Which monitor is right for me?

When buying a monitor, what matters first is what you use it for and what you connect it to. An office monitor needs good height adjustment and ideally USB-C for your laptop, a gaming monitor needs a high refresh rate and clean motion, a monitor for photos needs a wide colour gamut. The finder above asks about use, connection, size, sharpness and your wishes. The result is a ranking where every place is explained. Manufacturers and retailers cannot buy a place in it.

Size and sharpness

If your desk is less than 70 cm (28 in) deep, 24 or 27 inches are more comfortable. How sharp a picture looks depends on pixel density: Full HD at 27 inches looks coarse, QHD is decent there, 4K is fine. On a Mac, text at around 110 ppi (QHD at 27 inches) looks a little softer than on Windows; it becomes truly sharp with 5K at 27 inches (218 ppi).

Panels: IPS, VA, TN and OLED

Manufacturer figures such as “1 ms” are not comparable. Whether a monitor smears in fast motion is therefore judged from independent tests (RTINGS, Monitors Unboxed, PCMonitors, PRAD and others): clean, slight smearing or clear smearing. If there is no test of a VA monitor, we point out the panel type.

Gaming and consoles

Fast shooters benefit from 240 Hz and more; for all other games 144 to 180 Hz is plenty. We count the refresh rate at full resolution: some 4K monitors only reach 320 or 360 Hz in a Full HD mode. For PlayStation 5 and Xbox, what matters is whether the manufacturer confirms 120 Hz over HDMI and at which resolution. “HDMI 2.1” alone does not always mean 4K at 120 Hz.

Laptop and home office

With USB-C and enough charging power (from about 65 W), one cable carries picture, power, keyboard and mouse. A KVM switch moves keyboard and mouse between your work laptop and your own computer. Height adjustment, USB-C charging, a webcam and KVM cannot be added later, so the finder filters for them.

OLED and burn-in

OLED monitors can burn in when the same content (taskbar, windows) stays on screen for hours. Dell and Alienware, ASUS and AOC give a 3-year warranty that also covers burn-in, Samsung 2 years on the Odyssey G6. For lots of office work we recommend IPS instead.

Prices and retailers

Prices are reference prices from manufacturer shops and price comparison sites from October 2026, not from Amazon. We only link to Amazon when the monitor is available new there. You will see the current price at the retailer.

All Monitors at a glance

Data: our own research from manufacturer and retailer information. Undocumented values are marked as such.