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Conclusion

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.

Pixio PX259 Prime — (Image credit: Pixio)

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.

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Christian Eberle is a Contributing Editor for Tom's Hardware US. He's a veteran reviewer of A/V equipment, specializing in monitors. Christian began his obsession with tech when he built his first PC in 1991, a 286 running DOS 3.0 at a blazing 12MHz. In 2006, he undertook training from the Imaging Science Foundation in video calibration and testing and thus started a passion for precise imaging that persists to this day. He is also a professional musician with a degree from the New England Conservatory as a classical bassoonist which he used to good effect as a performer with the West Point Army Band from 1987 to 2013. He enjoys watching movies and listening to high-end audio in his custom-built home theater and can be seen riding trails near his home on a race-ready ICE VTX recumbent trike. Christian enjoys the endless summer in Florida where he lives with his wife and Chihuahua and plays with orchestras around the state.

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