Fast becoming staples on the desks of gamers and creative pros, 4K monitors are falling in price—but getting more complicated to buy. Here’s how to shop for an ultra-high-definition (UHD) display, plus our top picks, backed by deep-dive reviews.
Whether it’s for gaming, office productivity, or creative work—or just to stream your favorite movies—a 4K monitor is a must-have upgrade for some shoppers. But the 4K monitors on the market today are far from alike. Some are built to deliver speedy refresh rates to benefit PC gamers. Others are designed for graphics pros, with extreme color accuracy and support for wide color ranges in mind. And selected models pack workflow-enhancing features that can make managing your desktop much easier. Here’s everything you need to know about the benefits (and possible pitfalls) of getting a new 4K panel today. We’ve also ranked the 4K monitors that have made the cut according to our detailed testing. They’re a great starter set for your search. First Off: Do You Even Need a 4K Monitor? Let’s define 4K first. The vast majority of 4K monitors are displays with a native resolution of 3,840 pixels across by 2,160 pixels on the vertical. That’s four times as many as a 1,920-by-1,080-pixel monitor—and that’s a lot of pixels. Some other resolutions with approximately 4,000 horizontal pixels—most commonly 4,096 by 2,160—are also considered 4K. All these panels remain a premium choice, but they are becoming increasingly common on desks at work, at home, or in gamers’ frag dens. But before we get too deep into the topic, we should first help you answer a key question: Is a 4K monitor right for you in the first place? Depending on what you do most with your monitor, and where you’ll place it, the extra money you’d pay versus a lower-resolution display may not be necessary. For starters, let’s take gaming. While gorgeous to look at, gaming in 4K with modern games requires loads of graphics horsepower to get above 60 frames per second (fps), today’s generally acknowledged minimum for serious gamers. Right now, only a handful of graphics cards can reliably power a 4K screen with leading-edge, AAA game titles at top settings. And you’d want to crank everything up to make the 4K investment worthwhile. (If you’re turning down the detail settings in a game to make it run better in 4K, that defeats much of the point of 4K in the first place.) These elite cards are Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3080, GeForce RTX 3090, GeForce RTX 2080, as well as the AMD’s Radeon RX 6800 and 6700 series—all of them expensive video cards with prices greatly inflated here in 2021. If you don’t have one, gaming at 4K is going to demand compromises—and it may not be worth the splurge. (Of course, you can always turn down the resolution if you need the 4K resolution for things other than gaming.) Similarly, if you want a 4K monitor solely for entertainment purposes that don’t center on PC gaming, a 4K TV would likely be a cheaper option. That’s because many 4K TVs aren’t beholden to the same standards that 4K monitors are, such as the need for boosted refresh rates (for gaming models), high-level or specialized color accuracy (for content-creative ones), or low levels of input lag. (See our picks for the best TVs, now uniformly 4K models.) If one of those scenarios fits your needs, though, the next step is to figure out whether or not a 4K monitor is right for you for different reasons: your desk configuration, and your eyesight. Next Question: Can You See in 4K? With TVs, the answer to whether or not you should opt for a 4K model today is almost always «yes,» because we sit much closer to our monitors than we do our TVs. It’s not quite as simple with 4K monitors. If you get really serious about that question in the monitor world, it comes down to algebra, and it raises issues like pixel pitch, pixels per inch (ppi), and «angular resolutions.» Let’s keep it simple, though. A good example of the pixel-pitch problem arises in VR headsets, with an issue known as the «screen door» effect. In essence, the lower the maximum resolution that a screen is capable of displaying, and the closer you sit to the screen, the easier it is to see its individual pixels. In the case of VR headsets, it makes the image look as though it’s being seen through mesh, and it’s why VR headsets have seen resolution upticks in successive models. When something’s that close to your eyes, you can more clearly see the difference. The same issues apply to monitors, just across a larger viewing distance than inches from your eyes. The tricky bit is that viewing distance isn’t fixed; it depends on the size and layout of your desk, your chair position, and so on. Whether you can make out the difference in resolution on a 4K panel versus, say, a 1440p one (that’s 2,560 by 1,440 pixels) depends on your eyesight, that viewing distance, and the screen size. The screen size, at a 4K resolution, calculates out to a certain number of ppi, in essence the pixel density of the screen. You can see how it scales here at each common resolution… (Source: Wikimedia Commons) Lucky for us, we don’t have to do any of the hard math on our own. The team over at Puget Systems has designed a helpful Google Sheet that will automatically help you figure out the optimal display size and resolution for you, depending on your personal level of visual acuity. All you have to do is plug in your target screen size and resolution, the distance from the panel to your eyes, and the specifics of your eyesight. You can then try different numbers and see how the output changes, helping you figure out if a certain screen size or viewing distance makes more or less sense. (If you haven’t been to the eye doctor lately and don’t know your prescription strength, a few more hand calculations, using some of the formulas on this page, are all you need.) Of course, less scientifically, you can also look at 4K panels of various screen sizes in a local store to see if you can tell the difference. But you’ll want to observe the same screen image, scaled the same amount, to see a meaningful comparison, and that may not always be practical. Still, to summarize: before you buy a 4K monitor, make sure you’ll actually be able to see the benefit of the increased pixel density in your particular seating setup. Have 20/15 vision, already own a 27-inch,2,560-by-1,440-pixel (1440p) monitor, and will sit three feet from the screen? A 4K monitor probably won’t offer a big enough boost in clarity to justify the cost at the same screen size and distance. It all depends on how big your 4K panel is, how close or how far you’ll sit, and your eyesight. What Screen Type of 4K Monitor Should You Buy? Before you buy a new 4K monitor, you should know the benefits and drawbacks of the different display technologies that power them. Most of the time, it’s easy to find what kind of panel a given 4K monitor has simply by looking at the manufacturer spec sheet.
