The Monitor Buying Guide - What You Need to Know! | The Tech Chap

hey guys I'm Tom the tech chap and if you're thinking about buying a new monitor then choosing the right one can be pretty overwhelming there's so many different things to consider sighs where's illusion panel type refresh rates g-sync freesync ports HDR it's a lot but don't worry I'm going to talk you through everything you need to know so monitors can be anything from 20 up to 49 inches in size but the two most common sizes for new displays are 24 inches and 27 inches and they provide a good amount of screen space for productivity and gaming as either a main or even a secondary monitor for your laptop and they also sue a variety of budgets you can find decent 24 inch monitors for around a hundred pounds 27 inch monitors offer an increase in screen space and are more popular with gamers and power users and they start from a little over 200 pounds so that's size but then we have resolution which refers to the number of horizontal pixels and vertical pixels on a screen the higher the number the sharper the image most 24 inch monitors will have a resolution of 1920 horizontal pixels by 1080 vertical pixels that's also known as Full HD some 27 inch monitors will have the same resolution but because the screen is bigger the number of pixels is spread out over a larger area which means the image can appear softer and fuzzier the solution to this is choose a higher resolution such as 2560 by 1440 or quad HD which is common on more expensive 27-inch models and gives a sharper overall image next up our 4k screens these have a 3840 by 2160 resolution so the image is very sharp and detailed and they're particularly good for graphic designers or creative professionals they are of course more expensive than full or quad HD monitors and I'll kind of overkill for most users I mean gaming in 4k requires a seriously beefy PC unless you have a high-end graphics card like ER and video RTX 2080 or better then you probably won't be able to use high settings in games and still get a consistent 60 FPS or above you'll also need to have the right display ports on your computer but we'll come back to that in a minute so for most gamers I'd recommend a good full HD or quad HD panel unless you're after the sharpest possible image I have a 4k capable console you're looking to use with the screen and even then I'd suggest getting a larger 32 inch model to get the most benefit out of 4k and it can be difficult to see all that fine detail on smaller 27-inch screens now if you are looking to edit 4k content I mean I shoot these videos in 4k then you may actually want to consider a 5k monitor which boosts the pixel count by about a third and it allows you to display the full 4k content on the screen and still have a few pixels left over for the editing software toolbars around the edge and if that's not enough then we also have 8k TVs and monitors which are on the way but the cost and the lack of availability means I'm going to leave them to one side for now and finally in terms of screen sizes we have ultra wide or even super ultra wide now most monitors and TVs have a 16 by 9 aspect ratio whereas ultra lights like this have a 21 by 9 aspect which makes them around 30% wider super ultra wide take this a step further with a 32 by 9 aspect ratio now both types are great if you need extra screen space for multiple programs or loads of browser tabs open at the same time or if you want a wider more immersive gaming experience these screens tend to be curved to wrap around you a little bit and make sure that the corners of the screen aren't too far away from your eyes now personally I use an ultra wide every single day for working and gaming and they are my favorite type of monitor to use but then super authorized have the advantage of being the equivalent of 2 Full HD or to quality panels side-by-side with exactly double the number of horizontal pixels which is very useful if you want to display two programs or images or videos in their native resolution on each half of the screen and they're also the natural replacement for existing two screen setups but without that horrible bezel in the middle and of course with fewer cables you can also get some great gaming focused ultra lights but these tend to be quite expensive and again with the high resolution you'll need a pretty powerful PC to get decent frame rates in modern games for most people then and gamers who want an ultra wide I would go with either a 29 inch 2560 by 1080 or a 34 inch 34 40 by 40 40 model and if you are a professional who would benefit from that extra screen space then a 43 or 49 inch super ultra white will be your best option just a quick thought on the actual design of the monitor now most will be pretty boring to look at but more expensive models can look pretty nice with brushed effect materials and metal stands like this one it is worth considering how will actually look on your desk I mean gaming monitors range from subtle to definitely not so subtle and if you want a curved ultra wide that bear in mind it won't sit flush against a wall more important though is the stand some monitors offer height and tilt and rotational adjustments whereas others offer only limited movement so if you do think you'll be making some adjustments then make sure you check the specs of the monitor and also if you're playing to wall mount it then make sure that it is visa mount compatible okay so the next most important thing to consider is the screen panel type this is pretty important as it will determine how good the image looks there are four main types TN IPS VA and OLED although this is still very rare with the first two being the most common now TN panels tend to be the most affordable but at the expense of image quality TNS offer fast response times high refresh rates up to 240 Hertz although IPS monitors are catching up and minimal input lag don't worry I'll explain those terms in a minute but that means like they're great for fast-paced gaming now on the downside they do have the poorest contrast the lowest color accuracy and the viewing angles aren't very good so if you're not certain time lately in front of your screen the color shift and the contrast suffers then we have IPS screens which are the next most popular after TN and they provide the best overall quality with improved brightness contrast more accurate colors and far better viewing angles than TM some manufacturers have their own version of IPS Samsung calls theirs pls which they claim has some advantages but for our purposes I'm going to bomb them all into the same IPS category so IPS screens are best for design photo and video professionals who need image accuracy and quality however IPS powells tend to be a little more expensive and generally but not always they have higher input lag but they can also suffer from something called IPS glow where the backlight of the actual screen bleeds into the edges now moving on to VA panels and these quite go compromise between TN and IPS but there are fewer models available now these tend to have better colors contrast and view angles than TN but not quite as good as IPS although they do offer higher potential refresh rates improve contrast and potentially much higher brightness than IPS which is why most HDR monitors do use VA panels we'll get into that in a second however they can suffer from color distortion and contrast loss when viewed from off angle and also the response time can be a bit higher so with fast motion competitive games you can see some slight blurring or ghosting the file type is OLED which is a gray technology with the best contrast ratios great response times and higher color accuracy but that said they can suffer from temporary or even permanent image retention if the pictures left on like this for an extended period of time and also they're extremely expensive and also very rare right now so I wouldn't recommend one for the time being okay that is quite a lot to take in so which one should you buy well TN is a good option if you're on a strict budget and it's fine but if you want an all-purpose monitor for work for watching videos or even a little gaming I would definitely recommend spending a bit more on IPS or AV a panel as you're getting a much better image but if you are a gamer then a good IPS preferably with a high refresh rate would be best and it'll have nearly as low input lag in response times as a TN and also avoids the blowing you can get with VA if you are a serious competitive gamer though then you should choose a model with a very high refresh rate and also probably a TN to get the lowest possible response times but if you're a professional that deals in graphical work then you should definitely go for a good quality IPS for the best image quality and highest color accuracy so we've already kind of touched on refresh rates but what does it actually mean well the refresh rate of a MARTA is how many times the screen image is updated every second the higher the number the smoother the on screen motion looks refresh rates are measured in hertz and most monitors including this one here will refresh 60 times per second so it's 60 Hertz and that's fine but if you're a gamer you'll prefer 100 120 134 even 240 Hertz refresh rate monitors from much smoother and faster gaming experience but of course a high refresh rate usually also means higher cost and also remember that you'll only see the benefit of it if your PC has enough grunt to render all those frames every second if you've only got a fairly average PC you need getting like 80 or 90 frames per second then you're not going to fully take advantage of that high refresh unless of course you're going to drop your graphics settings so I think we fresh rates are fairly straightforward but then we move on to adaptive sync and this it gets a little tricky so for the smoothest possible gaming experience try to get a monitor that supports variable refresh rates or adaptive sync because this eliminates was known as screen tearing so this has the effect of where part of the screen displays one frame and another part that's slightly offset and is especially obvious at lower frame rates below 60fps and it can be pre distracting so an adaptive sync screen can synchronize its refresh rate to the exact number of frames coming from your graphics card which means cleaner smoother motion and it also avoids the compromises of older workers like vsync which would usually increase input lag and sometimes result in stuttering so there are three main types and videos g-sync aim DS free sync 1 and facing 2 which are similar to the third type visas open adaptive sync standard now g-sync martyr's can cost several hundred pounds more and they have a custom controller chip that's built in and requires an Nvidia graphics card for that variable refresh rate whereas free sync 1 or 2 or adaptive sync monitors don't have a chip so you can use any compatible aim D or Nvidia graphics card so Nvidia g-sync comes in a few different flavors we have regular G sync which guarantees a certain level of performance then we have juicing ultimate which adds HDR and extra brightness and also allows for variable refresh at very high refresh rates and finally we have G's incompatible which our aim deep-freezing 2 monitors which meet certain performance criteria most other free sync 1 & 2 monitors that are listed as compatible will likely work with G sync but just how well they work will have to be assessed on a case-by-case basis although free sync 2 monitors will probably work better and as features like HDR lower latency and it also removes a frame limit for which it works so my advice would be to choose a free sink to monitor as it's cheaper it works well with AMD graphics cards and will likely be nearly as good as a regular g-sync panel but not cost anything extra still with me that was quite a lot to take in but we've got a few more topics that I do want to cover so next up we have response times and input lag now sometimes these are confused as the same thing but they are both important in their own way now response time is how quickly a pixel can change what it's displaying usually from one shade of grey to another or greater gray response and it's measured in milliseconds now a higher response time can result in more motion blur which can be seen as ghosting those trails that follow fast-moving objects in games and videos and can give you a bit of a smelly image so TN panels offer the fastest response time sometimes as low as one millisecond and ideal for competitive gaming fast paced gaming IPS pals are a bit slower usually around 5 milliseconds but that's fine for most people and he probably wouldn't really notice the difference then we have VA now some premium VA pals can have very fast response times but generally these are the slowest and the most likely to suffer from blurring now input lag on the other hand is not usually advertised by the manufacturer but it is also worth checking especially if you're a gamer and they refers to the time between when the graphics card outputs an image signal and then when it's actually displayed on the screen so for example the time between clicking the mouse button and the gun firing in your game so again like response times the less time this takes the better response time and input like are often measured as a combined value and so anything under around 50 milliseconds combined is pretty reasonable although under 11 is ideal next up we have high dynamic range or HDR enabled monitors and these can look awesome they have a greater contrast range between the brightest and the darkest parts of an image and a wider color range so games and programs that are optimized for HDR can look really impressive but unfortunately not all HDR is made equal and an important measurement is the maxim brightness level of Vermonter we measure them in nits and a highest score is better so we have the display HDR standard which lists martyrs under three tiers we have HDR 400 which gives you 400 minutes of brightness and this is kind of considered to be the baseline then you have HDR 600 and premium HDR 1000 4000 its but you can also find panels that are just listed as HDR 10 which refers to the 10-bit color depth but they can have varying degrees of brightness it's difficult many people maintain that you don't get true HDR unless you have 1000 nits and 10-bit color depth anything less is fake well be prepared to pay a lot of money if you want both of those in a PC monitor now generally VA panels offer the best HDR and some of the higher-end models will actually use quantum dot filters like Samsung's TVs to increase the brightness further OLED monitors are also great for HDR but give them their cost and the scarcity I can't really recommend them right now so getting a good HDR panel will make most sense if you're planning on watching loads of HDR content on other amazon prime or Netflix or maybe you're going to plug in your Xbox or Playstation your HDR enabled console or even if you're gonna play some PC games but the problem with PC games is HDR support is patchy at best even if it is getting better some games have implemented what is known as fake HDR where the dynamic range isn't really improved at all but a filter is added to basically give that impression to accentuate the brightest areas on the screen and of course also increase color saturation but the type and the quality of HDR will depend on how the game has been developed so throughout this video I've been saying how TN IPs and VA all offered slightly different color accuracies and this can be measured against a range of color gamut such as srgb Adobe RGB and also DCI p3 and the closer the monitor is to matching a hundred percent of that color gamut the more color accurate it is and what can influence that is the type of panel used and also the color depth is at 6 bit 8-bit or 10 bit pretty much everyone should avoid 6 bit a bit is fine for almost everyone but if you are a professional color calibrator or Foe to answer then you may want to look for a 10-bit panel although you will pay more for that but also be careful because a lot of technical specs will suggest a Martha is timber but actually it's only 8-bit and uses a technological FRC to artificially simulate that extra color so it's not true native timber although it will be a bit of an improvement and that bit color depth indicates how many shades of color and want I can display but then how accurate that is as I say we test against things like srgb and Adobe RGB and generally for the average user I would look for anything that's over 90% srgb and over 70% Adobe RGB although of course the higher the percentage the more accurate it will be the vast majority of new monitors will use an HDMI 2.0 DisplayPort 1.2 or 1.4 or USB type-c as their main connector now many will have both HDMI and DisplayPort connections with more expensive and newer models also offering type C in some cases you'll find mini HDMI and mini DisplayPort switch each obviously as it says in the ten years a small connector but otherwise they are the same you will need to check your graphics card or your laptop ports to see which connection type to use if like me you're outputting from your graphics card then generally I would recommend using DisplayPort 1.2 supports high refresh rates and 4k at 60 Hertz and actually DisplayPort 1.4 supports up to 8 K and also we do have to consider hdmi 2.1 which is coming soon and it's going to offer even more bandwidth and higher resolutions and higher frame rates but right now that is very very rare so I'll probably cover that in my next video but then we also do have USB C pause which you'll find on newer graphics cards and laptops some type-c ports are also Thunderbolt 3 enabled which is an even higher bandwidth technology and means you can output to multiple high resolution displays ok that was a lot to take in and fair play if you've managed to stick with me this long but the big question is what should you buy if you want a decent home and office monitor that doesn't break the bank go for a 22 or 24 inch 1080p IPS or VA panel and if you can't stretch your budget a little bit go for a 27-inch 1440p now if you're a creative professional working with photos video design work than a good-quality 27-inch 1440p IPS or if your budget allows maybe even a 32 inch 4k IPS will be your best bet and aim for ones with the highest color accuracy most good reviewers will include that in their review but if you need a highly productivity focused monitor with loads of screen space thank consider a 29 or 34 inch ultra wide or maybe even a larger 43 or 49 inch super ultra wide but if gaming is a priority for you then do try to get a model with a higher refresh rate anything above 60 Hertz and also if you can try to get one with an adaptive sync technology such as free sync - or do you think if it's not too much more money and that's it congratulations you now know more about monitors than a normal person should and as you can probably tell I'm starting to lose my voice as this was quite a long video and don't forget to check my recommended monitors in the description below so I really hope you found this video useful if you did hit that like and subscribe button down there somewhere and I'll see you guys next time right here on the texture

Channel: The Tech Chap

Views: 3,245,378

Rating: 4.9348269 out of 5

Keywords: monitor buying guide, best monitor, what monitor should i buy, 4k monitor, computer monitor, monitor size, monitor resolution, gaming monitor, 4k gaming monitor, best gaming monitor, ultrawide monitor, ultrawide monitors, The Tech Chap, 4k hdr monitor, pc gaming, super ultrawide monitor, ultrawide vs dual monitor, gsync vs freesync, hdmi 2.1, freesync 2, gsync, tech chap, best gaming monitor 2020, best monitor 2020, monitor buying guide 2020, pc gaming 2020

Id: 9ZwCDBBwSdU

Length: 18min 53sec (1133 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 30 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/baitboy3191]

This guy is the worst, you will find much better guides from other tech channels.

[u/Jae775]

Could someone recommend a better video? Or some monitors for 1440p gaming

[u/[deleted]]

This guy switches to a new laptop and phone every week lol.