Digit Zero1 Awards and Digit Best Buy Awards 2022: Best Gaming Monitors

We started seeing OLED panels featured on mainstream laptops a couple of years ago as it became cheaper to produce the premium panels at scale. Come 2022, we’ve seen not only the OLED panels but even its evolution, the QD-OLED panels feature on gaming monitors. While the QD-OLED gaming monitors are yet to enter the Indian market, we do have a decent amount of great gaming monitors with premium features in the country. Also, we’ve seen more of those premium features trickle down to the mid and even the entry-level segments. QD-OLED panels with higher refresh rates and larger panel sizes are a rarity even now, and the vast majority of gaming monitors are built on IPS, VA and TN panels. This year we saw even more gaming monitors offer higher refresh rates at 2K and 4K resolutions. The sweet spot for this year is seeming to be 120-144 Hz at 2K resolution, striking a balance between refresh rates and screen resolution. Which sort of aligns with the immensely powerful graphics cards that are launching left, right and centre. So we have really feature-rich gaming monitors and the equally capable graphics cards to drive them.

DIGIT ZERO1 AWARD 2022 WINNER: ASUS ROG Swift PG32UQ

Price: ₹1,39,799

The ASUS ROG Swift PG32UQ leads the pack with more features implemented the right way than the rest. It sports a 4K panel from AUOptronics that’s capable of hitting 144 Hz refresh rate, has a colour gamut coverage that’s rivalling some of the budget designer monitors that are in the market. The panel is native 10-bit so it’s capable of rendering a much higher number of colours in an accurate manner than all the other monitors we’ve tested. Fitting a 4K panel within a 32-inch chassis also means that its pixel density of 137 is also higher than the rest of the panels that we received. Then there’s also support for HDR600 which sets it apart from the rest. Even the HDMI interface is a proper 2.1 implementation rather than a gimmicky half-hearted one. The panel also features ELMB (Extreme Low Motion Blur) and the backlighting is also flicker-free. This monitor represents the best of technologies implemented in the right way for the best gaming experience and that’s why it wins the Zero1 Award for 2022.

1st Runner Up: BenQ ZOWIE XL2566K

Price: ₹54,990

BenQ is known for their no-frills dedicated eSports product line under the ZOWIE brand. If you’re primarily into competitive gaming then the ZOWIE monitors will finetune the most pertinent features for your gaming experience. For example, they still prefer TN panels since it offers the best response times than any other panels at the same refresh rate without additional technologies at play. This time around, ZOWIE is opting for a 360 Hz panel and they have DyAc to reduce motion blur. As for eSports specific features, the 2566K has most of the features that the 2546K did and they even have colour tone settings to mimic what gamers might have been used to with their personal monitors. Where the XL2566K falls short is display brightness. Everything else is top-notch.

Digit Best Buy Award 2022 Winner: LG UltraGear 27GP750-B

Price: ₹23,500

Deciding the Best Buy was a tough one with two very competitive monitors in play. In one corner, we have the LG 27GP750-B and in the other, the ViewSonic XG2431. Both are 240 Hz panels but the LG monitor is in a 27-inch chassis and the ViewSonic monitor in a 24-inch chassis. In terms of pixel density, the 24-inch panel gets the advantage since both are operating at FHD resolution. Coming to colour reproduction, the ViewSonic panel is 6-bit+FRC whereas the LG panel is a native 8-bit panel. With the colorimeter, both panels are very close in performance. ViewSonic also has the advantage of being DisplayHDR 400 certified whereas the LG panel is HDR10 certified. With the scales tilting in ViewSonic’s favour, it comes down to the price of the two monitors. ViewSonic is a little pricey at 32.4K and the price has been creeping upwards over the past couple of months whereas the LG monitor has been consistently lower since launch. So the LG 27GP750-B naturally offers more value for money and therefore, wins the Zero1 Best Buy award.