The Best Budget Monitors
GTX 1660 Mega 33 Game Benchmark
Best Budget Monitors in 2020
ViewSonic VA2456-MHD
The best budget monitor
- The VA2456-MHD is an affordable and reasonably color-accurate monitor with great contrast that pairs well with any laptop or desktop. Its main flaw is a basic stand that only tilts the monitor up and down, but that’s typical of almost all inexpensive monitors.
- The 24-inch, 1080p ViewSonic VA2456-MHD has the best contrast ratio of any budget monitor we tested, with darker blacks that make for slightly better images in games, movies, or web browsing. This model’s color accuracy out of the box isn’t good enough for professional photo and video work, but it is good enough for anything else and better than that of many of the other models we tested. The VA2456-MHD has both HDMI and DisplayPort connections—most budget monitors have one or the other—a modern-looking design, and a stand that doesn’t wobble too much (though like most cheap monitors, it only tilts up and down). The built-in speakers aren’t great, but they’re fine for YouTube videos or your operating system’s bleeps and bloops, and ViewSonic backs the monitor with a three-year warranty and a decent replacement policy for panels with dead or stuck pixels.
- Acer CB242Y bir
A cheap monitor with a great stand - The CB242Y is the only monitor we found in this price range with a great stand that allows it to tilt, swivel, and pivot 90 degrees. But its display quality isn’t quite as good as that of the VA2456-MHD, and it doesn’t have a DisplayPort.
- If you don’t plan to get a monitor arm but still want to be able to adjust your monitor just right, the Acer CB242Y bir is a 24-inch 1080p monitor with a far better stand and a slightly worse screen than on the ViewSonic VA2456-MHD. This Acer monitor isn’t as color-accurate out of the box, and its contrast ratio isn’t as good—to the naked eye, its blacks aren’t as dark—but unless you’re viewing it side by side with another screen, looking at a test pattern, that isn’t a problem. It doesn’t include a DisplayPort (it has only HDMI), and it lacks internal speakers. But its stand is head and shoulders above all the other ones we tested, allowing for height adjustments as well as tilting, swiveling, and pivoting 90 degrees; most monitors in this price range can only tilt (and wobble). The CB242Y has a 75 Hz refresh rate, which makes scrolling and gaming look a bit smoother than on typical 60 Hz monitors, and it supports FreeSync, which helps to eliminate screen tearing and stuttering while you’re playing games. It comes with a three-year warranty, though Acer’s dead-pixel policy isn’t quite as good as ViewSonic’s.
Our pick: ViewSonic VA2456-MHD
The ViewSonic VA2456-MHD doesn’t have many extras, but it gets all the basics right. It’s a 24-inch 1080p monitor with an IPS screen that offers the best contrast ratio and most detailed blacks of any budget monitor we tested, plus great viewing angles and reasonably accurate color. It has HDMI, DisplayPort, and VGA ports, so you can connect just about any computer to it, and although the stand only tilts the monitor up and down a few degrees, it’s not too wobbly or cheap-feeling. And the monitor includes okay-sounding internal speakers and a three-year warranty.
The VA2456-MHD is one of the few budget monitors we tested to have both an HDMI port and a DisplayPort (in addition to the common but ancient analog VGA port). HDMI is more common in budget laptops and desktops and in stuff designed to connect to a TV, such as streaming boxes and game consoles; DisplayPort is found more often in high-end monitors and business laptops and desktops. Cables and adapters to connect HDMI to DisplayPort and vice versa are available, but it’s nice to have the flexibility that the VA2456-MHD offers and to be able to connect multiple things to the monitor at once.
A table showing the contrast ration, grayscale, ColorChecker, and Saturations of nine budget monitors tested for this review.
These are the most important numbers we look at when evaluating a screen’s accuracy and image quality. A contrast ratio of 1000:1 or above ensures that the monitor can display deep blacks and can differentiate between different shades of black. A grayscale score above 3.0 means shades of gray may have a visible color tint. ColorChecker and saturation scores above 3.0 mean that the colors displayed on screen may look visibly different when compared with a color-accurate reference image.
Color accuracy is not a strong suit for budget monitors, but the VA2456-MHD fared okay in our testing (as shown in the table above). We looked for grayscale, ColorChecker, and saturation values at or below 3.0—lower is better. Values of 2.0 or below indicate accurate color that looks right when compared with a reference image; the further above 3.0 you go, the more pronounced the inaccuracies are. The VA2456-MHD’s values mostly landed between 2.0 and 3.0, meaning that its color isn’t perfectly accurate but is good enough for casual photo and video editing and viewing. (Generally, its blues, greens, and other cool tones were a little more accurate, and its reds, oranges, and other warm tones were a little less so.) The VA2456-MHD’s contrast ratio of 1319:1 means that this model’s blacks look blacker than those on the other budget monitors we tested, but it’s not a night-and-day difference. A 1300:1 screen won’t make things visible that are impossible to see on a 1000:1 screen; it’ll simply make the stuff that’s visible a bit easier to discern when you’re watching a movie or playing a game.
ViewSonic’s three-year warranty is respectable for a low-priced monitor; it covers parts, labor, and the LCD backlight. ViewSonic will also replace the display under its LCD Pixel Performance Guarantee if the monitor has “three improperly operating pixels and no more than two bright or two dark pixels.” Some high-end monitors—such as the ones we recommend from HP and Dell—come with better dead-pixel policies under which the company will replace your monitor if it has even one bright pixel, but for the price, ViewSonic’s guarantee is fine.
The VA2456-MHD is good at everything it does—its flaws are mostly things it doesn’t do, all of them reasonable omissions for a budget monitor.
Like all the monitors we tested, the VA2456-MHD has VESA mounting holes on the back in case you want to replace its basic stand with a nice monitor arm. And its included internal speakers, while not as good as even basic USB speaker sets from Logitech and others, will be fine for YouTube, quiet music, and operating system noises.
Runner-up: Acer CB242Y bir
The screen on the Acer CB242Y bir isn’t as good as that of our top pick, the ViewSonic VA2456-MHD—its color isn’t as accurate, and its blacks can’t get as dark. But it’s the only budget monitor we tested with a great stand that can tilt, swivel from side to side, pivot for portrait-mode viewing, and adjust the screen’s height. And if you play games, the CB242Y has a 75 Hz refresh rate, up from the normal 60 Hz, and support for FreeSync. Both of those features can help make high-speed games look a bit better as long as you’re using an AMD or Nvidia graphics card that can run them well. The CB242Y is similar to the VA2456-MHD in price; it’s just good at different things.
Like the other monitors we tested, the CB242Y is a 24-inch 1080p monitor with an IPS display panel, which means good viewing angles and better color and contrast than you can get from cheaper TN monitors. It has one HDMI port and one VGA port; that’s an acceptable minimum, but you’ll need the right cables and adapters if your computer has any other kind of por
Upgrade pick: ViewSonic VX2485-MHU
For MacBooks and other USB-C laptops
It costs more than our other picks, but this is the cheapest monitor we found with a USB-C port that will charge most 13-inch laptops with no other cables or power adapters required.
ViewSonic VX2485-MHU
Spend more money, get more screen
This 27-inch 2560×1440 monitor can fit lots more information on the screen at once than a 24-inch 1080p monitor, but it’s more expensive and saddled with many of the same flaws that other budget monitors have.
Acer V277U bmiipx
A cheap monitor with a great stand
The CB242Y is the only monitor we found in this price range with a great stand that allows it to tilt, swivel, and pivot 90 degrees. But its display quality isn’t quite as good as that of the VA2456-MHD, and it doesn’t have a DisplayPort.
Acer CB242Y bir
Other good budget monitors
If our picks are out of stock or if none of them are quite what you’re looking for, we tested a few more budget monitors that we think most people will be happy with. They’re a step above the other models we mention in the Competition section.
The Asus VA24EHE has color accuracy comparable to that of our top pick, the ViewSonic VA2456-MHD, as well as a tilt-only stand that doesn’t wobble and all the other features we look for in a budget monitor. It also offers a 75 Hz refresh rate and FreeSync support, though unlike the VA2456-MHD it doesn’t have a DisplayPort, and its 1042:1 contrast ratio isn’t as good. If you can find it around its typical price of $110, it’s an excellent buy, but as of this writing it’s widely out of stock at most major retailers, and it’s selling for considerably more than that at other places.
Acer’s EK240Y Abi also costs around $110, usually, and its color accuracy was surprisingly good when we used the sRGB color preset (its DeltaE values were all close to or under 3.0). It’s a 24-inch 1080p IPS screen with an HDMI port and a VGA port, so it meets (but doesn’t exceed) our bare-minimum requirements. But its plastic stand was the wobbliest of anything we tested, and we didn’t love its proprietary “wall wart” external power brick or its shortish 6-foot cable. Its main issue, though, is that it’s hard to find—as of this writing, it’s available only from TigerDirect, not better-known retailers like Amazon, Newegg, Best Buy, or B&H. When it’s easier to find and to buy, it might be easier to recommend.
Compared with our top pick, the VA2456-MHD, the ViewSonic VA2459-SMH falls short because it doesn’t offer DisplayPort, it looks and feels a bit cheaper, its stand is wobblier, and its color isn’t quite as accurate. All of that said, it’s still a nice-looking monitor that checks all the most important boxes, and it has the same okay-for-basic-use speakers as the other ViewSonic models we recommend. It’s usually cheaper than the VA2456-MHD, but not by much.
It’s toward the top of our price range, but HP’s P244 is a competent all-around monitor from a well-known company, with better-than-average build quality for a budget monitor and exceptionally good color. Its Multimedia color preset gave us DeltaE scores of 2.0 or below, good enough for professional production work and better than the scores we saw from anything else we tested. It also has HDMI, DisplayPort, and VGA ports, plus a nice, stable stand. That’s all spoiled somewhat by its lack of extra features—other monitors toward the top of our price limit usually offer a better stand, higher refresh rates, FreeSync, or internal speakers, but the P244 doesn’t have any of those. Its contrast ratio was also lower than that of anything else we tested, meaning blacks don’t look as black on the P244 as they do on the other monitors in this guide (we measured its contrast ratio at 870:1, while most other models we tested were around 1000:1 and our top pick, the VA2456-MHD, was 1319:1).
