Attention gamers and other PC enthusiasts on a tight budget. You may want to point your browsers toward Amazon for one of the best tech deals on a 24-inch gaming monitor. This 24-inch IPS display is selling for just $149, which is $50 off its recommended retail price and its lowest price yet.
Highlights begin with IPS, which bodes well for color accuracy and viewing angles. The BenQ EW2480 also sports a 75 Hz refresh for a slight advantage over mainstream 60 Hz monitors, plus AMD FreeSync adaptive refresh. Both features will help smooth out the gaming experience compared to more mainstream monitors running at 60 Hz and lacking frame-syncing technology.
The 1080p resolution isn't very exciting in this age of 1440p and 4K gaming monitors. But if you're on a budget and have gaming in mind you may not relish the investment required, in graphics cards terms, that pumping all those pixels implies. Smooth 1080p performance is within the grasp of more affordable graphics chipsets, such as Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1660.
The BenQ EW2480 can also play HDR content and uses BenQ's HDRi technology. This won't be the best HDR monitor, as it doesn't have local dimming, and the the EW2480 isn't a wide-gamut display, so don't expect a dramatic improvement over an SDR monitor. But HDRi looks to boost HDR content by improving contrast and color. Although, when we went hands-on with BenQ's EX2780Q, which also uses HDRi, we didn't prefer the feature.
The BenQ EW2480 is rated at 1000:1 for contrast, tops out at 250 nits brightness, supports 8-bit per channel color and offers two HDMI 2.0 inputs. It also features a pair of 5W stereo speakers, which will get you by in a pinch, plus industrial design that belies its budget positioning. It may be cheap, nut it doesn't look cheap.