With the best 4K monitors becoming easier and easier to get, it’s time to ask – do you actually need one?
These days, it seems like everyone is talking about 4K monitors, and for good reason. We’re starting to see more content available in 4K, with hundreds (or even thousands) of YouTube videos, not to mention all the streaming services that support the resolution. But for a display that’s either for getting work done or for playing the best PC games, getting a 4K monitor might not actually be worth it. Gamers will likely want a faster refresh rate, and games like Cyberpunk 2077 are notoriously hard to run at the high resolution. And, if most of what you’re doing is going through spreadsheets or writing up emails, there’s little to gain from actually using such a high resolution. So, with the advent of extremely powerful hardware like the RTX 3080 that promises to deliver a flawless 4K experience no matter what you’re using your PC for, it’s worth asking if you should jump for a premium 4K monitor, or save some cash and get a 1440p or 1080p display instead. If you pay any attention to gaming, you probably know that the PS5 and Xbox Series X are all about 4K gaming, even if those consoles mostly miss the mark when it comes to the actual rendering resolution – they’re mostly using methods to upscale the games from a lower resolution. However, in September 2020 when Nvidia announced the GeForce RTX 3090, the company advertised the graphics card being able to handle gaming not only in 4K, but in 8K. Now, in our review, it didn’t quite hit that mark but it kind of made it seem like 4K was already done and we were already ready to move up to 8K, but we’re definitely not there yet. While there are definitely graphics cards out there that can easily handle 4K gaming, like the RTX 3080 and Radeon RX 6800 XT, most graphics cards on the market simply can’t. The GTX 1060 is still the most popular graphics card right now according to the latest Steam Hardware Survey. That card is really just for 1080p gamers, and it’s starting to struggle even there – especially in more graphically demanding games.
