PC monitors

I just got a decent PC for the first time in a decade and trying to figure out the monitor situation is a nightmare. Beyond resolution and refresh rate, is there stuff I should be looking for?

I don’t want to spend much more than ~100$ for the budget.

Also if anyone has mouse suggestions that’d be neat. I’m just doing fine with a basic one.

You also want to make sure it has a low response time so below 2ms and if it uses one of the vertical sync technologies that it matches your graphic card manufacturer - so G-Sync for Nvidia cards and FreeSync for AMD. Also a big element is if it's an LED panel or an IPS panel. Generally more and more monitors are IPS panels which give a bigger and more realistic spectrum of colors, but lower range IPS panels can come with all sorts of issues such as backlight bleed which is identified by a bright outline around your monitor bezel or clouding where splotches of backlighting can be visible in solid black colors.

This is what I look out for as a layman. Monitors much like TV's are sort of a nightmare to buy and you can get pretty granular with the pros and cons such as the different types of IPS panels or the black ratio etc. I'm certain plenty of people here can shed a lot of light on the nitty gritty details of such a purchase, but what I mentioned are some solid basics to look out for.

i usually use a combo of this:

logical increments monitors

and this

pcpartpicker (monitor search and then dial in your desired specs to see what's popular)

that will give you a sense of what's out there. i'll be honest- beyond hitting your target screen size, price point, panel type, resolution and refresh rate- the rest is just noise to me (but then again i'm not a hardcore image/video editor, pro gamer, or prosumer).

IMHO buying a monitor is a lot like buying headphones- there's a well established spectrum of quality, and then within that an endless amount of opinion on why something is better than the other. as long as it meets your requirements and has an established history of good reviews, you can't go wrong.

If it's a Freesync monitor, most are compatible with G-sync now.

You're not giving us much information to work with, but at a $100 budget your options are pretty limited.

What are your system specs?

After some poking around with y'alls advice I think I'll get this ViewSonic. Last I knew it was a knockoff brand but it seems people like it.

I realize the options are limited, but that's the problem with getting new hardware, it's expensive.

I'm gonna pull a @Mike and say that you should save your money for a better monitor. $100 isn't going to get you anything worth while, and you most likely won't have a great viewing experience even at 1080p 60hz.

Also, list your system specs so we can actually recommend monitors with a resolution and refresh rate that won't bottleneck your system.

My specs:

Intel i5-4570k Overclocked to 4.4GHz

Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo

16GB DDR3 @1,600MHz

EVGA GTX 770

PC monitors seem crazy expensive and lagging behind in features right now compared to their TV counterparts. I don't really get why you have to pay double for a 32" 4K/HDR/G-Sync/120fps monitor compared to a 55" TV with the same specs.

@hurricrane: Based on those specs, you won't really be able to get much higher than 1080p as a resolution and still hit playable frame rates, so don't look at any monitors above that resolution, unless you plan to replace the video card reasonably soon. Assuming not, and at the budget you mentioned, just look for a reputable brand in your price range.

Based on a quick Amazon search for stuff in that price range, you're probably looking at a max of about 24". I found a BenQ for $119.99 and an Asus one for $109 that both would probably meet your needs nicely. If it was me, I'd probably go for the BenQ one, despite the fact that the Asus has a 75hz panel vs. the 60hz panel in the BenQ. That is because with a GTX770, you're likely not going to be consistently hitting 75fps or more with most games, and you want to have a refresh rate that is closer to your max frame rate so that v-sync can do its job most effectively. You're not going to find a monitor with variable refresh rate (FreeSync or, especially, G-Sync) in your preferred price range so you'll be relying on v-sync.

@isomeri: Are you sure about that? You can definitely get a cheap 4k TV, but one with gsync and 120fps and HDR? All less than a monitor with all that?

Panel size isn't what makes things expensive, hardware that runs HDR, gsync and refresh rate along with having low latency are what makes things expensive.

@jesus_phish: You can get a 55" LG B9 OLED from last year for under €1,000 now. That TV has HDR, G-Sync, 120fps, 4K and a low input lag. I'm struggling to find a monitor with similar performance on the market with a lower price tag.

You're of course right in that the hardware costs between monitors and televisions is similar. If anything, shoving more pixels into a smaller screen is more demanding. But it still seems like monitor manufacturers have gotten too used to gaming enthusiasts paying a premium for certain features, while TV makers have caught up with them and strolled past with sets aimed at a more casual audience.

I'm not going to say you're entirely wrong, but it's worth noting that PC monitors aren't smart TV's. They don't connect to the internet so you can watch Netflix and Youtube and so on and so forth - which means they also aren't gathering data that TV manufacturers can sell for profit. That TV with all the fancy features you can get for a $1000 is also part of an ad revenue machine that most people aren't even aware of. You buy a PC monitor once and that's all the manufacturer gets from that sale, so the price is going to be higher. A lot higher.

Also, I wish I could find the video but Linus Tech Tips toured a place that Nvidia uses to test monitor panels submitted to them by manufacturing. They were testing Gsync compatibility and Nvidia wanted to make sure that the monitors were up to their quality standards by doing some pretty rigorous testing. I don't quite remember what all they went through but for me, it was one of those moments where I went "oh, so that's why Gsync is such a premium feature". This was a while ago and things may be different.

EDIT: After poking around the internet a bit, it seems like there are several other factors I haven't mentioned. A bigger market means more people to buy all those TV's, which drives the price down and makes up for R&D a lot faster. Computer monitors are expected to stay on, stay used, and deal with still images for much longer than TVs usually are, so they have to have better backlights, better color reproduction, better eye care, and they can't be susceptible to ghosting or anything. On that note, since gaming monitors are meant for a specific niche and that niche tends to know a thing or two about what they're buying, they're under much greater scrutiny so if you cheap out on certain areas of the design, people will notice and your monitor won't be purchased.