Best monitors under $200 you can get now – CNET [CNET]

If you’ve suddenly found yourself on a tight budget, you can still find a decent screen among our picks for the best monitors under $200. But act fast if you find a cheap monitor you want — they’re going in and out of stock like crazy, thanks to so many people now working from home.

When buying a budget monitor, you should absolutely check out the listing of what’s in the box. Make sure that it’s not missing items that would drive the price above that threshold, like a stand or appropriate cables. The stand might not be an issue if you’re planning to use the VESA mount to put it on a wall or arm. But in that case, you should ensure the mount screws on the back of the monitor match yours: The bulk of these have 100-by-100-mm mounts, though in some cases, they don’t support a VESA mount at all.

Got a Mac? If it’s an old MacBook Pro and has an HDMI port, or an iMac or Mac Mini, you won’t have a problem. More modern MacBooks with USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 connections will require an adapter or cable with conversion built-in. You may also need to fiddle with the resolution and scaling settings in Mac OS, since it natively prefers a 16:10 aspect ratio, not the 16:9 aspect ratio that’s much more popular on Windows.

Read more: How to buy a monitor for gaming or working from home

Unless you’re a hardcore gamer or creative professional, many of the most technical specs — color gamut and latency, for example — won’t really matter to you. You should always take them with a grain of salt, anyway.

For the money, you can generally expect to get:

• A maximum of 1,920×1,080-pixel resolution (dubbed by marketers as “Full HD resolution” and also referred to as 1080p or 2K for its roughly 2,000 pixels across). Below 27 inches, that’s fine. At 27 inches or larger, it’s not great except in one important case. Essentially, the reason you buy a 27-inch monitor over a 24-inch is usually because you want to fit more onto it. But if it’s using the same number of pixels, it just makes everything bigger — it doesn’t put more on the screen. And because it’s spreading them across a bigger screen, some people (like me) may get annoyed at seeing the pixel grid. I find a pixel density (the number of pixels per inch, or ppi) of at least 90 a good balance, but YMMV. The exception? If you actually need things like text to be bigger, such as if you have impaired vision.
• A stand that lets you tilt the computer monitor, not raise or lower it.
• While there might be one or two larger, the monitors go mostly up to 27 inches.
• Between 250 and 350 nits of brightness. That should be fine for most uses.
• Up to 75Hz refresh rate for an IPS (which stands for in-plane switching) monitor or 144Hz refresh rate for a TN (twisted nematic). A high refresh rate matters if you’re planning to play a lot of FPS, racing, fighting or other motion-sensitive gaming. An IPS monitor is better for general-purpose use, since it’s superior for off-angle viewing and typically has better color. But the fastest IPS monitor you’ll find for the money is 75Hz. A TN monitor is better for fast gaming and a better gaming experience; it has a higher contrast ratio, but poorer viewing angle — color accuracy and contrast changes as you move further from looking straight-on. 
• A lot of these cheap monitors support AMD’s adaptive refresh FreeSync technology, which works with AMD’s graphics processors for syncing game frame rates with the display.
• If it comes with built-in speakers, don’t assume they’re a replacement for real standalone versions. They’re occasionally better than expected, but think of the speakers as a nice perk for basic system sounds or videoconferencing and consider it a windfall if they’re satisfactory for entertainment. (I’ve been relatively impressed with the speakers in BenQ’s EW series.)
• A curved monitor, which can make a wide display fit into your field of view without requiring you to sit too far back, isn’t worth paying more for in monitors 27 inches or smaller; then the bezels are too far within your field of view. One potential exception is if you plan to span across three identical monitors for gameplay. Then they wrap around you better than three flat screens.

Upping your budget to between $200 and $300 will bring more 32-inch options and 2,560×1,440 resolution. And, of course, the more you’re willing to spend, the more you’re likely to find something in stock and ready to ship.

Read more: Best speakerphone for working from home

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