The 4 Best Budget And Cheap Gaming Monitors - Summer 2024 Reviews

The best budget gaming monitor we've tested is the Acer Nitro XV275U P3biipx. It's a 27-inch, 1440p monitor that provides both great picture quality and good gaming performance, which is rare for a low-cost display. It has excellent image quality thanks to its Mini LED backlighting, which most budget monitors don't have. It displays deep blacks next to bright highlights in a dark room, and highlights get bright enough to pop against the rest of the image. You can even use it in a very bright room, as it easily gets bright enough to fight glare and has good reflection handling. It also displays vivid and rich HDR colors.

However, while it has a 170Hz refresh rate for a smooth and responsive feel, if you're playing a game with VRR turned on and have rapidly changing frame rates, the monitor has distracting VRR flicker. Additionally, while its motion handling is good, dark trails are visible behind dark, fast-moving objects, and games with lots of motion don't look as crisp as some other budget monitors. If you're looking for a monitor with much better motion handling, consider the AOC Q27G3XMN. However, it doesn't get as bright and can be harder to find.

If you're on a tight budget and are looking for something cheaper, there are some monitors you can get that perform well for gaming, like the Dell G2724D. It gives you a good gaming experience, and you can often find it directly from Dell's website for a low cost. It's different from the Acer Nitro XV275U P3biipx because it doesn't have very good image quality in HDR. It doesn't have Mini LED backlighting, and its local dimming is terrible, so deep blacks look gray in a dark room, and highlights don't get bright enough to pop. Additionally, colors look far less vivid and rich than they do on the Acer.

That said, it's still a good gaming monitor and a solid choice if your games have a lot of fast-moving objects. It has a faster response time and doesn't have black smearing like the Acer. It's pretty limited in extra features, which is expected for a cheap display. It even lacks an audio output. This means you'll need to connect your audio sources directly to your computer.

If you're a competitive gamer looking for a higher refresh rate, the ViewSonic XG2431 is a great choice with a 240Hz refresh rate. It's different from both the Acer Nitro XV275U P3biipx and the Dell G2724D because it has a lower 1080p resolution, so images aren't as detailed, but that also makes it easier for your graphics card to maintain high frame rates with the lower resolution. It doesn't display the same deep blacks as the Acer either, but it still delivers great gaming performance, especially for competitive gaming.

One of the monitor's standout features is its customizable backlight strobing feature, which allows you to adjust the flicker to your liking to reduce persistence blur. Many monitors can't do this, so it's a nice addition to a budget-friendly display, but it doesn't work at the same time as VRR. Fast-moving objects also look fairly crisp thanks to the quick response time across its entire refresh rate range.

While bigger monitors in the budget price range generally don't offer the best performance, if you want the biggest possible size within your budget and you're okay with getting something with worse picture quality than the Acer Nitro XV275U P3biipx, check out the LG 32GN650-B, which you can also buy as the 32GN63T-B at different retailers. Both variants offer the same performance. It has the same 1440p resolution as the Acer, delivering the same amount of details, but because of its larger size, the pixel density is lower, so games and text aren't as sharp.

It has similar motion handling to the Acer, and it's decent enough for most casual gamers. However, while its VA panel displays deep blacks for gaming in dark rooms, it still doesn't deliver great HDR performance like the Acer. You'd need to spend more to get a 32-inch monitor with good HDR performance.