Top monitors for PC, PS5 and Xbox

Our favourite gaming monitor right now is the AOC Agon Pro AG276QZD. It’s certainly not cheap, costing over £800 at the time of writing, but it still represents outstanding value considering it’s flaunting a 27-inch OLED screen, HDR support and a speedy 240Hz refresh rate. It’s even got integrated speakers.

The OLED screen is an absolute delight for gaming, with the deep inky blacks resulting in eye-catching contrast and an incredible picture. The 2650×1440 resolution ensures video looks incredibly sharp too. Our benchmark results show the monitor to be capable of up to a 380-nit brightness in SDR, and 810-nit brightness in HDR. Colour coverage was superb too, ensuring you’re getting an accurate picture.

We were also really impressed by the monitor’s design, with the stand taking up very little space on your desk. There’s loads of flexibility in terms of adjustment options too: the monitor can pivot by 90 degrees, while there’s 130mm of height adjustment. Ports are well covered with inclusion of HDMI 2.0, DisplayPort 1.4 and and a 3.5mm headphone jack.

Considering the fantastic specs you’re getting for your money, it’s hard to find faults with this gaming monitor. It’s a shame that there’s no HDMI 2.1 support, so you’re best off checking out the LG UltraGear 27GR95QE-B if that’s important to you. Otherwise, we’re confident in saying that the AOC Agon Pro AG276QZD is the best gaming monitor you can buy at this price.

Reviewer: Alun Taylor
Full Review: AOC Agon Pro AG276QZD review

Ultrawide gaming monitors are incredibly popular right now, with gamers craving the extra immersion provided by a stretched-out display. The Lenovo Legion R45w-30 may not be the absolute best ultrawide monitor we’ve reviewed in recent years, but it certainly offers the best bang for your buck with a price undercutting the £800 mark.

This monitor’s display looks stunning too, with a 49-inch screen with a supremely sharp 5120×1440 resolution. This isn’t an OLED monitor like the Samsung Odyssey G9 OLED (2023), but it’s still capable of an excellent 3020:1 contrast, as well as a high 415-nit brightness. This results in an excellent picture that gamers will adore.

The 1500R curvature ensures that the monitor wraps around your peripheral vision for a brilliantly immersive experience. It’s also not so bendy that it’s a nightmare to find a place for it on your desk – it should be perfectly fine in the average study or bedroom.

If you want the absolute best ultrawide gaming monitor, then you can spend even more cash on the likes of the Samsung Odyssey G9 range. But if you simply want a great all-round ultrawide monitor while keeping costs as low as possible, then the Lenovo Legion R45w-30 is the way to go.

Reviewer: Alun Taylor
Full Review: Lenovo Legion R45w-30 review

The AOC Agon AG405UXC has a huge 40-inch panel, making it more of a TV replacement than your typical gaming monitor. It has a 3440×1440 resolution, a 144Hz refresh rate and surprisingly good HDR performance, despite not having a Mini-LED backlight. 

We measured maximum SDR brightness at 361 nits and 486 nits once in HDR mode. The Agon AG405UXC features four different HDR modes – HDR10, HDR Picture, HDR Movie and HDR Game – allowing you to fine-tune your screen to suit the content. For the price, we found the motion handling to be perfectly acceptable and the support for AMD FreeSync Premium Pro ensures that you won’t encounter any screen tearing or juddering while enjoying your favourite AAA games. 

Being a 40-inch monitor, you will need to make sure you have the desk space to store the Agon AG405UXC, which weighs in at 11.88kg. It comes with a convenient remote control so you can change the volume or brightness without needing to use the bezel buttons, although we did note that it had a slightly slow response time.

There are also two 5W speakers buried inside the Agon AG405UXC. Our reviewer found that they did more than a decent job of pumping out volume and were pretty tuneful, with the soundscape underpinned by solid bass and plenty of detail in the upper ranges. 

For the money, the AOC Agon AG405UXC is a highly competent big-screen gaming monitor. It comes with an excellent array of ports, reliable speakers and a massive display that excels in HDR content. 

Reviewer: Alun Taylor
Full Review: AOC Agon AG405UXC

A lot of the gaming monitors on this list cost a fortune, so we’ve made sure to include the budget-friendly AOC Gaming 25G3ZM/BK, which offers top specs and performance despite being available for less than $200/£200.

This 23.8-inch monitor has a standard 1080p VA panel rather than the more luxurious Mini LED and OLED options, but our testing showed it to still offer an outstanding picture quality with a high 4,000:1 contrast and superb colour coverage. It has a great performance too, with a 165Hz refresh rate ensuring butter smooth motion, which is especially useful for multiplayer shooters.

The appearance is fairly basic, but offers great adjustability options as a 90-degree left pivot, 130mm of height adjustment and -5/23-degree of tilt. There’s no RGB lighting or USB connectivity, but it still packs all of the necessary ports for gaming.

The AOC Gaming 25G3ZM/BK is limited to a 1080p resolution and lacks fancy features such as HDR, but at this low price, this monitor is an absolute steal for gamers. This is the best gaming monitor option you’re going to find without spending considerably more.

Reviewer: Alun Taylor
Full Review: AOC Gaming 25G3ZM/BK review

Gaming monitors come in all shapes and sizes, but if you’re after something the size of a TV, then the Samsung Odyssey Neo G7 (2023) is your best bet. It comes in at a massive 43 inches, with our reviewer needing to dismantle the top section of their desk to accommodate it. If possible, we would recommend placing it at a reasonable distance from where you are going to sit, as the screen is too large to view in full when placed directly in front of you on a desk. It could even be used in your lounge or mounted in a bedroom, with the large display creating an absorbing picture that made games like Horizon Zero Dawn look even more picturesque.

The Neo G7 packs a 4K resolution and Mini LED technology. We found that it produced pin-sharp imagery in both video and gaming content and was massively more premium than the standard Full HD experience. Samsung opted to include ‘Quantum Mini LED’ technology which ensured better light control and stopped colours leaking into other parts of the imagery on screen; dark scenes in games looked deep and inky and there was plenty of detail in every frame. 

Unlike a lot of other gaming monitors, the Neo G7 can connect to the internet and run streaming applications without needing to be connected to external devices. This opens the door to running apps like Netflix or Xbox Game Pass without needing to hook up a console or PC. Navigating the system is easy thanks to the bundled remote and furthers the Neo G7 as a replacement TV, rather than just a monitor. 

The combined picture quality and streamlined design of the Samsung Odyssey Neo G7 make it a fantastic choice for anyone who’s looking to enjoy their games on the big screen. With a $799.99/£899 launch price, this is an absolute bargain for anyone who’s more bothered about size rather than speed. 

Reviewer: Ryan Jones
Full Review: Samsung Odyssey Neo G7 (2023) Review

If you’re looking for the best ultrawide monitor and don’t mind spending a bit more money, the Philips Evnia 34M2C860 is our top pick. 

This 34-inch ultrawide monitor stands out from your standard black monitor with a stylish white and silver colourway available. You can choose between the stand or VESA mounting with a bracket for the latter included in the box. There’s also a headphone stand built into the back of the metal stand which is a handy addition. 

The display features a 3440 x 1440 resolution and a smooth 175Hz refresh rate. We found the image quality to be excellent, delivering deep blacks, vibrant colours and virtually infinite contrast that lends itself to both games and films. The colour accuracy is near-perfect and the 237-nit peak brightness looks good but falls slightly short of Philips claims. 

The panel is a QD-OLED one as opposed to an OLED panel, allowing users to reap the benefits of OLED’s deep blacks and QLED’s higher peak brightness. The monitor also supports AMD FreeSync and Nvidia Adaptive Sync to reduce screen tearing and stuttering. 

The Philips Evnia 34M2C8600’s OSD is one of the most comprehensive of any monitor we’ve reviewed. There are ten presets to adjust the look of the display, as well as options to enable the KVM switch, change inputs and access OLED care settings to prevent burn-in. The OSD also includes the option to switch on Philips Ambiglow which reflects ambient lighting off the wall behind the monitor and is adaptable to fit the game you’re playing or movie you’re watching. 

This isn’t the cheapest option available and we wish Philips had included a HDMI 2.1 port at this price. However, for all you do get, this is a monitor that comes highly recommended by us. 

Reviewer: Reece Bithrey

Full Review: Philips Evnia 34M2C8600

The Philips Evnia 42M2N8900 features a glorious 42-inch panel featuring 4K resolution and an OLED panel.

The imagery was perfectly crisp and sharp with the OLED panel allowing for 100% coverage of the sRGB gamut. Blacks were inky and dark and the contrast was very high, allowing for immersive gameplay. It comes with a handy feature, Dynamic DarkBoost. This raises the brightness in dark areas in games, allowing you to see everything on screen without washing out other colours or bringing a grey tinge to everything.

The main elephant in the room here is the 138Hz refresh rate. It’s not terribly high for a gaming monitor and we wouldn’t recommend it for any eSports fans. Some PC gamers may find that this refresh rate isn’t high enough, but it won’t be an issue for those looking to hook up their PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X. 

There is a large selection of ports on the Philips Evnia, including two HDMI 2.1 inputs, a DisplayPort 1.4, four USB-A ports, a USB-B port as well as a 3.5mm audio jack. We found it to be a very well-connected monitor, although the port placement does make it awkward to remove and add more cables. 

Inside the monitor, there are two 10W loudspeakers that produce more than enough volume to fill up a bedroom. They come with DTX Sound audio processing and we found that at 80% volume or less, there was enough bass, treble and composure to make for a very pleasant listening experience. 

Overall, if you can get past the low refresh rate, this is a fantastic 4K gaming monitor. Our reviewer notes that when paired with a PS5 and placed at a comfortable viewing distance, the sumptuous OLED panel looks very impressive. This is well complemented by the integrated speakers, meaning that you don’t even need to splurge on more hardware to experience a truly premium gaming setup.

Reviewer: Alun Taylor
Full Review: Philips Evnia 42M2N8900