The Digit Zero1 Awards recognizes and awards the best performing products of the year
Products are evaluated on basis of objective and scientific test processes
These are the winners for the Best Gaming Monitors for 2021
What's the point of getting a high-end PC with a powerful CPU and graphics card, if you're not going to pair it with a good monitor? With graphics cards as well as CPUs becoming increasingly overpowered, display manufacturers can build monitors with higher refresh rates than ever before. However, this year, we've seen a more holistic approach as gaming monitors have started incorporating system latency measuring capabilities to help gamers better optimise their gaming experience. Panels have started improving, HDR is present in most monitors north of Rs 30K and refresh rates have gotten even higher. And this year's Zero1 Award winner is a great example of this combination. We’ve got to the point that merely ramping up the refresh rate no longer makes sense. Video game developers don’t make video games to scale beyond 300 FPS and there are hard limits placed to prevent an overflow situation. However, there have also been technologies that have managed to pull down frame rates because they’re compute heavy. We’re looking at you, ray-tracing. What’s also becoming apparent is that video game graphics are increasingly becoming life-like and thus, the need for high fidelity panels has become ever more important. In fact, all the monitors we received this year had IPS panels. Next year is going to be even more exciting.
Winner: ASUS ROG Swift 360Hz PG259QNR (Price – ₹73,499)
Up until last year, we had to pick between a high refresh panel or a panel with high colour accuracy. Getting the two together wasn’t an easy task. This year, that changed with the Zero1 Award winner. Now, the choice is between getting a high refresh-rate coupled with colour accuracy against resolution. Mainstream gaming is still on 1080p, at least that’s what the Steam Hardware survey says with a whopping 67 per cent. However, 1440p is slowly becoming popular. Most of our candidates were 1440p panels and hopefully, we should see a 1440p 360 Hz next year. The ASUS ROG Swift PG259QNR is a 360 Hz gaming monitor with NVIDIA G-Sync and NVIDIA REFLEX. It uses an IPS panel with HDR10 support and has great ergonomics which is bound to make the monitor very appealing to gamers. And the 360 Hz refresh rate makes it attractive for eSports professionals as well. And when it comes to colour, the PG259QNR is very colour accurate with a colour delta of less than 0.5. This is the monitor that a professional FPS eSports athlete would want.
Runner-Up: Acer Predator XB323U (Price – ₹61,299)
This year’s first runner up is the Acer Predator XB323U which is a QHD 165 Hz monitor with support for VESA HDR600. In terms of colour accuracy, the XB323U is not far behind the winner and a larger 32-inch makes the monitor ideal for not only PC gaming but also for folks who’d like to play from a little farther away. The native refresh rate is 144 Hz but it comes overclocked to 170 Hz right off the factory floor. It supports FreeSync as well as G-SYNC so it doesn’t matter which GPU you have, you can utilise the variable refresh rate tech without worry. Being a VESA HDR600 monitor also makes the Acer Predator XB323U ideal for HDR gaming during the day as well as during night time. Overall, it’s a great gaming monitor for enthusiasts.
Best Buy: BenQ MOBIUZ EX2710Q (Price – ₹35,990)
BenQ’s portfolio always reflects what gamers want. They tend to have a wide variety of monitors or peripherals with just one or two aspects being different. Take for example the MOBIUZ monitors. If you want a curved screen then there’s the EX2710R and if you want a flat panel, then there’s the EX2710Q. With gaming mice, they’ll have multiple models which only vary in terms of the grip style while the internals remain the same. It’s that ergonomics-first approach that makes their product portfolio more appealing. And you get all that without breaking the bank. This year’s Best Buy, the EX2710Q is also a 27-inch 1440p IPS monitor with VESA HDR400 and also includes several features within the OSD menu that can be triggered to improve the overall gaming experience.
ABOUT THE DIGIT ZERO1 AWARDS
With a legacy of 20 years, the Digit Zero1 Awards is recognized as the Industry’s only performance-based awards. Digit rewards brands for putting in years of research in developing and introducing performance-driven products for their audience. All products are made to pass through a rigorous and scientific test process and compete with competitor brands in the same category. The Winner in each category is announced on the basis of their total score, post complete performance analysis done across an average of 56 tests, conducted for every category, across key performance parameters. The test process for the Zero1 Awards does not consider scores for features, price or design. The aim is to identify the very best products that money can buy, celebrate the innovations that push the industry forward, and reward the products that dare to disrupt the market.
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Mithun Mohandas
Mithun Mohandas is an Indian technology journalist with 10 years of experience covering consumer technology. He is currently employed at Digit in the capacity of a Managing Editor. Mithun has a background in Computer Engineering and was an active member of the IEEE during his college days. He has a penchant for digging deep into unravelling what makes a device tick. If there's a transistor in it, Mithun's probably going to rip it apart till he finds it. At Digit, he covers processors, graphics cards, storage media, displays and networking devices aside from anything developer related. As an avid PC gamer, he prefers RTS and FPS titles, and can be quite competitive in a race to the finish line. He only gets consoles for the exclusives. He can be seen playing Valorant, World of Tanks, HITMAN and the occasional Age of Empires or being the voice behind hundreds of Digit videos. View Full Profile
