I need to bring a monitor to whale land, but I don't want to tear apart my desk
to take my beloved AW3225QF.
What am I gonna do? Maybe there's a sale on.
What do I actually need to gain? 120 Hertz refresh rate is fast enough
and a smaller display is easier to move. IPS has decent motion clarity.
That's it. Wow. And for only 70 Freedom Box?
What have I got to lose? Whoa.
And here it is. I actually did go to the land with this puppy
and it was great. Partly in thanks to this little monitor that could.
And that's thanks to how much display tech has advanced over these last few years.
When you can get a proper nice gaming OLED for around $500 or $600,
you better believe the older gear is out there priced to sell.
And while I can't guarantee that every model is going to be a winner like this one,
I think the results for this little guy are gonna surprise you. I've got absolutely zero buyers remorse
because I followed a short list of what I consider to be must-haves
when shopping for a budget gaming monitor. You might know me as a man who owns a monitor,
but now I own two. And I'm here to convince you to not overspend on your next display,
at least if you don't have to. Instead, save your money for our sponsor.
I know what you're probably thinking.
You spoiled son of a bitch, stop with the act. But it's true.
In part because of must-have number one, the refresh rate, 60 or even 75 Hertz, way too low.
We want the 120 that's on this box, what?
Wow, maybe it's not. Yeah, maybe it's not actually listed on the box.
Whatever, it was on the spec page on the monitor section of Best Buy.
And so I know it's 120 Hertz. Whether you're gaming or working, 120 Hertz feels great,
thanks to massively reduced latency. And while that can be reduced further
with a higher refresh rate, the returns start to diminish quickly.
120 Hertz is also great for modern consoles and at the resolution we'll be using,
they won't have to worry about poor performance.
Boom, headshot. Look, 1080p is definitely a compromise,
but at 24 inches, we're still getting over 90 pixels per inch.
That's under the desired 100 threshold,
but our price is under that threshold as well. A bigger screen would be nice,
but you can always scooch it towards you or kind of scooch yourself towards it.
And set up was a breeze. I've brought a 27 inch LED monitor to a LAN before
and while that was nowhere near as difficult as moving a CRT,
this thing took up hardly any desk real estate.
And it was still easy to see over the top when I wanted to talk to someone
on the other side of the table. The last item on my checklist is panel type.
I dream the dream. That someday OLED will be obtainable
for the sub $100 mark. But today, it's not that day.
However, IPS still has solid motion clarity
while maintaining decent color accuracy and viewing angles.
Higher end VA panels are fine, but my experience with them on the lower end
has been a smeary mess. And TN, the clearest of the trio,
just doesn't pop like IPS or VA do. I wanted a jack of all trades.
And this is it. Do you think anyone's gonna hate it? Let's go.
What are we testing? Am I talking about the monitor or the computer?
The whole thing. The whole thing? Okay. It looks amazing.
It looks amazing. It looks really smooth. Oh, there was a kitchen, not kitchen, a chicken.
I think everything's fine. Just I've never really played counter strike, but everything feels smooth and looks fine enough.
Should I be expecting leg spikes or?
Well, if he's like really high frame rate, that's for sure. Oh, I just got a headshot.
Ha ha ha. I've never played these games before.
This is the most okay monitor I've ever seen. This is sort of comparable to the monitor that I had before.
I got my upgrade. You could watch that if you'd like. I own a monitor now too.
Apparently that was a headshot, but that was his chest, but okay. Oh, they're bots, right?
I'm not that good. Yeah, they're bots. Okay, yeah, I'm not that good. Ha ha ha.
Like the colors are fine on it, but I wouldn't call it, oh God, I'm terrible.
Kind of shook, why are you getting me to play this? By my standards, I can see myself using this.
Ploof, this is a really cheap monitor, right? Yeah. The monitor's $70.
Oh, okay. LG? Yeah.
Ha ha ha. Really? It looks pretty good. I gotta say, like, what's the refresh rate?
It feels really smooth. 120 Hertz. 120 Hertz, okay. This has gotta be 1080p.
1080p? But solid viewing angles.
Right? Dude, I could get like, one, two, three, four, five, six of them, man.
Ha ha ha. Where'd you get that sick shirt? I got this sick shirt from the Glitch Collection
at LTTstore.com. Get yours today.
What surprised me the most was just how color accurate the monitor is in SDR.
It's not perfect, but with 99% coverage of SRGB,
it's able to achieve an average Delta E2000 of just 3.5.
Great for professional creators. Maybe not, but that's more than accurate enough
for damn near anyone to not only game on this thing,
but to watch content on it too. It's also got almost zero processing latency
with their measurements being just a bit above the theoretical perfect while refreshing at 120 Hertz.
And while the motion clarity isn't amazing,
it's not awful with great-to-great response time averaging just 6.6 milliseconds with a max under 13.
I've seen worse on a $30,000 TV.
If that's not fast enough for you, this does support black frame insertion
or BFI through its one millisecond motion blur reduction
setting, cutting our average response time nearly in half.
For my use case, and I think for most people out there trying to game on a budget,
there's not much more you need. It's a solid monitor for gaming in a dark room,
but there are some flaws. I don't mind the lack of brightness.
350 nits is more than acceptable in a dimly lit land event.
But put this thing near a living room window though, and you're gonna wanna invest in some curtains
for that midday sun. Also, thanks to that low brightness and edge lighting
instead of a set of full array local dimming zones, this thing sucks when it comes to HDR.
Frankly, it shouldn't even get the HDR10 rating,
let alone have it in the name on LG's website. But don't worry, because aside from our poor HDR experience,
finding a model with better features, refresh rate, size, and resolution
is actually pretty easy and surprisingly affordable if you're not gunning for the latest
and greatest panel tech. Let me show you.
This 27 inch, 1440p 180 Hertz Acer model
looks great on paper and only costs 160 bucks
now that it's a couple years old. Next step, quick review check.
The lab doesn't have a monitor section yet, so for now, we'll let ratings tell us
if this is trash or not. However, I kinda stand by IPS in general
and would probably only look deeper than the storefront reviews
if it's a higher end purchase or a VA panel.
Past the coveted 1440p 27 inch range,
I personally think that increasing the resolution or size
is a lot of diminishing returns real fast, unless you're talking about going ultra wide,
which is a totally valid, but different bag of worms entirely.
Once you're at that 1440p 27 inch target,
I think it's better to spring for proper HDR, which we'll get to shortly.
In terms of refresh rate, 120 Hertz already felt good.
165 is nicer, but realistically,
240 Hertz and above is something many of you will only notice in first person shooters.
If you can tell it all, on a strict budget, I wouldn't move past this price point
as we're already paying more than double for some nice to haves compared to the goat here.
If you've got a few more coins in your piggy bank, some mini LED monitors have fallen below
the $300 price point. This AOC model is going for 260 right now,
and if you can afford it, OLED is incredible
and has hit the five or $600 price point
many of us have been dreaming about. This AOC model looks pretty good,
or get the Dell Alienware model with similar specs
for 550 if you trust them more. Personally, I think if you can wait
even a few more months to save, OLED's incredible HDR performance
with per pixel dimming zones, giving us counts in the millions, is worth the wait.
Yeah, it's twice the price, but we're getting more zones than our AOC model over here
to help with bloom. And near perfect motion pixel response times
to keep your screen clear and up to speed in Battlefield 6 or whatever other modern shooter
you're playing. But maybe you're like me, a gamer with no kids and three money
buying some of the best displays on the market. Now, for hundreds instead of thousands.
Well, okay, if you want an oddity like the Samsung Arc,
you'll be spending more than hundreds, but you get the point.
You've got options people, many of which we'll have linked
in the video description below. Tandem OLED is here driving down prices,
QD OLED still looks incredible, and who knows what will come out next.
Until then, I'm gonna keep bringing the little LG that could to Whaleland,
and I'm not going to spend a single second of my time thinking, wow,
I wish the monitor looked better, because honestly, it looks almost as good as our sponsor.
Thanks for watching. If you liked this video, maybe watch the one where we fixed my old budget monitor.
It worked great for a little while. Then I took it to a LAN, and I guess it just jostled around a bit too much
in my car on the way there and it broke. It's not always fixed forever.
Sometimes you're just extending a lifespan.