Gaming monitors are a lot like sports cars. Some deliver amazing performance and a lot of features and cost a lot of money. But a few well-engineered models can give you a lot of that thrill for a much lower price. The Pixio PX259 Prime is in that second category, as are the other Pixio monitors we’ve reviewed. If you’re willing to sacrifice some bells and whistles, you can enjoy smooth gameplay and instant response while saving money to put elsewhere in your system.
For the absolute ultimate in high frame rates and low input lag, a 360 Hz monitor can put up some impressive numbers. But at 280 Hz, you can get a very similar experience. The PX259 Prime aced our response and lag tests with a 4ms draw time and just 20ms of total lag. That’s just 3ms slower than the fastest monitors we’ve tested. If you want those 3ms, it’ll cost you another $300.
The PX259 Prime delivers decent image quality. Our only complaint was light gamma tracking. Though color is nicely saturated, it looks slightly washed out next to monitors with higher contrast. And HDR performance was merely average. With no dynamic feature, it doesn’t change the look much. We did notice a small improvement in Doom Eternal when switching to HDR mode, but Call of Duty :WWII looked the same.
But no matter what game we played, the experience was excellent. The PX259 Prime has a superb overdrive that delivers perfect motion resolution at high frame rates.
You can spend a lot more money to get a tiny bit more performance. But for gamers wanting to put their money into other parts of their systems, the Pixio PX259 Prime is a great choice.