The 5 Best 1080p Monitors - Black Friday 2020 Reviews

The best 1080p monitor we've tested is the Acer Nitro XV273X. Although it's primarily designed for gaming, it's packed with great features, making it a good choice for productivity and media consumption. It has a simple design that fits into most settings, with thin bezels that are well-suited for multi-monitor setups. It has good ergonomics and wide viewing angles, allowing you to share work or content on your screen with others with ease. It has decent reflection handling and gets more than bright enough to overcome glare.

One surprising aspect is its exceptional out-of-the-box color accuracy. It has a dedicated sRGB mode with nearly perfect white balance, and the color inaccuracies are so minor that they shouldn't be noticeable. Its superb response time results in almost no motion blur in fast-moving scenes, and it has an optional Black Frame Insertion that can further improve clarity. It has a 240Hz refresh rate that provides an incredibly smooth desktop and gaming experience, and it has FreeSync support and G-SYNC compatibility to reduce screen tearing.

Unfortunately, although it supports HDR, it can't display a wide color gamut, so HDR content doesn't look all that different from SDR. Also, its IPS panel has a low contrast ratio that makes blacks look grayish, which isn't ideal for dark rooms. On the plus side, it has a flicker-free backlight and a blue light filter, great for helping reduce eye strain. It also has four USB 3.0 ports that you can use for charging and a pair of built-in speakers. Overall, it's a well-rounded monitor that should please most people.

The best 1080p gaming monitor we've tested is the ASUS VG279QM. It's one of the best gaming monitors we've tested, as it has a 240Hz refresh rate that can be overclocked up to 280Hz to provide an even smoother and more responsive gaming experience.

It has an extremely quick response time at its max refresh rate, resulting in almost no motion blur. Even at 60Hz, the response time is outstanding, and even though there's a Black Frame Insertion feature to improve the appearance of motion, you likely won't need it. The monitor has native FreeSync support, and it's certified by NVIDIA to be G-SYNC compatible. The picture quality is great; it has great out-of-the-box color accuracy, it gets bright enough to combat glare, reflection handling is decent, and it has really wide viewing angles.

It has an extremely low input lag when playing at 280Hz, but sadly, it increases quite a bit at 60Hz. Like most IPS panels, it has a low contrast ratio, so blacks appear closer to gray when viewed in the dark. On the upside, it has outstanding ergonomics, and it's well-built, so you shouldn't have to worry about any build quality issues for a while. All in all, most people should be pleased with it, making it the best 1080p gaming monitor we've tested.

The best 1080p monitor in the budget category that we've tested is the LG 27GL650F-B. Despite its budget price, it offers good overall and great gaming performance that rivals some of the more expensive options on this list.

It has a native 144Hz refresh rate with FreeSync support, and it's also G-SYNC compatible. Input lag is really low, response time at its max refresh rate is excellent, and the response time at 60Hz is also good, resulting in clear motion. It has great out-of-the-box color accuracy, so you likely won't need to get it calibrated. The viewing angles are wide if you need to share your screen with others, which is typical of an IPS model. It gets bright enough to combat glare in a well-lit environment, and its reflection handling is decent.

Unfortunately, its stand doesn't offer much in terms of ergonomics, and it has a low contrast ratio, so blacks appear gray when viewed in the dark. It gets somewhat bright in HDR, but it doesn't display a wide color gamut in that mode, so HDR content doesn't look all that different from SDR content. Regardless of these issues, this is the best 1080p monitor available for less than $300 that we've tested.