Senior staff writer Dave Gershgorn has reviewed and covered technology since 2015 at publications such as Popular Science, Quartz, Medium, and now Wirecutter. He covers all computer displays for Wirecutter and is a certified display calibrator through the Imaging Science Foundation.

If you use your computer only for browsing and video calls, or if you’re looking at your screen for just a couple of hours a day, you don’t need to spend extra money on a 4K monitor. But if you’re doing professional video or photo editing and want to view 4K photos and videos at their native resolution, if you want to be able to fit more stuff on your screen at once, or if you want to see sharper text and more-detailed images on your screen, a 4K monitor is worth the investment.

“4K” is a loose term that refers to the number of pixels present horizontally across the screen; the most common 4K resolution is 3840×2160 pixels (yes, it’s rounding up, but “3.84K” is not as catchy). That’s four times the pixels in a 1080p display and 2.25 times the pixels in a 2560×1440-pixel display. The increased pixel density allows for sharper text and more-detailed images and videos, as well as an increase in usable desktop space—you can view a bunch of information on a 4K screen at once, depending on your operating system’s scaling settings.

To push all of those pixels, you need a newer and faster computer; most laptops and desktops released in or after 2015 should be good enough to handle your web browser and other basic apps. To run a 4K display at the typical 60 frames per second (60 Hz), your computer should support DisplayPort 1.2 or later or HDMI 2.0 or later. If you’re playing high-end games, you also need a powerful graphics card, such as an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070, 3080, or 3090, or an AMD Radeon RX 6800 or 6900. These graphics cards allow your computer to change the image on the screen faster, up to standard speeds of 144 or 240 frames per second (144 or 240 Hz). In addition, streaming 4K video requires a relatively fast internet connection; Netflix recommends speeds of at least 15 Mbps for 4K streaming, and if other people are using your network at the same time, you should have more than that.

If a 4K monitor isn’t right for you, we have guides for lower-resolution budget monitors and 27-inch monitors, which are still excellent for browsing the web, multitasking, and gaming. A good budget monitor will run you between $100 and $150; a good 2560×1440 27-inch monitor will cost between $250 and $400.

These are the features you should look for in a 4K monitor:

• Size: A 27-inch monitor is large enough to take advantage of some of 4K’s extra screen resolution yet isn’t too large to use on a desk.
• Display technology: We prefer IPS panels because they offer a good balance of color accuracy, wide viewing angles, and price. OLED displays are more expensive, but offer an infinite contrast range, discussed below.
• Price: An excellent 27-inch 4K monitor should cost less than $700, and a decent budget model should cost $400 or less. You can buy a high-quality 32-inch model for $700 to $900.
• Ports: HDMI and DisplayPort connections are both requirements for any decent 4K monitor, and the best models also include a USB-C port that can send a display signal and charge a connected laptop at the same time. Great monitors should also include a USB 3.0 hub so that you can connect peripherals such as keyboards, mice, and webcams, since modern laptops come with fewer and fewer ports of their own.
• Contrast ratio: Contrast is the measure between the brightest and darkest colors a monitor can produce. We measure each monitor’s contrast ratio during our testing, instead of relying on the manufacturer’s listing. A contrast ratio of 1000:1 or higher (note that higher is better) is typical of IPS panels, but newer OLED displays can control the brightness of individual pixels, giving an infinite contrast ratio. Having a good contrast ratio is a little more important than having accurate color—you can often fix inaccurate color after the fact by calibrating the monitor yourself, but a poor contrast ratio is harder to address.
• Color accuracy and color gamut: For any kind of photo, video, or graphics work, a monitor’s color accuracy ensures that your images look the way you intend them to when they appear on another screen or in print. The best 4K monitors come calibrated from their manufacturers and thus have better color accuracy than those that don’t. For the best image quality, your monitor should also cover as much of the sRGB color gamut as possible; the more gamut coverage a monitor provides, the wider the range of colors it can accurately represent. Coverage of the wider DCI-P3 color gamut is a plus. If you’re doing professional image work on the monitor, we recommend either calibrating it yourself or hiring a professional. Though the accuracy of factory-calibrated monitors is generally great, professional calibration can usually improve it.
• Monitor-control software: Monitor buttons are notoriously small and fiddly, which can make them annoying to use for most people and especially difficult for those with limited use of their hands. Software controls make things easier for everyone.
• Stands and VESA-mount support: If your monitor doesn’t allow you to properly align it for correct posture, your body can pay the price. The most ergonomic option, and a requirement for our picks, is a monitor’s ability to attach to a monitor arm via a VESA mount. But because good monitor arms can cost an additional $100 to $200, we prioritize 4K monitors with stands that can tilt front to back, swivel side to side, slide up and down, and pivot into portrait mode.
• Warranty: 4K monitors are bigger investments than budget monitors, so a good warranty is important—we confirm that each monitor comes with a good dead-pixel policy that protects your purchase from bright- and dark-pixel defects.
• Refresh rate: A 60-hertz refresh rate over either HDMI 2.0 or DisplayPort 1.2 keeps things smooth and prevents laggy animations and mouse movements. For higher refresh rates, you’ll need an HDMI 2.1 cable.
• Design: A monitor’s bezel, or the border around the screen, doesn’t affect its functionality. But a slim border looks more modern and reduces the amount of space between screens if you’re using a multi-monitor setup.
• Easy-to-use controls: Your 4K monitor’s on-screen display should make it easy for you to change settings such as text size or brightness. Its buttons—whether capacitive or physical—should also be easy to use.
• Variable refresh rates: If you play PC games, this is something to watch out for. A monitor with a variable refresh rate, also called adaptive sync, matches the screen’s refresh rate to the frame rate of the game you’re playing as it goes up and down, eliminating screen tearing and stuttering, and reducing input latency without affecting the game’s performance. A few of the monitors we’ve looked at support FreeSync, which works with both AMD and Nvidia graphics cards.

For each round of research and testing, we look through the websites of 4K-monitor manufacturers, including Acer, Asus, BenQ, Dell, HP, LG, and ViewSonic. And we eliminate models that don’t meet our criteria, aren’t readily available through established retailers, or are too expensive relative to other models with similar features.

To test the monitors, we use each model for typical desktop work for a few hours, noting the sturdiness and quality of the stand and how easy the monitor is to adjust via the on-screen controls. We test for some common issues that can afflict LCD monitors, such as low-light flicker (also called PWM flicker) and image retention.

For each round of tests, we adjust the monitor’s brightness to 140 cd/m² (candelas per square meter), a good value for everyday use, and set its contrast as high as it can go without losing white details. We test different built-in color presets for the monitors that have them, noting the presets that produce the most accurate colors.

We then test the accuracy of each monitor’s color and contrast—a screen with too-bright, oversaturated color might look good to the naked eye, but photos, videos, and web pages won’t look the way their creators intended. We test each monitor using an X-Rite i1Basic Pro and a Calibrite ColorChecker Display Plus, as well as custom tests in the Calman software calibration suite.

A contrast ratio higher than 1000:1 is necessary for a monitor to produce enough detail in highlights and shadows in images. Grayscale results tell us whether a monitor’s white, gray, and black tones contain tints of other colors. The CMS and ColorChecker measurements determine performance on specific colors, and the saturation test measures how each monitor handles different intensities of certain colors.

The Calman tests produce DeltaE 2000 numbers, which show how much the displayed color deviates from what it’s supposed to be: The lower the number, the better the result. A DeltaE value lower than 1.0 is perfect. Under 2.0 is good enough for print-production work, and you wouldn’t notice a difference even if you had a perfect reference to compare against. Ratings above 3.0 mean you’d probably see a difference with your naked eye.

Color gamut, or the range of colors that a device can accurately represent, is also important—color accuracy doesn’t mean much if your screen shows only a portion of the colors meant to be displayed—so we use our Calman tests to determine how much of the sRGB color gamut each monitor’s screen can reproduce. The ideal score is 100%.

Often, 4K monitors include support for a wider color gamut called DCI-P3, which is primarily used in film production but is also supported by most of Apple’s recent phones and computers and a number of high-end Windows laptops. It’s rare to come across 100% DCI-P3 coverage, at least in our price range for this guide, but anything higher than 80% is better than average.

Dell’s UltraSharp U2723QE pairs an accurate IPS display with plenty of ports and features, so it’s a terrific standard monitor for home or work. Traditionally, Dell has geared the UltraSharp line of monitors toward professionals, which makes such models expensive compared with the competition. However, the U2723QE’s addition of a new screen technology called IPS Black elevates the display’s quality by a significant margin and makes this 4K monitor an easy recommendation. It also has a wide range of ports, and its USB-C port, which is capable of 90 W, allows you to connect and charge most laptops through the monitor.

It offers fantastic contrast. With an outstanding 2000:1 contrast ratio, the U2723QE produces noticeably more vibrant images than similar IPS-technology monitors, which typically have a contrast ratio closer to 1000:1. This is due to Dell’s use of IPS Black technology, a new kind of display made by LG that claims to increase contrast, color accuracy, and viewing angles. In the U2723QE, IPS Black certainly does those things—but most important of all, the results look wonderful.

It also has good color accuracy. We really liked the way 4K content looked on this monitor, as its great contrast bolstered its color accuracy. In darker, high-contrast scenes such as the introduction to The Matrix, details in shadows were suddenly more visible in comparison with their appearance on other monitors such as our budget pick, the Dell S2722QC. And thanks to this monitor’s fantastic grayscale accuracy, white and gray on this display are actually white and gray, and they don’t have any visible tints of color.

It’s bright enough for most rooms. We measured the maximum brightness of the display at 393 nits, very close to the 400 nits advertised. This monitor is bright enough even in reasonably sunny rooms.

You can easily change the monitor’s settings from your computer. Dell offers software, for both Windows and Mac, to control the U2723QE’s settings. The software works well on both platforms and can change all of the monitor’s settings.

It has a wealth of ports. Dell built this monitor to work with most laptops, which you can connect to the U2723QE through its USB-C port. It can deliver up to 90 W of power, which is enough to charge most laptops. (However, gaming laptops, and those with powerful graphics cards, typically need too much power to charge this way.) For connecting to a PC or Mac desktop, the monitor also has HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort 1.4 connections.

In addition, it has five USB-A ports for peripherals, one extra USB-C port (with 15 W of charging for a phone or tablet), a Gigabit Ethernet port, and a DisplayPort out that allows you to daisy-chain a second monitor into your setup while still using just one connection cable to the U2723QE. (Note that daisy-chaining works only on Windows computers, as Apple doesn’t support this capability on its devices.)

The stand is highly adjustable. Dell’s monitor stand allows you to change the height, tilt, swivel, and rotation of the monitor, including rotating it to a portrait orientation. The monitor feels secure in any valid position, and the stand is sturdy and doesn’t wobble to a noticeable degree.

Dell provides a long warranty. Dell’s premium monitors come with its Premium Panel Exchange service, which allows you to get a replacement monitor if yours has just one bright subpixel, or more than six dark subpixels, within three years of purchase. This is one of the better warranties that we’ve seen from a monitor manufacturer.

The packaging is eco-friendly. Many manufacturers are moving away from Styrofoam packaging and toward newer, more eco-friendly ways of shipping their products. Dell, for one, packages this monitor entirely in cardboard, which helps the planet and saves you from having small foam bits lingering in your office for weeks.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

Although the Dell U2723QE’s color-accuracy scores indicated that this monitor would be perfectly fine for most people in that regard, out of the box it wasn’t quite up to par for color-critical work. If you intend to use this monitor for designing graphics for print or anything similar, we recommend calibrating it beforehand.

The Asus ROG Swift OLED PG32UCDM is intended for gaming, but looks fantastic while working or watching entertainment. It’s one of the first widely-available 4K OLED computer monitors, a technology that allows the monitor to individually turn pixels on and off, which means dark shadows in a moody thriller will look inky black. These displays look head-and-shoulders better than their IPS counterparts, but come with the high cost of a new technology, so we suggest seeing it in person if you’re on the fence. We also liked that the PG32UCDM has a USB-C port with 90W of power delivery, in addition to HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPorts, making it easy to use a laptop and a PC together.

Its 31.5-inch OLED display is sharp and incredibly vibrant. The PG32UCDM is a fairly massive 31.5-inch monitor, which has the traditional 4K resolution of 3840 x 2160. The monitor is built for gaming and has a fast 240 Hz refresh rate, a measure of how many times the image on the screen is updated per second. But even if you don’t game, text and images on the PG32UCDM look crisp, a combination of the near-infinite contrast that an OLED can achieve and a change to how the pixels are laid out, which prioritizes text. Blurry text was previously an issue on OLED TVs that some people would try to use as monitors, but this issue is fixed on newer OLED displays like the PG32UCDM.

It knows how to take care of itself. A concern with OLED technology is its longevity, as the displays are known to overheat and burn images onto the screen. The PG32UCDM comes with a few screen protection tools, like a pixel cleaning mode which rapidly cycles the pixels on and off to get rid of remaining electric charge. The monitor reminds you to run the cleaning mode every 8 hours of operation. By default, it also slightly shifts the pixels on your screen to avoid burn-in, but to such a small degree it’s typically not noticeable.

It works well using multiple computers, like a PC and laptop. The PG32UCDM has two HDMI 2.1 ports and one DisplayPort 1.4, and it’s one of the few models with a USB-C port capable of video and 90W of power delivery. It also has a USB hub with three USB-A ports and a headphone jack. Those three USB-A ports can be used to hook up peripherals like a keyboard and mouse, and the monitor’s KVM switch will automatically route the peripherals to whichever input you’re currently using.

You can change the monitor’s settings in an app, rather than the on-screen menu. Asus’ DisplayWidgetCenter software automatically detects the PG32UCDM and allows control of a large portion of the monitor’s settings. All the picture settings are controllable, as are some of the gaming settings like a crosshair overlay. You can also set hotkeys for certain monitor settings, like brightness or which computer the KVM is passing the peripherals to. However, you can’t change the input from the software or with a hotkey, which Asus says it will address in a firmware update in coming months.

It has a sturdy stand that takes up a bit of space. The PG32UCDM’s stand raises and lowers, swivels side-to-side, and tilts forward and back, but doesn’t turn. The stand is identical to many of Asus’ previous stands, which look kind of like a non-adjustable tripod. It takes up a bit of desk space, but it’s stable enough that we won’t complain about it. The fact that most of the stand isn’t in contact with your desk, given the tripod-like nature, makes it easier to route cables and other accessories around it than other stands. The top of the stand also has a ¼-inch screw hole, perfect for mounting accessories like a camera or light.

It’s one of the only 4K OLED monitors in a new market. This monitor is more expensive than the ones that we typically recommend, but OLED is a new technology in the world of monitors and looks starkly better than the competition. This is the monitor that we’ve also seen most consistently in stock, as cheaper competitors that we also liked, such as the MSI MPG321URX, are chronically sold out everywhere. Buying the model that’s available now means you’re paying more for a technology that will likely be much cheaper in the coming years. For instance, 2023’s first OLED breakout, an LG gaming monitor, is now on sale for 30% to 40% off.

We recommend the Dell S2722QC as a stellar budget-pick 27-inch 4K monitor, as it’s a bright, high-resolution display with USB-C connectivity and charging. Bonus: You can often find the S2722QC on sale for less than $400, and it comes with most of the features of Dell’s more expensive 4K monitor models, as well as a generous warranty that ensures that you won’t get a flawed panel out of the box.

It has most of the ports you’re likely to need. This monitor has all of the standard ports for day-to-day work, including two HDMI 2.0 ports, a USB-C port with 65 W of power delivery, a headphone jack, and two USB-A ports that support USB 3.2 Gen 1. The USB-C port is the big-ticket item here, as it allows you to connect a compatible laptop with only one USB-C cable for both displaying the image and charging the laptop. The monitor’s 65 W of power output is sufficient for charging most laptops, including non-Pro MacBooks.

It offers exceptional color accuracy for its price. The S2722QC’s out-of-the-box color accuracy looks great for handling productivity tasks and watching 4K content, though if you’re doing color-critical work, you should either calibrate the display or opt for our top pick, the Dell U2723QE, which is much more accurate. In our tests, we were able to calibrate the S2722QC to get DeltaE 2000 scores of less than 2.0 for most metrics, which is good enough for casual to semi-professional media work. That’s about the limit of this model (and many other comparable monitors), though, since Dell doesn’t provide granular controls for adjusting the gamma and color beyond basic RGB sliders on the Custom Color setting.

It’s sturdy, sleek, and simple. We generally like Dell’s monitor stands, which it uses across many models, and the stand for the S2722QC is no different. This sturdy support allows you to raise and lower the monitor, swivel it side to side, tilt it up and down, and rotate it 90 degrees into a portrait orientation. The rest of the monitor offers similar build quality.

The HP Omen 27k is a sharp, affordable 4K gaming monitor. Other monitors might offer milliseconds better response time for professional gamers. But the Omen 27k is the best option for the casual gamer who also needs to get work done, rather than those who need to squeeze out every ounce of gaming performance.

It’s ready for competitive gaming. The Omen 27k has a 144 Hz refresh rate, which is the bare minimum we recommend if you’re playing competitive online games or generally want the best gaming experience. It has a fast 1ms response time, and in our testing, gaming was pleasant without any tearing or noticeable artifacts. It’s also a bright panel—actually slightly brighter than the advertised 400 nits of brightness in our testing.

It has all the ports you need for desktop and laptop use. With USB-C, HDMI 2.1, HDMI 2.0, and DisplayPort 1.4 options, the Omen 27k easily connects to both your laptop and gaming computer. If you plug your keyboard and mouse into the monitor’s two USB ports, you can use the monitor’s KVM button (Keyboard, Video, Mouse) to switch between computers and automatically change your mouse and keyboard to control the right one.

It’s sleek and has a nice stand. The Omen 27k has a sophisticated, understated design, and the RGB lighting on the back manages to not look garish. It also has a stand that raises and lowers, tilts up and down, swivels side to side, and also rotates 90 degrees to a portrait orientation. Many gaming monitors we tested had less ergonomic stands, which made it harder to dial in a healthy posture.

For PC gamers who want an OLED display first: The Dell AW3225QF has a curved, immersive display that has the same near-infinite contrast provided by OLED technology as our upgrade pick, and fast-moving objects are sharp and easy to see at its 240 Hz refresh rate. Our upgrade pick is meant to accommodate a wide variety of uses, but if you’re a gamer with a PC that doesn’t care about USB-C, the AW3225QF is a great choice for $300 cheaper.

If you’re a designer or work in print production: The Asus ProArt PA279CRV has fantastic color accuracy in its sRGB mode, and has features like 96W of USB-C charging and true 10-bit color depth. We preferred the richer black tones of our Dell top pick, but the PA279CRV is still a dependable 4K monitor for creative professionals who require the best color they can reasonably afford.

If it’s on sale, or if our picks are sold out: The Philips Brilliance 279P1 is a great budget 4K display that’s often on sale. It’s about as color-accurate as our current budget pick, the Dell S2722QC (which is quite good), and it has a similar port selection and 65 W USB-C charging, but the Dell model is about 50 nits brighter and provides better contrast. We’ve seen this Philips monitor go on sale for $300, which is about as cheap as you can find a 4K monitor with USB-C. If you find it for that price, it’s a good deal.

If you want a bigger 4K gaming monitor: We also liked the Gigabyte M32U, which is the best option we could find for those who want a larger monitor that easily switches between two computers. It has two HDMI 2.1 ports, alongside a DisplayPort 1.4, a USB-C port with a scant 18W of charging, and a USB hub with KVM capabilities to switch your peripherals between computers. We found its contrast, color accuracy, and gaming performance to be about as good as our top gaming pick’s; it’s just larger.

We’re still waiting for the release of a few 4K OLED monitors, like the HP Omen Transcend 32, and Samsung’s Odyssey G80SD.

At Computex 2024, a trade show for the personal computing industry, another wave of monitors has been announced–even before many of the models announced at CES have shipped. MSI has announced a new 32-inch OLED monitor, the MEG 321URX, which it claims can use AI to analyze content on the screen to give gamers an advantage. This could be identifying enemies on a minimap or keeping track of health indicators, according to promotional materials. However, whether these features actually work across games and as advertised is unlikely, and MSI hasn’t released pricing or release information for the monitor.

Asus has announced the ProArt Display 5K PA27JCV, a 5K display, as well as the PA32QCV, a 6K, 32-inch version. These displays will have 96W USB-C power delivery, HDMI, DisplayPort, and a USB hub. We’re looking at these with interest, as we’re always on the hunt for alternatives to high-priced 5K monitors like the Apple Studio Display. Asus has also announced the ZenScreen Smart MS27UC, a 27-inch 4K display with smart TV features. We’re still waiting for pricing and release dates for these monitors.

We’re also interested in testing Samsung’s ViewFinity S80UD, a 27-inch 4K display with 90W of USB-C charging and a KVM switch for changing peripherals between computers. It only gets up to 350 nits of brightness and its contrast ratio is advertised at 1000:1, two middle-of-the-road metrics that more competitive displays surpass. However, Samsung monitors go on sale often– the relatively new and very similar S80PB is already on sale for $100 off, so we want to check it out to see if they’re worth recommending.

The MSI MPG 321URX would have been our upgrade pick in this guide, as it offers almost all the features of the Asus ROG Swift OLED PG32UCDM for about $300 cheaper, but it’s consistently sold out everywhere online. The main specs are the same: They’re both 32-inch displays with the same OLED technology and 240 Hz refresh rates. The PG32UCDM gets about 150 nits brighter in typical use, which is a significant difference, and has one fewer USB port in its hub, but you most likely wouldn’t notice it unless comparing the monitors side-by-side.

The Gigabyte Aorus FO32U2 we tested had issues switching inputs, and its picture would intermittently turn off after disconnecting a device from USB-C. It otherwise has similar specifications to the MSI and Asus OLEDs, but we’d steer clear after our experience.

Samsung’s newest Smart Monitor M8, refreshed for 2023, is both a 32-inch computer monitor and a smart TV. It even comes with a remote, and it’s a fun idea that could be great for a college dorm or studio apartment. It has a nice picture, a marked improvement over the 2022 model we reviewed. However, we found the smart TV software too slow for a $700 monitor. A smart TV needs to offer an advantage over a $50 Chromecast, and while the monitor is packed full of apps like Game Pass and Google Meet, the software runs just a bit too slow to enjoy using them.

The Dell UltraSharp 6K 32-inch monitor has a fantastic display with a built-in webcam. While this display is twice as expensive than we’d typically recommend, the resolution and color is superb. The built-in webcam has 4K resolution, but Dell’s software support makes it difficult to recommend. There’s no way to directly control the exposure of the camera, meaning you can’t get a good picture unless you’re in a specific lighting situation. Since the camera can’t be removed, we cannot recommend this monitor.

The BenQ PD2725U 4K Thunderbolt 3 display exhibited poor contrast (690:1) in our tests. Content still looked nice, but considering this model’s $850 price tag, we’re sure that you can get a better picture for less with one of our picks.

The LG UltraFine 5K Display 27MD5KL-B promises 500 nits of brightness, a claim that we found to be accurate in our testing—the display looked fantastically sharp when used with a Mac, and it seemed bright enough for almost any office. However, we didn’t find it to be especially color accurate out of the box, it has a short one-year warranty, and its stand only tilts and adjusts height. This monitor might be the right fit for Mac owners who want to spend $1,200 on their display, but the vast majority of people don’t need 5K, and frankly, most people wouldn’t be able to tell the difference over 4K.

The Apple Studio Display provides a 5K resolution, excellent color accuracy, and nice speakers. Our advice here is similar to that regarding the LG UltraFine 5K Display: If you’re a Mac user who wants to spend the money, this is a nice monitor. Otherwise, you can get an image nearly as good for much, much less.

If you’re choosing between the LG UltraFine 5K Display and the Apple Studio Display, we’d say go for the Studio Display. It’s brighter, it has speakers that are actually decent for listening to music, and nearly every Apple display we’ve tested has provided fantastic color accuracy. The Apple Studio Display is also about nine years newer than the LG UltraFine 5K Display. (We eliminated cost in arriving at this conclusion, as by this point we’re already far beyond the price range of what we recommend in this guide.)

The Dell P2723QE represents a step down from our top pick, Dell’s U2723QE, as it doesn’t incorporate IPS Black monitor technology. Upon testing this model, we found its maximum brightness to be about 250 nits, significantly dimmer than our similarly priced budget pick.

As for other budget 4K monitors, the Dell S2721QS typically costs only $50 to $75 less than our budget pick and omits both a USB-C port and USB hub features.

This article was edited by Caitlin McGarry and Arthur Gies.