Ranking ALL 26 Monitors We Reviewed in 2022

welcome back to monitor's unboxed today I'm going to be ranking all 26 monitors I tested and reviewed in 2022 in a tier list you're probably familiar with what a tier list is and might have even seen my previous ranking video I did on Hardware unboxed at the end of last year but if you're not well here's what it looks like on the left hand side we have the tiers with the S tier at the top for the best monitors down to the Ft at the bottom for the worst monitors last time this video was pretty long so I'm expecting something similar today and I'm not going to speak on each product for very long so as always please check out the full reviews for more details on performance and how they Stack Up This tier list will feature rankings based on both overall performance and value at times so products that were too expensive will get ranked down and products that were great value will see a higher placement but of course we'll also be discussing the best overall products as we go and finally before we get into it this video is well it's not really meant as a recommendation video though it will be interesting to see where everything ends up like G I haven't pre-planned anything but I would encourage you to watch the full best of monitors videos for more detailed recommendations the main reason for that is our recommendation videos include monitors from past years that may still be great Buys in 2022 whereas this tier list only includes products we tested in 2022 so let's get into it the first monitor that I reviewed in the year was the Acer Predator xb273 ugx so this was a 1440p I believe it was 240 maybe 270 Hertz IPS LCD so obviously designed for gaming there and at the time this is one of the better value 1440p products so if you were getting a one of a high refresh rate then this product was going to give you Superior value to some of the others but in terms of its actual performance you know it was pretty average it did have a very wide color gamut but average calibration you know it did support backlight strobing had locked overdrive controls which was a bit of a weird one and yeah as I said okay value at the time I think less so now it's still available for I think around 550 us 1440p 240 hertz has come down in price so it being you know a fairly average product good but not amazing I think I'd probably for now put this into the seat here but again we can revisit some of these things later with adjustments and that sort of thing if it turns out that the seat here most of those monitors aren't as good as the xb273 ugx then later on we might bump it up a little bit the next product that we've got to look at is the Samsung Odyssey G7 s28 so this was their 28 inch 4K IPS monitor at 144 Hertz and this was using the same inner Lux panel that we'd seen from several other products we tested in 2021 so m28u was kind of the primary example of using the same panel as this and the m28u last year I believe was an st product it was very good so the s28 you know it's all this very similar performance good response times good colors average calibration did have full HDMI 2.1 HDR performance wasn't amazing because it's not an HDR product and at times throughout the year especially if you got on sale I think it offered reasonable value that said it wasn't as good value as the m28u in the US almost regions of course it does depend a little bit but generally I was quite impressed with the performance I think these days I'd be putting this into the a tier it certainly is a very good Monitor and offers outstanding performance in a lot of areas but yeah I think Samsung if they had produced you know top tier value class leading value then I'd be bumping up to the S tier like the m28u from last year but I think for now we'll leave it in the ATR next up we have the gigabyte m34wq so this is an ultra wide monitor a bit of an interesting one because it's a flat Ultra wide still 34 inches 3440 by 1440 um 21.9 aspect ratio IPS and this is a quite similar to a lot of gigabyte products I've been reviewing lately in that it's a very bounced product so it was no real standout area to Performance but it had good response times good colors and did offer better response times than you'd see from a VA monitor which I think is key for some of these more budget class Ultra wise where when you you gain that VA panel you're typically getting things like you know dark level smearing and that doesn't really lead to Great Motion Performance but with this IPS panel you do get better Motion Performance which I think is one of the key selling points and the reason why you would go with something like this again HDR was pretty unimpressive I think the pricing of the monitor as well was very fair it was around that sort of 500 us sometimes as low as maybe 450 for a memory which makes it reasonably good value and I would often buy this over a VA ultrawide in this class I think yeah the curve maybe you'd want the curve and the higher contrast to a VA but I think most of the time this monitor is the way to go again there's nothing really that's out standing about this but I think it's probably better than sort of an average monitor so I'd probably put this into the B2 I think that's probably a pretty good spot for the m34wq and in contrast to that we have another Ultra ride that I reviewed next in the SEPTA c34b qun168 I didn't quite fit the eight into the little card here for it this is a terrible monitor um the main issue that I had with this particular display was it was advertised as having display HDR 1000 support so you'd think hey it's an HDR monitor surely we're getting good HDR right and while it did accurately pass the display HDR tests when we looked into you know how accurately it was meeting those testing criteria and what the testing criteria actually were it ended up with well issues let's say mainly because it doesn't actually have full array local dimming so I find it hard to recommend an LCD for True HDR unless it has some form of full array local dimming in this monitor the scepter c34b well it only has edgement local dimming two rows but yeah not great so what we end up with is poor extra performance despite display HJ 1000 ranking so with that in mind it goes into the F tier because of its well deceptive and misleading marketing but on top of that average response times locked overdrive settings there was no srgb mode it had flickering and scan line issues as well so definitely can't recommend this Monitor and I'd put it into the F tier as a result I think it's a well-deserved FDF that particular product next up is the LG 27 gp950s this is quite similar to the previous 27 GN 950 that I looked at maybe that was 2021 or maybe the year before that can't quite remember but this is your 4K 160hz IPS panel 27 inches and it does have decent panel quality one of the advantages of the LG Nano IPS panel that's used for this LG as opposed to say the you know the interlocks panel that we see for the s28 it does have a slightly wider color gamut than you get from the inner Lux panels which makes it a bit better suited to productivity work but you know that can depend depending on your exact use cases of course with the 27 GP 950 specifically we do get good response times good tuning there slightly above average Factory calibration poor HDR not really an HDR Monitor and yeah decent quality panel HDMI 2.1 as I said the main issue with this Monitor and why I probably wouldn't put it immediately into the Atia is that it was very expensive and it continues to be very expensive to this day I think if you're buying something like the s28 for around 550 us and this month is coming in at more like 750 us it makes it very expensive and kind of hard to recommend when it is very similar to the s28 so if we're measuring just based on the performance of the monitor I'd have the 27 GP 950 in the eightier but I think because of its high price I would have to bump it down to the beta here so let's just lock that in place there next up we have the pixio px277 pro so this is the only pixio monitor that we tested this year 27 inch 1440p 165 Hertz IPS and this is a good basic monitor so it has UK response time is bit below average for factory calibration its srgb mode didn't work very well but you know it's sort of Keeping Up With The Pack in terms of what today's more budget and entry level class 1440p monitors are offering so you know if we're talking purely based on performance I think this would probably be a c tier product the issue with the px277 pro was mostly around it sort of offering that basic entry level you know low-cost experience but being priced more in sort of the mid-range for 1440p monitors today I believe even as we speak right now it's priced around 350 U.S whereas the Baseline for 1440p in 2022 has been more like 250 us and there's some monitors coming up that do meet that sort of price range so when you're sort of getting CT level performance but at too high of a price I think it has to be moved down to the detail which maybe is a little harsh maybe we'll adjust that later um maybe it should be in the seat here but I think just yeah based on it being an average panel with too high of a price I think probably should be in the detail the MSI Optics mag281 URF is a very simple monitor to rank in this tier list and I'm going to be putting it into the ATA and the reason for that is that it's very similar to the Samsung G7 s28 like the m28u that we reviewed last year uses the same interlocks panel so most of the main performance characteristics things like performance for motion and also color quality is very similar between these two products so it doesn't make a lot of difference which particular monitor you get you're going to end up with a very similar experience on top of that MSI is also pricing it very similarly to the G7 so again there's not a lot separating those two products I think if you were buying a 4K 144 Hertz 28 inch monitor using IPS technology of course then you could easily split the difference between those and just buy whichever one is cheaper in your region or the m28u that we've talked about extensively in some of our recommendation videos again this monitor you know average sort of factory calibration good levels of performance and yeah sort of that pricing isn't quite at the level of the m28u so again if it was priced as well as the m28u instant s tier in my opinion but I think at the current pricing it's still a good product it's still definitely worth recommending in the 80 it's just not the sort of STS standout that we saw earlier next up we have The Cooler Master gm27 fqs this is a monitor that I put through my full testing Suite but I never actually produced a video on you might have seen some of these results in Benchmark charts in other videos uh sort of comparing to the performance of other products the main reason why I didn't review this is that it wasn't that interesting of a monitor it just has average performance across all areas nothing was really a standout there and at the time and I believe still today it didn't really offer Great Value so when you're looking at this being a 27 inch 1440p 165 Hertz IPS panel it sort of falls into the same issues as the the px277 pro and then it's offering that mid to to entry level type performance today but it's sort of trying to price up into that three to four hundred dollar US range and these days in that price range you can get 1440p 240 hertz at 400 or some of the really good quality 1440p you know 160 180 Hertz monitors we've seen previously things like you know LG 27 gp850 so when you're pricing against that sort of monitor you have to produce the same sort of performance and ultimately I don't think it really uh delivered that but again didn't have any notable deal breaker issues either that would sort of push it into e or FD nothing was super broken about it it just is average with a not great price point so I think we put the px277 pro in there the gm27 fqs also belongs in there next up I think we're going to have one of the more difficult rankings in this particular video that being the Alienware aw3423dw the reason I say that is that undoubtedly this is a very good product so we're going to be talking about top tier sort of levels here with this particular Monitor and just as a recap of course 34 inch 3440 by 1440 Ultra wide monitor with all their technology 175 Hertz and this is really the first gaming appropriate monitor that used OLED technology so of course we're getting all the elite OLED experiences that you'd expect like it's excellent HDR performance it's elite response times had great colors um yeah those are the main three advantages here and as well on on top of that we've got 175 for its refresh rate previously when we were looking at you know the OLED TVs like the LG C1 120 hertz refresh rate this was bumping it up to a much more appropriate refresh rate and all the benefits of sort of you know PC use sort of display port we had no automatic brightness limit to an SDR mode and really lots of benefits it is truly a great display based on everything I've just been saying you'd think probably this would be an STM monitor but what I'm thinking is that there's also a few issues with the Alienware monitor sort of those early adopter type things so for example the Cutie OLED panel screen coding is an ideal reflected a lot of ambient light it had audible fan noise a lack of user upgradable firmware how to sub weird subpixel layout so the triangle RGB layout which means that it wasn't as suited to desktop productivity use along with obviously the OLED burning risk and those sorts of things so I feel like if you were early adopting this particular cutie OLED monitor as I did then some of those issues would probably negate it back down to the Atia which is you know harsh I guess it probably also deserves to be maybe between the S and the a tier but I think you know if some of those issues weren't present like for example if it didn't have as much fan noise or it had better screen coding but I think I could pretty comfortably put it into the SD we do have the DWF model coming up later in this video as well so we'll see where that gets ranked but I think for now just based on it having some of those issues and it not being the perfect product even though there'd be products that are not perfect that I would rank in the SDA I think there's just a few too many issues uh to put it into the SDF now but again I think it's a very difficult product to rank in this sort of tier list because yeah we've got it here we've got up against the the G7 and the mag281 URF and you know it is a better monitor than both of those monitors um but these products have fewer issues than the Alienware these monitors are sort of better value and cheaper this is 1300 U.S so again there's a lot of discussion points there about that particular Monitor and maybe we'll end up re-ranking it later but for now let's keep it in the eight here next up we have the gigabyte m27qx and for me this is immediately an STM Monitor and the reason I say that is that it's a 1440p 240Hz IPS monitor at 27 inches but it has been consistently priced throughout at least the second half of 2022 at just 400 us so that's a great value buy um previously in that sort of price tier we were only getting you know 1440p sort of that mid mid to Mid High refresh rate so 144 up to around that 180 Hertz with products like the LG 27 gp850 with the m27qx we bumped that up to 240 hertz and again gigabytes providing a really balanced experience so it had great performance in terms of color quality good calibration there it had decent response times it didn't have a single overdrive mode experience but I think for the price that's probably acceptable flat IPS and yeah just when you're getting that sort of balanced experience with no major notable flaws and it comes in at a really good affordable price point it's sort of is Shifting the motor Market forward and it's making that 1440p resolution cheaper and more accessible to more buyers especially with the gpus that we've got today that can run 14 40 pit super high frame rates something like the m27qx is a great pairing for those sorts of products so I think this is clearly an SDM monitor in my opinion and one of the best products that was released in 2022 I do highly recommend it and yeah a lot of that comes down to the value of the monitor again if it's if we're sort of talking about just the performance it's probably 80 but I think the the value proposition elevates it up that little bit to the S tier the x27q is another interesting product in terms of its ranking mainly because the real strength of the hpx27q was value it's a 27 inch 1440p 165hz IPS monitor and it was very cheap like you can get it for 200 to 250 us at times which is really good value for a 1440p display and sort of that's taking over the entry level price points which is great to see but in terms of its performance it's a fairly average monitor has okay response times average calibration no srgb mode fairly limited wide gamut support poor contrast it does have some good features High adjustable stand for example and the performance isn't terrible or anything it's certainly not like D or e-tier performance but you know it is a fairly average product in terms of its performance overall So based on performance I'd put it into the seat here but I think with its excellent value for a lot of buyers I think that's going to elevate it into the Beta because again the reason why you'd buy something like this monitor is because of its value you want 1440p at the cheapest price point and it doesn't have any major deal breaking flaws like you know major flickering issues or things like that so yeah I think the BT is pretty appropriate for the x27q next up we have the annoyingly named MSI MPG Artemis 273 cqrx QD a long name from MSI there they love their long names this is another monitor that is very much a fail so we'll be talking about either e or ft with this product it's a 27 inch 1440p 240Hz VA Monitor and the main issue that I had with this is that it presents the same specifications as you would see from the Samsung Odyssey G7 so it's the same a thousand are curved monitor her same 240Hz refresh rate same VA technology in fact I believe it uses basically the same panel the main issue with this though is that it didn't give you Odyssey G7 performance so you weren't getting the response times of the G7 the g70 is a very fast monitor delivering great performance this monitor had issues like dark level smearing and just lackluster response times which at the same sort of price tier it was quite an expensive monitor sort of priced in that same range as obviously G7 it makes it basically impossible to recommend because it didn't offer the performance of that product I think it was almost misleading to advertisers having a similar feature set when it wasn't really delivering the same experience or performance so if they were able to offer G7 performance and this would be you know A or B tier like the j7 but unfortunately I think it probably has to go into the F tier because yeah I was really disappointed with the performance that it offered at the price tag that it was offering um so yeah unfortunately for MSI that product is an F tier product the next 12 monitors to rank have appeared on screen now so let's get going with the gigabyte m27qp so this was their successor to the very popular m27q replacing the panel with one that doesn't use a BGR subpixel layout still a 27 inch 1440p 170 Hertz IPS but it provided a wider color gamut better calibration it was slightly faster as well and very competitive against monitors that had a similar specs and price tag this is quite an affordable monitor at the time that I reviewed it the pricing wasn't great which probably would have limited it to maybe B tier in terms of its value but when we got sort of towards the end of 2022 in the last couple of months gigabyte has dropped the price to be one of the most affordable and travel monitors and compared to something like the HP x27q that we talked about earlier it isn't much better monitor in terms of its performance so when you're looking at you know the m27qp is slightly more expensive than the x27q in a lot of regions but I think because of its performance it has to go into the 80 it is a very good product and that is where I'd be ranking it so yeah very impressive product from gigabyte and I really like their M Series in general we've got the m27qx and St we've got the m27qp and 80 m34wq in the beach here I think it's once again showing the gigabyte have quite a good range of monitors especially in terms of price to Performance and value m27qp being no exception there next up we've got the Sony in zone M9 one of the first Sony monitors that I've tested on the channel I believe they're releasing some more monitors next year so we'll see how those go but for now let's talk about the M9 so this was a 27 inch 4K 144hz IPS monitor with quite a unique backlighting setup with 96 zones of full array local dimming so that did allow it to provide sort of a basic HDR experience which is superior to some of for example G7 s28 and mag281 eurof those monitors didn't really include HDR at all whereas this monitor it does have some HDR gives you that basic experience outside of that did have fairly average response times average calibration no sigb mode and power performance it was pretty similar to the 27 GP 950 one of the issues with this monitor well firstly is that obviously we're not getting top tier HDR so with only 96 zones we're still limited to that sort of basic entry level hdrx experience in my opinion and it was quite expensive as well costing I believe it was eight or nine hundred dollars US which is a very expensive very expensive for a 4K mod especially in the second half of this year where you'll see on the side here we've got things like Neo G7 uh LG C2 to cover as well as gp27u all those monitors did beat it for Value in terms of HDR generally speaking so inso an M9 I think we had that sort of window where it was a good buy for a couple of months but then I did get superseded by products towards the end of the year so based on that and also it did have a few firmware bugs that I believe maybe they haven't solved up to this point in time which is a bit disappointing you know back when it launched I would have put this into the 80 I think at the moment do I put it into the b or into the seat here it performs pretty similarly to the 27 GP 950 it's not as well optimized but it does have the advantage of HDR but then again it's also more expensive than the 27 GP 950 so maybe it deserves to be in the C tier but the CT feels kind of harsh for this monitor so I'm really torn on this one I think I'll put it into the beat here because I still I still like what it offers but it does need to be cheaper it does need to be more around 700 us maybe even 600 us that's where I'd find its real niche in the market so I don't know I'm gonna leave in the BT for now but that's one that definitely may be adjusted once we see the positioning of of other products next up we have got the MSI Optics mag274 qrx this is very similar to the m27qx in terms of its performance it is slightly better than it in my opinion because it has a single overdrive mode experience or at least better tuned overdrive performance compared to the m27qx and it does have a few more built-in car modes which you know it's better if you're using it for productivity performance however it is mostly a gaming Focus product 27 inch 1440p 240Hz IPS so I think the main benefit there would be the single overdrive mode experience so you know you'd probably think surely that belongs in S2 as well the main reason why I probably wouldn't put it into the St is that it's only slightly better than the m27qx but it costs a lot more so generally speaking you're looking at least 20 percent more to buy the MSI model which means for most people I recommend getting m27qx because ultimately it's a very similar Monitor and the value equation is strongly in favor of the gigabyte but it is still a very good product so I think for now it would belong into the uh what we got here the a tier I think along with these other monitors it is a good buy a good monitor but not quite as good value as the m27qx so for me I'd be putting that into the a tier for now next up the Samsung Odyssey Neo G7 so this is a 32 inch 4K 165 Hertz VA monitor with 1196 Zone full array local dimmings this is one of the first 4K monitors that are available for PC use that does genuinely provide good quality HDR a lot of the other monitors that we've been looking at previously with h Java either been super expensive like the pg32uqx or really large like the LG C1 the Neo G7 sort of introduced this 32 inch size 4K panel great HDR experience good levels of brightness and the same sort of great Motion Performance that we've seen from Samsung's previous VA panels in terms of its tuning so still had mediocre calibration and the 1000r curve which I'm not a huge fan of the curve but generally speaking what you're getting from a Motion Performance standpoint and from an HDR standpoint at 4K 165hz was very impressive and is probably one of the more highly recommended HDR monitor is that I would have across 2022 the main problem with this monitor apart from the things I've already mentioned is probably that it's MSRP of 1300 is quite expensive however Samsung have frequently discounted that down to the thousand dollar range or even as low as eight hundred dollars at 800 it's an outstanding buy if this was an 800 monitor I'd put it into the S tier because it's more frequently been seen around a thousand dollars I think it probably deserves to be in the 80 because again there are a few issues with it but generally speaking I think the HDR experience that you're getting from the Neo G7 is excellent and I do recommend it so that we're going to the 80 and just at the moment I think it's been it's been a pretty good year for launchers looking at it so far with the amount of products that we've put into either the SA or B tiers and not too many in the sort of lower rungs at the moment which I think is good however that said we're just about to rank the Odyssey Neo G8 which for me I think this is a pretty clear e-tier product and the reason I say that is that it's very similar to the Neo G7 but it increases the refresh rate to 240 hertz the cost of that though is of course a higher price tag but on top of that it also introduced scan line issues at the highest refresh rate so you sort of upgrading the refresh rate from the G7 to the G8 but then the highest refresh rate isn't really worth using because it has these artifact issues so that kind of negates the whole purpose of spending more money to buy the 240 hertz option so that's why throughout most of the year I've been recommending the G7 over the G8 I think the G7 is the better product than the G8 so the G8 not really being worth buying I think puts it into the etier it's not as flawed or terrible as the two FDA products that we've got here so I think it does make a lot more sense to keep it in the e-tier but I certainly wouldn't be ranking it above that sort of you know level if this did not have scanline issues then you know we'd be looking at s or 80 it'd be very similar to the Neo G7 in terms of its ranking because obviously it would just be a new G7 with a high refresh rate which would of course be worth buying but with that flow and also with the testing generally speaking being worse than the G7 so my Neo G7 outperformed my Neo G8 in a lot of areas again it makes it very hard to rank that above the e-tier and it's certainly not a product that I'd recommend for most people so I think ETF is pretty fair next up we've got the LG C2 OLED so this is an excellent OLED Monitor and with this generation the C2 generation it has been brought down to a 42 inch size so this is a 42 inch 4K 120 hertz OLED and I think at that size it is a much more manageable product than what we saw last year with the C1 which only bottomed out at 48 inches 48 inches is pretty unmanageable on most desktop setups you kind of have to sit a little bit further away than usual at 42 inches with the C2 it's a very immersive display and I think it works with some desk setups it's not going to be suitable for everyone because it is a quite a large monitor still but yeah I think the sizing of this monitor is much more appropriate the main issue here is probably that obviously some of its OLED burn-in issues is one consideration and also that it only types out at 120 hertz which is a fairly low refresh rate by modern standards and it lacks a lot of the desktop features that we've been used to things like DisplayPort no automatic brightness limiters those are all concerns with the C2 mainly because it is designed as a TV which kind of makes sense the positive there though is that you get a full set of TV features including excellent ability to Hardware calibrate the display it supports Dolby Vision has lots of HDMI 2.1 support and of course it has all the benefits of OLED like Elite per pixel dimming Elite response time speed and these days it's available at a really outstanding price of like 800 us which that's just a ludicrously low price that's a very very affordable price so I think for me you know it's at least an eight-tier product the question here though is that I'm ranking it you know the same as the aw3423dw which throughout most of the I think has been very fair I personally slightly prefer the Alienware monitor for my everyday gaming needs I just prefer the ultrawide format and some of the PC features including its high refresh rate but the C2 is much cheaper at 800 it's thirteen hundred dollars to get the the Alienware the C2 is dropped in price significantly since it was launched the Alienware is pretty much the same price so you know do I put this into the estia based on pricing that's it's a difficult decision because generally I would recommend that Alienware over the C2 so does that mean I then need to move the Alienware into the S tier because the C2 is in the s t or do I move the C2 back down to the a tier because it still has some of the OLED issues that I talked about that sort of also apply to that the aw3423dw doesn't really have as much of a screen coding issue still has a sub pixel issue still has the burn in Risk still has you know some of the the lack of desktop suitable features so yeah at 800 I think I have to put into the SDA I I think I have to put it there just based on the fact that it's that price because we're talking cheaper than the end zone M9 and it's much better than the end zone M9 alternative to HDR performance of course you have to put up with the 42 inch size but I think it has to go in the St at that price if it was still a thousand dollars eightier as current price yeah I think it really has to be there in the STM all right after that extremely difficult discussion with the LG C2 let's move into the AOC 24 g2sps this is an update to the 24 G2 so I believe I'll probably write that in the St last year I can't quite remember it was either s or 80 very highly ranked product 24 inch 1080p 165 Hertz IPS so you know it is still an entry-level product being a 1080p monitor one of the only 1080p monitors I looked at this year and by modern standards in terms of things like response times and that sort of thing it is only an average monitor so it doesn't quite give you the same speed that you'd be getting from say m27qp at 1440p which is now the sort of you know low cost Great Value 1440p monitor it does have great calibration it is a wide gamut monitor does have a very good price but whether or not you know it wasn't a significant update on the 24 G2 which is now a two-year-old product so and it is only 1080p in 1440p he's encroaching a little bit on the pricing of 1080p making it not as outstanding value of a product so I think for now probably put this into the B tier but again I could make a case for being an ATM monitor as well it's one or the other b or eightier but I think just being 1080P and the value of 1440p these days probably a beta product for now next up we've got the Asus Rog Swift pg42 uq so this is asus's take on the LG C2 that I've put into the SD the main differences between the C2 and the pg-42 uq was that the pg42 uq increases the refresh rate to 138 Hertz and also introduces many desktop suitable features so it adds in DisplayPort and it also has a uniform brightness mode which means you can disable the automatic brightness limiter that is a bit annoying with desktop usage on the LG C2 it also uses a matte coating which cuts down on Reflections compared to the C2 but that does come at the cost of diffuse light and reflection so it's not it's not going to appear as dark and black as the C2 in some scenarios that's a personal preference thing in my opinion as to whether you'd prefer the coating of the C2 or the pg42 uq it also lacks some of the TV features that we see from the C2 so it doesn't have Dolby Vision support it doesn't have as extensive Hardware calibration features there it does get brighter though than the C2 in my testing despite using the same panel I think the Asus model is better cooled and of course higher refresh rate means it has better motion clarity as well though of course response times are fairly similar so this is again a fairly difficult monitor to rank I've got the C2 in the S tier I don't think the pg402 uq is as good as the C2 in general just because of the some of the c2's additional processing features Dolby vision is a big feature if you want an HDR monitor better calibration support and I do personally prefer the glossy coating the other issue with the PG 402uq is that it is very expensive relative to the C2 so if you did want some of those specific desktop features things like you know it's automatic brightness limiter disabling feature display port High refresh rate you're gonna have to pay quite a bit of money compared to the C2 I think it's it could be up to around 40 or 50 percent more expensive which simply isn't worth it so based on that I think I'm going to drop this down just slightly to the beat here if they were able to get this monitor out at around you know eleven hundred dollars U.S if it if it was sort of that more aggressive more affordable price point certainly undercutting something like the aw be 3423 DW which I also think this monitor is better than the pg40 uq then I think it could probably go into the 80 but yeah it's definitely at the very least a BT B tier product it is very good just isn't quite as good as the excellent C2 next up we have the LG 32 GQ 950 this is an interesting monitor now it's a 32 inch 4K 160hz IPS display but it did deliver better performance than a lot of the 32-inch 4K monitors that I tested in this sort of SDR only price category of course now we've got the the Neo G7 where I end up putting that up here Neo G7 4K HDR at 32 inches this is sort of your flat IPS with very mediocre HDR performance so it doesn't really support HDR maybe semi-hdr at best but the benefits that it has is that it is very fast for this sort of size of ips LCD the previous generation that we've seen last year a lot of those monitors were pretty slow in terms of gaming performance didn't they didn't match the level of speed that we'd seen from IPS monitors in sort of 27-inch classes or other types of panel this monitor doesn't have that issue which makes it a lot more suitable for gaming and then on top of that has a very wide color gamut it has minimized IPS flow thanks to the new technology being used here and it did also have above average calibration which makes it quite a good option the issue that I had with this product is that it is very expensive LG we're pricing this or pretty much to compete with some of the HDR options like the Neo G7 I think the MSRP of the Neo G7 and the 32 GQ 950 are the same like 1300 us which is just crazy you buy the Neo G7 every time over this at the same price but if you did need a 32 inch 4K IPS monitor and you have that sort of bounced workload between gaming and content creation then this is a genuinely quite a good choice I would only recommend it though at a discounted price and it has been discounted at times again this is a difficult product to rank I don't think it belongs in 80 it doesn't belong in the B tier based on its performance I think it probably does if it was only ever available at thirteen hundred dollars US I'd have to drop it to the seat here but because at times it's been discounted I think it belongs in the beta so again it's just a difficult product to rank compared to some of these other monitors but then again we've got the 27 GP 950 there the endzone M9 it's pretty similar yeah I think that's probably Fair comparing it to those sort of products so yeah I was keeping the BT okay another monitor that I think is going to be very difficult to rank The Cooler Master Tempest gp27u so yeah this monitor is kind of one of the most affordable 4K true HDR products that we've seen so far so this being a 27 inch 4K 160 Hertz IPS with 576 Zone full array local dimming backlight capabilities so definitely a true HDR product product of course not quite as good HDR performance as we see from some of the oleds in here or the Neo G7 with its higher Zone count backlight and VA panel but still very good HDR performance generally speaking it also had solid Motion Performance at a very wide color gamut decent srgb mode and a good price it was at least at launch around 800 us it is more difficult to find these days so you know whether that price will change who knows the main issue that we had with this monitor when it launched was that the firmware did not allow you to use HDR and adaptive sync at the same time and since we've now tested the firmware update the monitor does have some flickering concerns so this kind of you know there's a lot of things to consider here so based on its HDR performance we're probably looking at a c tier product maybe BT it's better than the Amazon M9 in terms of its HDR performance at a you know better price when we sort of factor in the very wide color gamut and its Motion Performance I think BT in terms of its overall performance package would be warranted so that's where I would have it based on that I think if we're then factoring in value you'd have to bump it up to the eightier because it's better than the end zone M9 at a lower price so you know when we think about that sort of you know support I think the gp27 you would have to be elevated to the eight year that said we then have the firmware issues being launched in sort of a bad state it also having those flickering concerns which may or may not appear while gaming it's it's very difficult to say I was able to reproduce it in sort of more test environments but whether you see that in gaming is a much more difficult proposition to answer so you know maybe that makes it a city or even D to your product I don't know like I think I'll put in the seed here because you know I'm really on the fence about recommending it it's one of those really difficult products that you know if I said go out and buy it and then someone buys it and sees flickering issues then I'd feel you know I'd feel bad for that customer that I've recommended that product and they've had issues with it um but then again if you don't see the flickering issues then it is a good HDR monitor with good performance and a good price so maybe CT Coolmath has been working on firmware updates quite a bit I don't think they'll be able to solve the flickering problems though because I think that's more of a hardware thing again it's a very difficult monitor to rank very very difficult um I'll leave it in the CT for now we may re-rank it later next up we've got the Asus Rog Swift pg27 aqn this is the ultimate 1440p monitor in my opinion it doesn't quite have all the features that you want doesn't have great HDR performance but if you're looking for a competitive Focus monitor for multiplayer gaming the pg27aqn is where it's at 27 inch 1440p 360hz IPS monitor it has excellent response time performance very fast and obviously you get great motion Clarity because it is a 360 Hertz display and when you get that at 1440p you're sort of getting the Best of Both Worlds you've got this really nice resolution that is relevant for Competitive Gaming today it looks better to play games at 1440p in today's GPU Hardware can certainly run a lot of Esports games at that sort of frame rate and on top of that you can use this for single player games because it's a 1440p monitor so you're not you know seeing all the individual pixels like you might see at 1080P and again it just has great performance great Factory calibration the only downside as I said was that you're not getting HDR which you know might be a consideration at that sort of you know high price point and then of course the price point as well is very expensive this is a very expensive monitor but I think if you if you want the best of the best and considering there's very few flaws and downsides to this monitor I think I have to rate this in the St it's a great Monitor and I think people that bought it would be very very happy with it and for Esports Competitive Gaming at 360 Hertz with the feature set that it's got you know I don't think that there's anything that's really better than it in the 1440p class at the moment the gp27q is up next so this is another Cooler Master monitor similar to the gp27u however this is the 1440p variant so it's a 27 inch 1440p 165hz IPS monitor and it still has the 576 Zone full array local dimming backlight and basically performs very similarly to the gp27 new across all areas of performance So based on that what we've talked about previously including its you know firmware flickering issues maximum I could award this monitor is the CTO however the current state of the firmware is much worse than the gp27u it has other issues that were introduced as they tried to fix some of the HDR plus VR issues so for example color abandoning at the highest refresh rate we saw issues with a brightness bug in the monitor and yeah there's still a few other broken things that they need to fix in that monitor like you know their local dimming and the sdl mode things like that So based on that I I was very unimpressed with that firmware update and I think it being sold to Consumers right now and being a product that you can buy and Fork out like it's like 500 us makes it hard to recommend when they launch a firmware update that actually makes the monitor worse and I don't like companies beta testing monitors on consumers they should be fixing these problems before it ships so I think this goes into the ETA similar to the Neo G8 where we've sort of there's two monitors in a similar family one works a bit better than the other so the one that works for the worst probably gets down voted into the E tier um but yeah it's not a monitor I can recommend so something like the E2 I think would would be suitable for this product but again I don't think like these monitors the two APFT monitors just aren't worth buying at all if Cooler Master does end up fixing the gp27q Via a firmware update then it would be worth buying because it is a good value Monitor and you know the hardware is good there is some good quality Hardware there so I don't think F2 is quite warranted but ET feels about right to me final two monitors and next up we have the HP hyperx Armada 27 this is a pretty typical 1440p 165 Hertz IPS monitor and a 27 inch size of course um it does lean a little bit to the high end in terms of its performance things like Motion Performance color quality calibration it has no srgb mode limitations as well which is nice those are a sort of high-end features or at least high-end sort of performance for this class of product you know we're exclusively talking 1440p 165 Hertz here and it also comes with a monitor arm mount which for some people is going to be a good feature Edition because it is you know it's a it's a handy feature to have you get very adjustable standard it's a good quality uh arm that that's included the main issue with the Armada 27 is that it's very expensive it's like 500 us which it just isn't worth it to be honest at 500 us I think I have to put it down into sort of the DT and my reasoning behind that is while the performance is good it comes with the arm mount if you're spending 400 US you could just buy the m27qx and add in an arm mount for about 80 to 100 us or even cheaper than that and now you're at the price point of the Armada 27 but you have a 1440p 240Hz display which is going to give you a much better gaming experience so I just don't think I can recommend the Armada 27 at its price point it just yeah it just doesn't really uh cut the mustard in my opinion at that price I think if they're sort of trying to differentiate it based on the arm mount it has to be at least at least 400 that's kind of the the maximum that I could recommend if not a little bit lower because again we've got monitors like m27qp x27qx offering 1440p 165 Hertz for under 300 so to go like 500 us yeah it's very similar to these other sort of you know not great value 1440p offerings that we see there and the final monitor in these rankings is the Alienware aw3423 DWF so this being the F model it's very similar to the DW model except 165 Hertz versus 175 Hertz it removes the g-sync module in favor of just a traditional scaler and it's a little bit cheaper at 1100 US versus 1300 us which you know that's decent price saving you're saving 200 that's pretty good it does have a few other differences that we noted in testing the big one being that it's HDR modes are not as accurate as what you'd see on the DW model however it has user upgradable firmware it has more features it has lower fan noise and all of those things sort of you know they help out with some of the issues that we saw with the DW But ultimately it still has some of the same problems as the DW such as its screen coding subpixel layout risk of burn-in all those considerations are still going to be issues with the DWF model in my review I think I said it was very difficult to separate the DW and the DWF in terms of its overall performance you can go either way there you could save a little bit of money and get the DWF and a few additional benefits or you could still choose to buy the DW and you do get the superior HDR performance and also slightly higher refresh rate so either way you go with those monitors I think is they're going to be great for you and yeah they're great buys they're great monitors so um yeah they definitely both deserve to be in the 80 and on the same footing if a firmware update was able to resolve the HDR accuracy problems with the DWF and its hl1000 mode giving buyers a much better uh experience in that mode equivalent to what you see in the DW then I would Elevate this to the S tier and the reason for that is that it's a cheaper monitor that would then basically perform the same as the DW so if it's cheaper performs better and has additional features that that would put that into the stf for me um but right now I think I would put it in the 80 so yeah that's where things lie I guess the question now is whether any of these monitors deserve re-rankings because we've got the final rankings here and it's been interesting to see that this year I've sort of I guess gravitated towards testing products that are good and worth recommending we've got the majority of the monitors in the BT and above which I think is a good sign for at least the products that I was looking at this year that said there were a few monitors that I didn't get around to testing that were sort of on the weaker end of the scale just didn't have the time this year you know work on this new studio and stuff like that and if I had tested those products we probably would have seen a few more in the C D and E tiers um maybe I'll get to testing those early next year so we'll see maybe that you know impacts the rankings next year let's go through and have a look at some of the more contentious choices that I was having difficulty with earlier in the video I think one of the main ones would be sort of C2 versus aw3423dw versus the DWF model and I think again based on performance I think they should all be in the same tier and in the same choose the Neo G7 I think that's all pretty fair pretty fair going even though I would generally recommend the DW over the other models again it's very complicated but I think the C2 at its price point being so aggressive does that deserve to be dropped down to the a tier because I rank it the same against a very difficult discussion I wish there was something between the S and the ATL that I could rank the C2 the DW and the DWF in because I think that's probably where it would go but then I don't want to move all of these products down a tier I don't think I don't think something like the x27q or the 24g to SP or pg42 uq deserves to be a CT monitor because they're all pretty good um so I think I think on that I would leave all of those monitors in the same position I think but that's only based on the value of the C2 otherwise it would be an 80s so yeah just keep that in mind the one monitor I do think needs to be downranked just looking at this chart is probably the end zone M9 I think that probably needs to go into the seat here just because after evaluating you know things like the gp27 new in terms of its eight sharp performance again has flickering issues so you kind of got to mitigate that a little bit but when we're sort of looking at the price tag of 900 it's you know it's more expensive than the C2 it's similar price to the j7 on a discount it's getting up there to the 3423 DWF and those are all much better products in terms of HDR performance so I think the inzone M9 needs to drop down to the seat here and then on top of that I think the 27 GP 950 needs to move down as well because both of those are not awesome value and I'd probably buy the inzone M9 over the 27 GP 950 at the same price and with the current pricing discrepancy I think they're probably similarly priced in terms of value and of course performance is quite similar between those two products so I think on a re-ranking I'd probably have to move these two down because honestly I'd probably buy something like a pg4 GQ is a better monitor um these products that we've got here m34wq x27q 24 g2sp those are all great value monitors without delivering top tier performance these are sort of good performing monitors with poor value so I think both of those probably deserve to be dropped down to the seat here so I think I think that's a more suitable ranking there for example like I would definitely have the 24 g2sp being a better monitor in terms of overall offering for Budget buyers than I would the end in zone M9 as an overall offering for high-end buyers I think if there's more reason to buy a 24 g2sp or an x27q if you are a budget Shopper then there is if you're a high-end Shopper looking at something like the endzone M9 this then throws into a question referred to GQ 950 again performance is very similar to the 27 GP 950 but I think the reason why I would still keep this in the B tier is that there's fewer good 32-inch options that offer what the GQ 950 does whereas the 27 gp950 has very strong competition from G7 s28 mag281uif M20 those products So based on that I think those ug 950 still deserves to be in the B tier I think m34wq also still deserves to be here I think this is much more comfortable array the gp27u again that was a very difficult product to rank as well based on its flickering issues and the fact that I probably wouldn't recommend it for people but then the endzone M9 you know probably would recommend it over that maybe uh that's a hard that's a hard one that's a very hard discussion I have to go back and look more in depth at the reviews I did of those to be honest to properly rank that see I think I think I'll probably keep the GPS y7u in that position I think these three are all great examples of d-tier monitors they're not terrible in any specific way they're not outstanding in any specific way but also they're not great value so they're not really worth buying so I think DT and then in the after you I like that that's kind of reserved for the monitors that do have fundamental hardware issues we've got scan line issues we've got the firmware problems we've got the fake HDR and terrible VA performance and the high price and terrible VA performance of that monitor so I think all those all those make sense and I think I'm pretty satisfied with m27qx m27qp yeah those all feel right to me I feel like yeah if you're buying sort of a more budget that's not budget really but you know a lower cost 4K option you've got some great options these days with those yeah I think that's I think that's the final tier list that I'll go with at the moment I think that's a good selection of um performance for now and there's definitely room for some of these monitors to upgrade their performance depending on whether they can have some of their issues fixed I think DWF is a strong candidate for increasing into the S tier if they fix that product I think in terms of its HDR I think pg42 uq could upgrade to the a tier if it was cheaper gp27u if they'd minimize the flickering issues again good move up End Zone M9 could move up if it was cheaper the gp27q could move up several tiers if they managed to resolve that via a firmware update and a lot of the detail products could also shift up if they were a more affordable and cheaper option so yeah I think that's pretty much where things stand for now I think I've been recording for about an hour so again this will be a long video for people um but yeah I guess they'll pretty much do it for this month's well not this month this year's tier list for 2022 all the monitors that we've reviewed ranked all 26 of them I'm hoping to test more monitors in 2022 in 2023 sorry than I did this year last year I reviewed 31 we're down to 26 this year but we've got plenty of monitors to test in early parts of next year I'm expecting lots of new great HDR monitors as well coming so subscribe to monitors unbox for more monitor reviews as I mentioned earlier if you're interested in any of the full reviews of these products that we tested the exception being the GM 27 fqs which we never reviewed um you can see all those on the hardware unboxed all monitors unbox channel so you'll find reviews for that there also if you're interested in seeing the pricing for your region for any of the products we've been talking about links to those are in the description below and also if you want to support the channel then we have a patreon floor plan accounts also links in the description so yeah thanks for watching this tear this video hopefully you enjoyed it and seeing how our rankings end up in the end and I'll catch you in the next one [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: Monitors Unboxed

Views: 175,681

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Id: rsCn8GvgKxE

Length: 55min 41sec (3341 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 30 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/inyue]

Weird that he gets annoyed by the reflex caused by the "semi glossy" screen of the Alienware oled but doesn't say anything about the S tier C2 with has a FULL glossy screen.

Same with the text rendering issues which is way more noticeable for the LG TVs. I own the 48 C1 and if I'm remembering correctly should be the same for the 42 C2.

[u/Kradziej]

this whole ranking thing popular lately is kinda stupid idea for monitors where you have pros and cons for each type of panel, no way to measure it with one scale

[u/Rincewend]

Great video. I enjoy the thought exercise. My current choice got pushed to A instead of S because of price and I couldn't agree more. All of the S tier monitors have a good reason for being there and the A tier models have equally good reasons for not making S tier.

[u/b0uncyfr0]

So if i'm no too out of touch with the monitor world - all the decent $200-300 screens are IPS with shit tier contrast and the only good VA is the G7 which costs 1.6x as much..?

Is there really nothing in between?
Are there no VA panels at 1440p - 144/160/180hz that perform well..?

[u/decomoreno]

I ordered the M27Q X to see if it was any good, and it had a terrible, terrible IPS glow. "S Tier" indeed.