The 6 Best Multimedia Monitors - Spring 2020
Reviews

The LG 27UK650-W is the best multimedia monitor that we've tested so far, and the best monitor for movies. This 27 inch, 4k screen delivers an immersive multimedia experience with its HDR support, and although performance is somewhat hindered by its mediocre peak brightness and the lack of local dimming features, the gradient performance is outstanding, which minimizes banding. It also has wide viewing angles, great for watching the latest trending videos with your friends.

Response time on this monitor is great for gaming and fast action scenes; however, you're limited to a 60Hz refresh rate. Given that 4k gaming at a high refresh rate is still uncommon due to hardware constraints, we don't expect it to be an issue. Inputs include two HDMI ports and one DisplayPort, which allows for multiple devices to be connected, such as a gaming console or media streamer.

As expected, the IPS panel isn't ideal for darker rooms, as it can't produce true blacks and has mediocre black uniformity. Overall, though, this is a very good monitor that's feature-packed for its price.

The best 1440p multimedia monitor we've tested so far is the ASUS TUF VG27AQ. It lacks the LG 27UK650-W's 4k resolution, so the latest content won't display at its native resolution, but it's still an impressive monitor for consuming multimedia. It has decent reflection handling, so a few more lights in the room won't be an issue, and thanks to its wide viewing angles, both you and a friend can enjoy an accurate image when you watch a movie together. The input lag is extremely low and the response time is very fast, so the monitor feels very responsive and displays very crisp motion with almost no blur.

Unfortunately, it can't display deep blacks in a dark room like most IPS monitors and doesn't have a wide color gamut. Although it supports HDR content, it can't display the full richness of colors in some HDR content.

Overall, however, this is an impressive monitor that will deliver great multimedia performance.

The best budget multimedia monitor we've tested so far is the BenQ EX2780Q. It's a good multimedia monitor with a 1440p resolution, and it has one of the best SDR color volumes we've seen so far, displaying rich, saturated colors. It also has near-perfect coverage of the sRGB color space used in most content and fantastic coverage of the Adobe RGB color space used in photo editing. It supports a wide color gamut for HDR content, but unfortunately, it only has decent HDR peak brightness, so it fails to bring out some specular highlights.

As is the case with most IPS panels, it has excellent viewing angles, great for sharing your screen with others, but that comes at the cost of its contrast ratio, which is unremarkable. Its dark room performance isn't good since blacks look gray and its black uniformity is mediocre, with visible backlight bleed. On the upside, it has amazing gray uniformity, with only a bit of darkening around the edges, so uniform colors, such as on web pages or in panning shots, will look great.

For its value, it offers a good picture quality and performs well when watching multimedia content, making it the best budget monitor for movies.