Whether you are a casual after-hour gamer or a hardcore full-time PC gaming warrior, your hardware can mean the difference between victory and failure. To enhance your experience playing First Person Shooter (FPS), racing, sports and other action games, you’ll need to invest in powerful graphics solutions as well as a quality monitor that displays images.
Tips For Buying PC Gaming Monitors
The market is currently filled with a wide variety of monitors you can choose from. However, even with so many options, deciding what to get can be a bit confusing. Most people don’t know what to look for and therefore end up spending too much on either standard gaming hardware or products that don’t quite cut it for them.
How to Select Gaming Monitors
What do you need? – Whether you are upgrading or buying gaming monitors for the first time, it’s important that you determine what you need before heading out. Without getting all technical, try and figure out exactly what it is that you need to improve your gaming experience. Do you perhaps require a more comfortable gaming chair? What screen size would be more appealing to you? Note that gaming is all about your individual preference and it’s up to you to create that experience.
Resolution and Panel Size – For most gamers, the bigger the gaming monitor, the better the experience. Sadly, for those working on a budget, bigger is expensive, and you might have to get something like the Viewsonic Monitor which is by no means bad but not top tier.
However, if money is not an object, and you have the room for it, a 27″ monitor will bring you closer to the action and offer you more resolutions compared to smaller ones. A 27″ monitor goes beyond Full High Definition (FHD) to give you higher resolution pixels for an even better gaming experience. It’s important to note that bigger monitors with higher resolutions require powerful graphics engines to run correctly.
Panel Technology – The display technology used in gaming monitors varies as you move from one product to the next. Twisted Nemantic (TN), In-plane Switching (IPS) and Vertical Alignment (VA) panels are some of the most common display technologies available. Each one has its ups and downs, and it will be left for you to decide which one suits your needs the best.
Monitor Refresh Rate
The refresh rate is measured in hertz and refers to the amount of time in seconds it takes to redraw the entire screen as it transitions from one image to the next. A monitor that has a 60Hz refresh rate refreshes 60 times per second. You can improve your gaming experience by going for a monitor with a 120hz refresh rate or higher.
The amount you pay on gaming monitors will depend on factors such as size, features, model and store you buy them from. If you are working on a budget, consider shopping around for more attractive deals. You can easily find gaming monitors under $100 by simply typing in the keyword on your favorite search engine.
Consider reading reviews on each model you come across to better understand them before making a purchase. You may also skim through different gaming forums for more information on gaming monitors and the video game industry at large.
If it’s your first time buying a gaming monitor, it would be wise to invest less in hardware until you have a better understanding of what is right for you. Under $100 monitors may lack some of the features found at the higher price end. However, for someone just testing the waters, this would be a wise investment.