, wading through the monitor market is such a chore. Vendors that release a billion screens with minor differences don't help (LG and co).

I've poured hours into this now and haven't found really a single damn screen to shortlist, let alone one I want to buy. Unless I triple my budget probably stay that way, too :p The amount of sheer crap for <£500 is excruciating.
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It's also adaptive sync/freesync compatible as I understand.

What refresh rate do you require, it's not so bad if you can compromise on that down to say 75Hz?
 
thenewoc said:
It's also adaptive sync/freesync compatible as I understand.

What refresh rate do you require, it's not so bad if you can compromise on that down to say 75Hz?
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I'm after 120Hz and ideally also over HDMI (at QHD, for console use). I'm not fussed on >120Hz, I think I'd struggle to get FPS over that anyhow, and VA panels in the main can't respond quickly enough to have true 144Hz+ anyhow.

Anything below 120Hz is off my radar tbh.

As I understand it, the G-sync v2 module has a newer firmware that can enable Freesync but it's not guaranteed on any particular screen model, unless confirmed by the vendor.

In any case my budget is <£600 unless it's literally perfect (and HDMI 2.1 :p). Do wonder what will be announced at CES in Jan.
 
The best 2k 165hz ips monitor should be viewsonic XG270QG, the panel is LG LM270WQA-SSA1, which is the same panel used on LG 27GL850. The biggest strength for this monitor is that it has true hardware G-Sync support, while most if not all other 2k 165hz monitors were only G-Sync Compatible (Software G-Sync)
Since it uses hardware G-Sync, it comes with more premium price tag (£650)
For monitors below £500, there are couple of choices:
Dell S2721DGF (LM270WQA-SSA2 from LG)
LG 27GL850 (LM270WQA-SSA1 from LG)
Acer XB273UGS (M270DAN06.6 from AUO)
Acer VG272UV (M270DAN06.6 from AUO)
Acer XV272UV (M270KCJ-K7B from Innolux)
Acer VG270UP (M270KCJ-K7B from Innolux)
 
FoxEye said:
I'm after 120Hz and ideally also over HDMI (at QHD, for console use). I'm not fussed on >120Hz, I think I'd struggle to get FPS over that anyhow, and VA panels in the main can't respond quickly enough to have true 144Hz+ anyhow.

Anything below 120Hz is off my radar tbh.

As I understand it, the G-sync v2 module has a newer firmware that can enable Freesync but it's not guaranteed on any particular screen model, unless confirmed by the vendor.

In any case my budget is <£600 unless it's literally perfect (and HDMI 2.1 :p). Do wonder what will be announced at CES in Jan.
Click to expand...

I agree it is strange that all 34" IPS UW Monitors are still around a grand, you would think that they would've dropped by now, I'm still using an old Acer x34 UW which I grabbed off OcUK for £500 b-grade back in the day, I guess I should count myself lucky but it's getting a bit long in the tooth now and I want to replace it, but @ £1000 I can't justify it, I like you scoured though tons of monitors and anything under a grand just wasn't cutting it for me either.
 
FoxEye said:
I'm after 120Hz and ideally also over HDMI (at QHD, for console use). I'm not fussed on >120Hz, I think I'd struggle to get FPS over that anyhow, and VA panels in the main can't respond quickly enough to have true 144Hz+ anyhow.

Anything below 120Hz is off my radar tbh.

As I understand it, the G-sync v2 module has a newer firmware that can enable Freesync but it's not guaranteed on any particular screen model, unless confirmed by the vendor.

In any case my budget is <£600 unless it's literally perfect (and HDMI 2.1 :p). Do wonder what will be announced at CES in Jan.
Click to expand...

The only ones I've seen with HDMI 2.1 are the Eve Spectrum QHD 240Hz & Eve Spectrum 4K 144Hz but both would mean a compromise on size down to 27". Both are G-Sync Compatible certified & FreeSync Premium Pro certified.

As for anything 34" and above nothing really ticks all the boxes one would expect for the price point, such as IPS, 144Hz, 1440/1600 vertical pixels, USB-C + Power Delivery, KVM swich, HDMI 2.1. Hoping something suitable will be announced at CES too.
 
It just seems we've been talking about IPS low contrast and VA dark level smearing for decades now, without any real improvement.

I'm not wedded to IPS but I'd need dark-level transitions below 8.33ms - ie true 120Hz. A shame that almost no VA panels can even manage this - all the while advertising themselves as "144hz" "165 hz" etc. With dark level transitions between 20ms and 40ms typical. What a joke.

Then outside of Nano IPS, most of the cheap IPS screens have their own response time issues. Again, advertising 144hz but with typical transition times from 12ms up to 16ms. And with VRR implementations that often have the transition times getting worse the lower the refresh rate. How is none of this fixed yet?

So many stupid niggles. 27" curved screens where the curve is completely unnecessary. 34" ultra-wide flat screens where a curve is pretty much a requirement for this format :p

You look at so many of these monitors and you think, "With a bit more care or attention to detail this could have been great." But whoever is designing these things, they seem to make a few sane choices and then always at least one or two irrational/bizarro choices. Or cost cutting choices, I guess.
 
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