7 best computer monitors for entertainment, gaming and working from home

Best: For working from home

• Weight: 8.65 kg
• Video inputs: HDMI, USB 3.0 hub
• USB ports: 2 x USB 3.0 downstream, 1 USB-C
• Panel size: 27 inches
• Size: 27 inches
• Aspect ratio: 16:9

Elegant, convenient and beautifully sharp, this is our favourite monitor for home working. We found it a joy to set up and use, with the eight default picture modes catering excellently for a range of uses, from gaming to writing this very review.

The ergonomic stand of the 27QN880 is a bit of a marvel. Once safely clamped onto your desk, it enables you to swivel, extend, retract, pivot or tilt the screen, pretty much as you please. This makes it remarkably easy to position the monitor on your desk, where other screens of the same size might take up too much space.

Best: 4K monitor under £500

• Weight:7 kg
• Video inputs: HDMI, DisplayPort
• USB ports: -
• Panel size: 27 inches
• Size: 27 inches
• Aspect ratio:16:9

Beautiful, crystal clear viewing is the order of the day with this powerful monitor. It is an aesthete’s dream, combining 4k Ultra HD resolution with a chic silver design that’s distinctly snazzier than the average monitor.

One minor downside is that assembling it can be a little fiddly. The screws used to put the stand together with the screen doesn’t fit into place quite as easily as we’d have liked. However, this minor inconvenience will soon be forgotten, once you’ve hooked up your computer or console and feasted your eyes on the phenomenal screen.

Best: Budget monitor

• Weight: 3.84 kg
• Video inputs: HDMI
• USB ports: -
• Panel size: 23.6 inches
• Size: 23.6 inches
• Aspect ratio:16:9

This is the best affordable monitor we’ve tested, offering excellent performance and quality at a very fair price. The edge-to-edge design of the screen is particularly slick, placing whatever’s on-screen firmly in the spotlight. Its stand feels robust and nicely finished, well beyond our expectations.

A particularly interesting feature of this monitor is its “brightness intelligence technology”, which dims excessively bright areas of the screen whilst boosting the visibility of dark areas. In our testing, this clever tech delivered a wonderfully watchable viewing experience, combining comfort and clarity.

Best: Gaming monitor

The Dell ultrasharp QHD monitor is simply glorious to view media with. This should come as little surprise given the monitor’s spec sheet. 1080p resolution, “comfortview” blue light reduction and top-drawer colour calibrations are just a few of the many strings to the U2719D’s bow.

In terms of design, this monitor is eminently practical, from the capability to stow away dangling cables using its cable management system, to the solid, straightforward style of the stand and screen. If we’re going to split hairs, we’d say the headphone jack could do to be slightly easier to locate. It’s quite hard to get to it behind the monitor stand, and you’ll need it to hear the audio from your connected device.

Best: Portable monitor

• Weight: 2.8 kg
• Video inputs: HDMI, VGA
• USB ports: -
• Panel size: 21.5 inches
• Size: 21.5 inches
• Aspect ratio: 16:9

This screen gives you HD resolution in a remarkably affordable package. The monitor’s brushed finish and pleasingly simple design give it an appearance that’s a cut above most of its peers.

At 21.5in,  it is a suitable size to work within a fairly compact space. If you want to use the monitor for gaming or watching films, you may want to find something a little larger.

Interestingly, this monitor can be wall mounted – a capability that opens up the potential to save lots of space on your desk.

Best: Curved monitor

• Weight: 5.9 kg
• Video inputs: -
• USB ports: -
• Panel size: 32”
• Size: 32”
• Aspect ratio: -

Here’s a monitor so immersive, you can pretty well live inside it. The curved, 32in screen looks cinematic, and it does indeed lend itself well to viewing films. But that flamboyant curvature can be beneficial in day-to-day office use, too. A curved screen can help the user take in all the information on a wide screen more easily than they could if the screen were flat – a claim we found to be accurate during our testing.

Curved screen aside, this is a fairly simple and effective HD monitor. One minor downside is that it is not especially connectable, with only HDMI, VGA and headphone inputs/outputs to play with.

Best: 1080p monitor

This natty Philips monitor stands out from the crowd, with a smart, angular design and attractive brushed finish.

Of course, what really matters is what’s on screen – and in this monitor’s case, that’s something rather impressive. It uses an ultra-wide colour spectrum to deliver especially vivid images. From screensavers to streaming videos, this can make for excellent viewing.

One group of users to whom this monitor comes especially highly recommended is casual gamers. It represents a great compromise between the needs of home office use – a neat footprint, a restrained design – with impressive specs such as a response time of four milliseconds.