Monitors: the number on the box is rarely the one that matters

The first question is not the panel

Every monitor guide starts with panel types. That is the wrong first question, because the answer changes depending on something nobody asks you: what you are going to do in front of it for eight hours.

A screen that is excellent for photo editing can be a bad buy for a spreadsheet, and the other way round — not because one is better, but because they spend their cost in different places. So: first what you use it for, then the numbers that go with it, and last the ones you can stop reading.

The most sold and least understood number: 4K

Resolution is a count of pixels, not a measure of quality. The same 3840 × 2160 on 24 inches and on 32 is not the same screen, and the difference is not sharpness — it is how much usable room you have left after scaling the text up enough to read it.

This is why a 24-inch 4K is almost always the wrong buy: you pay for pixels, then you throw most of their benefit away at 175% scaling to see anything. At the same money a 27-inch 1440p gives you more usable desktop and a far easier life for your graphics card.

What you actually use it for

• Writing, email, spreadsheets. What matters is usable room and text that does not tire you: 27 inches at 1440p, or 32 at 4K. Refresh rate is irrelevant. Buy the height-adjustable stand instead of the extra hertz — your neck will notice, your eyes will not notice 144 Hz in a document.
• Photo and video. Here the panel does matter: IPS, and a sheet that states sRGB coverage with a number. "16.7 million colours" is on every box ever made and means nothing. If the work leaves your desk, a monitor you can calibrate is worth more than one with a higher resolution.
• Gaming. Refresh rate and variable sync, in that order — and both tied to what your graphics card can actually produce. More below, because this is where the money goes missing.
• Two screens. The second one does not have to match the first. What matters is that you can get the tops level — so a height-adjustable stand or a VESA mount — and that the ports let you drive both. A mismatched pair at the same height beats a matched pair at different heights.
• A laptop on the desk. One port changes the day: USB-C that carries video and power at the same time, so the laptop charges off the same cable. Check the watts: 65 W runs most ultrabooks, 100 W is needed for larger ones, and "USB-C" alone on the box promises neither.

The numbers printed to be sold

• "1 ms". Almost always measured in a way you will never experience: either MPRT with backlight strobing on, or the single fastest grey-to-grey transition out of the whole table. The honest figure is the average across transitions, and it is not on the box.
• HDR400. DisplayHDR 400 requires no local dimming and 400 nits of peak brightness, which a decent SDR monitor already does. It is a label, not a feature. HDR starts to mean something around DisplayHDR 600 with local dimming, and properly at 1000.
• "Dynamic contrast 1,000,000:1". Measured by turning the backlight off on a black screen. The number that describes the picture is the static contrast — roughly 1000:1 on IPS, 3000:1 on VA.
• Very high refresh rates. The monitor cannot show more distinct images than your graphics card produces. If the game runs at 70 fps, a 240 Hz panel shows 70 — and the jump from 60 to 120 is obvious while the jump from 144 to 240 is something most people cannot pick out in a blind test.
• Curved. It earns its place at 32 inches and above, and on ultrawides, where the edges are genuinely further from your eyes. On a 24-inch it is a styling choice you are paying for.

None of these is a lie. They are all true measurements of something — just not of the thing you are buying the monitor for.

Gaming, without paying for what you will not use

Start from the graphics card, not from the monitor. The card decides the resolution; the monitor decides what to do with the frames it gets.

• Match resolution to the card. 1440p at 144 Hz is where most cards live comfortably. 4K at high refresh needs hardware that costs more than the monitor.
• Variable sync matters more than peak hertz. FreeSync or G-Sync Compatible removes tearing and the stutter you get when frame rate wanders, which is what you actually feel. It is now cheap and widespread — a monitor without it, at any price, is an old design.
• OLED on a desk comes with a condition. The blacks are in a different league, but a desktop shows the same taskbar and the same window borders for hours, and static elements are exactly what burns in. Manufacturers now include mitigations and warranties against it; read that warranty before paying the premium.
• Panel type, briefly: IPS for colour and viewing angles, VA for contrast in a dark room, TN only if the budget forces it. The gap between a good IPS and a good VA is far smaller than the gap between the right size and the wrong one.

Side by side

And then there is the price

Monitors sit in the category where the crossed-out price is easiest to inflate, because a model stays on sale for years and the original list price stops meaning anything after the first six months.

• Ask what the discount is measured against. A percentage off a list price from the launch year is not a saving. A percentage off what the monitor actually sold for last month is.
• Use the reference the store itself shows. On Amazon.com that is often a typical price: the median of what customers actually paid over the previous 90 days. It is much harder to inflate, and it is the one we quote when we publish.
• Check the exact model code. Manufacturers keep a model name across revisions and sometimes change the panel supplier mid-run, so two monitors with the same name on the box can have different contrast and different response.
• Watch the condition. Renewed and open-box are common here and can be a real bargain, but a panel is the part that ages, and the discount should reflect that and not only the list price.

This is the same check we run before we publish anything. If a price does not survive it, the deal does not go out — which is why some days we publish less.