Monitor panels, refresh rates and resolution explained
IPS, VA or OLED? 144 Hz or 240 Hz? 1440p or 4K? What each monitor spec means, which ones are marketing, and how to match a screen to the graphics card driving it.
A monitor is the part of a PC you look at for every second it is on, and its spec sheet is one of the hardest to read. Here is what each number means.
Panel types
| Panel | Strengths | Weaknesses |
|---|---|---|
| IPS | Accurate colour, wide viewing angles, quick response | Greyish blacks in a dark room ("IPS glow") |
| VA | High contrast, deep blacks for the price | Slower dark-to-light transitions, which can smear in fast games |
| OLED | Every pixel lights itself: perfect blacks and extremely fast response | Costs more; static images left for very long periods can cause burn-in |
| TN | Cheap and fast | Poor colour and viewing angles; rare now |
OLED comes in two main flavours, QD-OLED and WOLED, which differ in subpixel layout and how bright colours get. Current OLED monitors include care features (pixel shifting, panel refresh cycles) that reduce burn-in risk with normal desktop use.
Refresh rate
Refresh rate (Hz) is how many times a second the screen can draw a new image. Going from 60 Hz to 144 Hz is the single most noticeable upgrade in games; 240 Hz and above matter most in fast competitive shooters.
A high refresh rate only helps if the graphics card produces that many frames. A 240 Hz screen fed 70 frames a second shows 70 frames a second.
Adaptive sync (AMD FreeSync, NVIDIA G-SYNC and G-SYNC Compatible) lets the screen wait for each frame rather than drawing at fixed intervals, which removes tearing when the frame rate varies. Almost every gaming monitor now has it.
Resolution and size
Resolution only means something next to size. Pixel density (pixels per inch) is what makes text and edges look sharp:
| Size and resolution | Pixel density |
|---|---|
| 24" 1920x1080 | about 92 PPI |
| 27" 2560x1440 | about 109 PPI |
| 27" 3840x2160 | about 163 PPI |
| 32" 3840x2160 | about 138 PPI |
27-inch 1440p is the popular middle ground: noticeably sharper than 1080p and far easier for a graphics card to drive at high frame rates than 4K.
Response time is the spec to trust least
"1 ms" on the box is usually a best-case grey-to-grey figure measured at the most aggressive overdrive setting, which can cause bright halos around moving objects ("overshoot"). Use it to rule out slow panels, not to rank fast ones. OLED panels are genuinely near-instant.
Connections
High resolutions at high refresh rates need bandwidth. DisplayPort 1.4 handles 1440p at 240 Hz and 4K at 144 Hz with compression (DSC); DisplayPort 2.1 and HDMI 2.1 handle more. Use the cable that came with the monitor where possible, and check your graphics card has the matching output.
Matching the monitor to the GPU
- 1080p at 144 Hz+: an entry or mid-range card.
- 1440p at 144 to 240 Hz: a mid to upper-mid range card.
- 4K at 120 Hz+: a high-end card, or upscaling such as DLSS or FSR.
You can compare monitors by panel, size, resolution and refresh rate on the monitor category page.