Best 1440p Gaming Monitor LG 27GL850 27" Ultragear Nano IPS
PC gamers can enjoy today's competitive pricing in CPUs, graphics cards and memory, and build a highly capable gaming machine without having to overpay or spend a ton of money (unless you want to). We're glad to report this PC builder's friendly environment extends to gaming monitors as well, with dozens of great options at record-low prices for the kind of technology that you get.
This article is an extension to TechSpot's Best Monitors that comprises professional, workstation and enthusiast oriented monitors, while this list is dedicated to high refresh rate monitors that are best suited for gaming. We've broken down our recommendations based on resolution and feature set, as we look for the best models that deliver on the specs, on the performance and on price.
If you want a high-end 1440p monitor, you’ll probably be looking at something that uses IPS LCD technology as it provides the best balance of decent response times, great color performance, excellent viewing angles, decent uniformity and a selection of mostly flat panels.
When you have tech that ticks all those boxes, it's bound to be the high-end option that commands a price premium, however high-quality 1440p high-refresh IPS monitors have come down in price substantially in the last two years. Case in point, we can find flagship gaming monitors priced as low as $500, with budget offerings dipping below $400 for the first time.
Our recommendation for the best 1440p IPS monitor is the LG 27GL850 (read our full review), a hugely impressive monitor that offers TN-like response time performance with the color and viewing angle benefits of an IPS screen. This makes it ideal for gaming and especially high refresh rate gaming, given this is a 144 Hz display with adaptive sync support.
The differences between the 27GL850 and other 1440p IPS monitors is stark. The 27GL850 puts up an average grey to grey response of around 4ms in its optimal configuration, which is much faster than competing options that at best pack a 5ms average, or at worse are up near 7ms. Although this is advertised as a “1ms” monitor, performance is equivalent to TN displays that also advertise “1ms,” which is impressive any way you look at it.
The LG 27GL850 also has great wide gamut support, around 95% of the DCI-P3 spectrum in our testing, which is wider than any VA or TN offering we’ve seen. It lacks true HDR like most 1440p displays, but if you need wide gamut for creative work or just want a vibrant picture, the 27GL850 delivers. Uniformity and viewing angles are good, certainly better than most competitors, which allows the 27GL850 to deliver this great balance of color quality and performance.
Black levels and contrast ratio are not the best, which makes it a less ideal monitor for gaming in a dark environment. If you are in that position, we’d recommend a VA display instead. There’s also no blur-reducing backlight strobing mode, if you want that feature we’d opt for the Asus VG27AQ with its strong ELMB-Sync implementation.
Those two concerns aside, we strongly recommend the LG 27GL850 as the best all-round 1440p display on the market right now, and at $500, it's honestly quite the steal.
One last thing to note is all high-refresh 1440p IPS monitors are currently 27-inch. If you want something larger, like 32-inch, you’re out of luck as the best panels at that size top out at a measly 75 Hz which we don't recommend for gaming. If you want a larger panel, we wholeheartedly recommend the 32-inch LG 32GK650F (read our full review) which once held our best value 1440p monitor spot. It's an excellent VA display that stands out because of its great performance. Most 144Hz VA displays at 1440p deliver response times in the 7-8ms range or above, with some pushing 10ms. The 32GK650F offers some of the best VA response times we’ve tested, at a 6.50ms grey to grey average, which is around the mark of a typical IPS display. This helps minimize a lot of the ghosting and smearing issues that early VA adopters have complained about.