A 4K monitor gets its name because it can display 3,840 x 2,160 pixels—that’s 4K resolution, also known as UHD. That resolution offers an incredible mix of crisp picture quality, high brightness and impressive color support. Whether you’re watching your favorite movie, gaming or creating your own content, using one of the best 4K monitors can make those look more impressive than ever. Our pick for the best 4K monitor overall is the Dell U3223QE, but that’s not the only recommendation we have for you.
For photo or video editing, gaming, watching videos and more, a 4K monitor is the way to go.
Illustration: Forbes / Photo: Retailer
While many of the top 4K monitors target gamers, there are plenty of models aimed at general use. The LG UltraGear OLED 32-inch is cutting-edge OLED technology, with an incredibly fast refresh rate for gaming. Want more screen space than that? How about the insane Samsung Odyssey G9 Neo 57-inch? Regardless of your needs, we did the hard work for you to pick the best 4K monitors you can buy in 2024.
Best for: Office work and enjoying movies and TV shows in your downtime.
Pros:
Excellent picture quality for work and play
Wide and deep color support
Strong connectivity with 90W power delivery
Cons:
Lacks fast refresh rate and response time for gaming
Not an OLED
For a straightforward 4K monitor with a brilliant quality picture, a sturdy build, trim bezels and a relatively affordable price, the Dell U3223QE ticks about every box you could hope for. It doesn’t have a super high refresh rate or response time for gaming, so this is a display best suited for casual games, if at all. But for work, for watching movies and TV shows, it’s stellar. It has an ultra-modern design with very slim bezels which help make the screen look even bigger than it is, but at 32-inches of 4K screen there’s a lot of space to work with regardless.
It has excellent color support for pro-grade work and photo editing, with 98% support of the DCI-P3 spectrum and with thanks to its VESA DisplayHDR 400 rating, you can rest assured your HDR movies and shows will really pop off the screen. It’s not an OLED panel, so the blacks aren’t quite so inky, but as an IPS panel it has far better contrast than most VA panels. It comes with a range of useful ports for connecting different devices, including USB-C with up to 90W of power delivery, Gigabit Ethernet, DisplayPort and HDMI.
Best for: Playing the latest games with the prettiest picture quality.
Pros:
Super high refresh rates for fast, competitive play
Bright, colorful and rich thanks to OLED technology
Impressive audio support
Cons:
Expensive
Lacks DisplayPort 2.1
If you want the richest picture for gaming, you need to be gaming on an OLED. Though Samsung offers stiff competition with its QD-OLED panel technology, there's really no beating the sheer hear-turning, eye-grabbing picture quality of an LG OLED display. Its latest generation 32-inch OLED monitor features a crisp 4K resolution, with a super high refresh rate—up to 240 Hz at 4K, or 480 Hz at 1080p—helping you compete at the highest levels, no matter what you're playing. With a sub 1 ms response rate, too, you needn’t fear any ghosting in even the fastest games.
It has excellent color support, with up to 98.5% of the DCI-P3 professional color gamut, and with VESA DisplayHDR 400 support, it hits a high brightness when displaying HDR content. That makes it just as good for watching HDR movies and TV shows, too. It’s one of a few displays to support DTS Headphone:X for improved spatial audio, and it has support for both G-Sync and Freesync Premium Pro, so you needn't fear screen tearing ever again.
Best for: Working and playing on an affordable 4K display.
Pros:
Amazingly affordable
Excellent picture
Great color support
Cons:
Slow response time and refresh rate for gaming
For a long time any 4K monitor was expensive, and then good 4K monitors were expensive, but now you can get a great 4K monitor for barely $200, thanks to the excellent MSI Modern MD271UL. It’s a 60 Hz 4K monitor with slim bezels and impressive color support for such an affordable monitor. It supports 99% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, and up to 95% of the Adobe RGB gamut. Thanks to its IPS panel, its contrast is impressive for a non-OLED display, and it offers excellent viewing angles for collaboration.
It’s not as large as our other picks, but it still features lots of display space to enjoy the 4K resolution, and with a high pixel density 4K movies and TV shows look extra crisp. The 4 ms response time and 60 Hz refresh rate are perfectly adequate for casual gaming, though you might want something more capable if you take your gaming seriously. It has an attractive, small footprint stand and good connectivity, with the option of USB-C with up to 65W power delivery for charging devices like laptops and smartphones.
Best 4K Monitor For Creatives
As Accurate As It Gets
Asus
Asus ProArt OLED PA32DC 32-Inch
Size: 32-inch | Type: OLED | Resolution: 3,840 x 2,160 | Refresh rate: 60 Hz | Response time: 0.1 ms
Best for: Professional work that demands color accuracy.
Pros:
OLED panel delivers images with amazing contrast
Wide color-gamut support
Crisp, color accurate images
Cons:
Very expensive
Overkill for nonprofessionals
If you’re a creative professional, then color support and accuracy are at the top of your list of important features for a 4K monitor. The Asus ProArt PA32DC might be expensive, but it’s one of the best looking monitors out there, from both a viewer’s perspective, and by the numbers. It’s an OLED display, so you get that high contrast and vibrant colors as standard, but it’s impressively bright too, and its color support is top-tier. It is factory-calibrated for Delta E < 1 accuracy, which is better than almost any other high-end monitor you can buy. It also supports 99% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, which is a real boon to photo- and video-editing professionals; and it handles HLG, HDR10 and Dolby Vision HDR.
If you don’t like the factory calibration, however, there’s a built-in motorized colorimeter for calibrating it exactly to your tastes, ensuring you get the picture that you want, and need for your professional grade work. It has an impressive fast response time, making sure you get no pixel ghosting during fast movements, but that’s more of a concern for gaming. It’s expensive, but if you can make more money by using a great display, this is definitely one to consider.
If you want a 4K monitor that’s actually two 4K monitors stuck together, you’re in luck, because Samsung’s latest generation of (arguably ridiculous) the Odyssey G9 Neo is exactly that. At 57 inches diagonally, and with an ultrawide resolution of 7,680 x 2,160 you'll be hard-pressed to find a display that offers you more screen real estate to work with. Sure it’s expensive, and takes up a lot of space, but if you bought two 4K monitors with specs like this at a similar combined size and quality, it’s a great option financially. This one supports super high refresh rates, has incredible brightness from Mini-LED backlighting, a subtle, but immersive curvature and excellent connectivity.
It’s certified VESA DisplayHDR 1000, so you can enjoy eye-watering highlights in HDR movies and TV shows. With a 240 Hz refresh rate and low response time, it’s stellar for gaming. The aggressive 1000R curvature is very immersive, but does mean turning your head a little more to view each side of it. You’re also going to need a lot of desk space for this—or a very strong monitor arm—but if you can make enough room and stomach the four-figure price tag, there’s nothing quite like the latest G9.
Best 4K Monitor With HDR
The Latest Generation QD-OLED Is Something Special
QD-OLED display produces terrific contrast and rich colors
Fast refresh rate and response time
Impressive brightness
Cons:
Expensive
No DisplayPort 2.1 support
The Alienware AW3225QF 32-inch builds on the success of its predecessors; it’s is a strong contender for our best 4K monitor overall, and best for gaming—but its in HDR content this display really shines. Along with near-infinite contrast from its OLED technology, and impressive color support and accuracy (Delta E < 2 and 99% support of the DCI-P3 color gamut), it gets incredibly bright. It supports a maximum brightness of up to 1,000 nits in HDR mode, and with its support for 240 Hz refresh rates at 4K, it can make your games look incredibly smooth—and responsive, if you play competitively. This is well in excess of anything you’ll find on a living room TV and games console. It’s a true PC gaming advantage, but keep in mind that there’s no DisplayPort 2.1 support.
Still, you can connect consoles and Blu-Ray players alike to this display, with its HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4 connections. There’s eARC support if you have a fancy A/W system to hook it up to, and you get a strong selection of other ports too, including USB-C and USB-A. It’s also G-Sync and Freesync compatible, and supports both HDR10 and Dolby Vision for nuanced HDR in both gaming and movies.
Best for: Using with your Mac or MacBook for a 4K+ picture quality.
Pros:
5K resolution looks crisp and detailed
High brightness is great for HDR
Nano-texture glass option eliminates most glare
Cons:
Expensive
Reviews suggest the refresh rate and response time are slow
While the resolution on the Apple Studio Display is a little more than the rest of the displays on this list—it’s 5K, for context—it belongs in the same kind of category because it really is the best screen for the job, especially when you’re seeking that 4K-like display quality. It supports a high 600 nits brightness, making it excellent for enjoying HDR movies or TV shows, and it has a wide color gamut support. The default glass is a little reflective, but Apple does offer a “Nano-Texture glass” upgrade for a couple of hundred dollars extra, which may well be worth it if you work in a bright office with lots of potential reflections.
Like most of Apple’s modern devices, the connectivity on this monitor starts and stops with USB-C, but one of them does have Thunderbolt 3 support for high speed data transfers and high power delivery. It comes with a stand too, and a good one at that—which is something its more-expensive Pro Display XDR sibling can’t boast. It’s fully compatible with all of Apple’s Macs and MacBooks, and makes a great external display if you need a super high resolution screen to work on.
The Forbes Vetted tech team is well-versed in all things digital, having written hundreds of articles in the category, from the best monitors to the best ultrawide monitors and more.
A couple of staffers, including Dave Johnson, our executive editor, have even authored a number of books on the subject. The tech vertical is overseen by Rebecca Isaacs, the consumer tech and electronics editor at Forbes Vetted.
Jon Martindale, the writer of this story, is a regular Forbes Vetted tech contributor. He has bylines in digital publications including Digital Trends and US News & World Report and formerly ran his own PC hardware review website.
To find the best 4K monitors, we combined years of PC expertise and first-hand knowledge of a wide range of monitors.
Because everyone’s needs are different, we also sought opinions of our fellow tech writers here at Forbes, thoughts of colleagues throughout the industry and robust research.
We’ve have hands-on time with a range of high-end 4K monitors, and so we’re familiar with their build quality and features.
Additionally, we’ve performed extensive comparisons between third-party and user reviews to find the 4K monitors that everyone says are great; not just the professionals.
Follow me on Twitter. Check out my website or some of my other work here.
