GUIDE TO BUY GAMING MONITORS

The monitor is an essential part in any PC, especially if you like gaming since it is the device that will reproduce the images and must do so with the best possible quality. There's no point in spending a pretty penny on your graphics card or CPU if you don't have a monitor that can keep up with your components.

Choosing the ideal monitor for our PC is not an easy task. It can take days and even weeks to gather the information to find your perfect monitor. Our goal with this guide is to simplify that search both for people who know more and for people who know less, Opjee explaining all the necessary terms you should know when choosing a monitor.

Resolutions: 4K or Full HD monitors

Let's start with the easy one, the resolution,  which is the number of pixels (individual dots of color) that a monitor screen is capable of displaying. The definition of the monitor will depend on this and its size.

When looking for a  gaming monitor you will find expressions such as HD ready, Full HD, 4k , and even up to 5k . The display market is advancing so fast that every year we find new things. But, what do these abbreviations mean?

You will probably already know many of them, but just in case we explain them to you:

• HD Ready: Refers to the first high definition resolutions that came onto the market. They can be 720p  (progressive lines) or 1080i  (interlaced lines). It is currently deprecated and we do not recommend it as it is a rather poor resolution for today's games. But if your budget does not allow you more, go ahead.
• Full HD:  The most common format today, its resolution would be 1920 × 1080, it is also known as 1080p. It is a good option, since with these characteristics we can find very good options with an excellent quality/price ratio. Since the 4K output, it's also known as  2k.
• 4K: Officially known as 4K UHD. It already takes a while and is coming to stay, the 4K monitors double the Full HD resolution, offering a total of 3840 by 2160 pixels on the screen. Little by little, these monitors are becoming more popular compared to Full HD. These types of monitors are more expensive but offer excellent quality and if we have a good graphics card they are the best option to get the most out of it.
• 5k:  What is on the horizon, are already on sale but their prices are not suitable for all budgets. They project up to 5120 × 2880 pixels achieving a hyper-realistic feeling that will leave you speechless.

Refresh rate and response time of a gaming monitor

The refresh rate is measured in hertz and the higher it is, the more images are drawn on the screen per second. Surely you are thinking that the more pixels the monitor displays, the better its refresh rate has to be and you are right, especially if we are talking about gaming.

The faster you refresh the monitor, the smoother and smoother the graphics will look. The refresh rates normally used by gaming monitors are usually 120 or 144 hertz (but you can find them up to 240 Hz ), more than enough since depending on the sensitivity of each eye, we may not notice the difference.

Other factors to consider would be the response time, which specifies the speed at which the screen is capable of receiving new information, and which works together with the refresh rate to achieve the best possible visual transition. If the response time is too high, residual pixels will appear on the screen until the screen refreshes and replaces them with new pixels. This phenomenon is called "Ghosting" and is quite annoying. Our recommendation to play is that the refresh rate is equal to or less than 2 ms.

Gaming monitor formats

The format is the proportion that the screen has with respect to its height and width. The most important when we talk about gaming monitors are the following:

• 4: 3 (Square):  The screens of a lifetime, are still used quite a bit, although personally I would not recommend it for gamers, since the immersion is less than in the panoramic screens.
• 16: 9 (Widescreen):  The most common at present, it is the most recommended if you go for gaming since most developers design their games with this size in mind.
• 21: 9 (Ultra-wide or "cinemascope"):  They are amazing , and thanks to the new curved screens it is very easy to adapt to such a wide vision. The problem? The price. At the moment, they are very expensive and not everyone can afford a screen in this format that is of good quality.

LED or LCD gaming monitors

LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) and LED (Light-emitting diode) refer to the technology that the screen uses to backlight, in the case of LCD screens fluorescent tubes are used and in LEDs they are small diodes that are in charge to emit light. If we put ourselves "nosy", all LED screens are LCD because they use LCD panels, but we are not going to delve into this so as not to get involved.

Currently the best option is an LED screen versus an LCD, the advantages that the former offer compared to the latter are too significant to ignore:

• LED monitors are much thinner than LCDs, making them lighter and both the space they take up and their design make them superior to LCD screens.
• They consume up to 40% less energy, which is a very significant saving when the electricity bill arrives.
• The colors are more vivid and the brightness is much higher.
• The lifespan of an LED monitor is considerably longer than that of an LCD monitor.
• There is practically no difference in terms of price, making it more profitable.

Panel types

We go with the panels, each panel has different characteristics that we detail below, so you must choose the one that best suits what you are looking for:

TN panels (Twisted Nematic)

The TN panels are the most common and also the oldest. Its main advantage is that they give a very short response time, which gives them an advantage when it comes to gaming. They also offer a fairly high brightness and their power consumption is quite optimal.

Another factor to highlight is its low cost, which means savings in the consumer's pocket that achieves a fairly good quality at a reasonable price.

The downside of this technology is that it is the one with the worst image quality. It loses quality depending on the angle in which you look at it, creating shadows and also that it does not represent colors too faithfully, creating distortions, so it is not one of the best options, unless our budget is limited.

IPS panels (In-Plane Switching)

IPS panel technology offers a noticeable improvement over TN panels, they reproduce colors much better and do not lose quality if viewed from other angles. They are the best option when we highly appreciate the quality of the colors since the difference is abysmal.

In the past, they had very high response times but over time they have been improving with the introduction of super IPS (S-IPS) panels. Perhaps the only downside is the price and that the hertz is not as high as on other monitors.

VA panels - MVA and PVA

Manufacturers are constantly looking to improve their technology to be up to date, and this type of panel tries to combine the advantages of TN and IPS. But unfortunately, they are not yet developed enough. The MVA and PVA panels offer a great quality both in contrast and in brightness and colors, but at the moment they are not suitable for gaming since they usually produce «Ghosting».

I hope this little guide has helped you a little when choosing a gaming monitor. If you have any doubt or criticism, do not hesitate to write us in the comments.