Choosing the right monitor to be able to carry out our daily tasks, whether for professional or leisure obligations, is a complex question. Indeed, the requirements for each use are different and the market is fragmented to say the least. Thus, one can find monitors for gaming with a very low response time, a high refresh rate, but with less accurate color representation. On the other hand, if you are a graphic designer, video editor or 3D modeler, it seems that the choice of a monitor is entirely different.
What should I look for when buying a monitor?
What you need to keep in mind is that if you are a professional who needs your computer monitor to have certain features to do your job, then choose those before anything else. A PC according to its use is also a means of production and the way you can earn your bread, so you must place these elements in the first place. In any case, there are a series of general elements for everyone:
- A bigger monitor is not always a better monitor, mainly due to the fact that with equal resolutions, a smaller one will look much better in terms of sharpness and image quality.
- A monitor that is too small is also not good, mainly due to the fact that the pixels are too small and can make reading difficult.
In the event that you are going to be doing typical office work, any monitor today will work for you, as they all meet more than the minimum specs to be able to work comfortably. Of course, we don’t recommend using a large TV. More than anything for one obvious thing, you don’t need to take up so much desktop space and it won’t improve your productivity.
for graphic design
The preferable ones here are OLED screens for their high level of contrast and make sure they support color rendering. If you can’t, choose an IPS, but avoid those with TN/VA type panels altogether. As for the resolution, this is where a good 4K panel comes into its own.
We also recommend you to check if it supports DCI-P3 with high precision, specifically, it is desirable that it support a low DeltaE. As for sRGB, try to get as close to 100% as possible. When it comes to refresh rate, you don’t have to pick a 60Hz monitor to work on and if you want to game, a 120Hz one will retain color well. The problem comes when we talk about rates over 144 hoursz, where color accuracy is lost.
for video games
When buying a monitor, if we are going to use it mainly for gaming, then the choice of the panel does not matter, what is more, depending on the brand of your graphics card that you have installed in your PC, you will want to choose a monitor with sG-SYNC support, if yours is from NVIDIA, or FreeSync support if you’re using an AMD-branded GPU. Which will help you fix image tearing and artifacts.
However, the choice of the resolution of your screen will depend on the power of your graphics card, because if you have a high-end one capable of reproducing 4K graphics, it would be wasting its capabilities to use a Full HD monitor. For us today, the best compromise between image quality and fluidity in games is Opt for a Quad HD monitor, that is to say with a resolution of 1440p and a good refresh rate.
