Best Prime Day Monitor Deals Still Available From Samsung, LG, Acer And More
Best Prime Day monitor deals still available from Samsung, LG, Acer and more
This story is part of Amazon Prime Day, CNET's guide to everything you need to know and how to find the best deals.
Editors' note, June 23: Prime Day has officially ended at Amazon, and with it all of the monitor deals worth highlighting. You can hop over to our recommendations for monitors under $200 instead, and Walmart's sale continues throughout Wednesday. Also, check out the best Prime Day deals still available, and some other favorite Prime Day deals that are hanging on.
The original story follows.
There are some surprisingly big price drops on monitors at Amazon this Prime Day, with a ton of models hitting all-time low prices from favorite brands such as Samsung, LG, Acer and others. That makes Prime Day a great time to pick up some bargains. You may also be able to find some really good prices from around the web even if they're not part of much-hyped sales events, including Target's Deal Days, Walmart's Deals for Days or Best Buy's Bigger Deal.
But, as always with monitors, you have to be careful. Some of the low prices are from manufacturers seeking to clear the channel of old models so that they can bring brand new ones to market in time for your Black Friday shopping pleasure. And yes, over the past couple of days I've gotten notifications from manufacturers about forthcoming replacements for a lot of the priced-to-sell models. If you're not picky and the price means the difference between springing for 4K or settling for 2,560x1,440 pixels (aka 1440p or QHD), then by all means -- go for the oldster.
Reading the customer reviews can also be tricky, especially if you don't know enough to tell the sense from the nonsense. You hear lots of cautionary tales about fake reviews, but those are easy to discount. It's harder to figure out which of the complaints are valid, which of the valid problems will affect you and which are worth living with for the significant discount.
Read more: How to buy a monitor
I've tried to filter out the models that don't seem like great deals to me, whether it's because the price is still high for the feature set or because the reviews throw red flags in my face. If you want to see Amazon's entire selection of monitor deals, check out its lists of Laptop, Desktops, Monitors and Tablet deals; Gaming Desktops, Laptops and Monitors deals; and savings on Handpicked Laptops, Desktops and Monitors.
Unless otherwise noted, these are live now and run through 11:59 p.m. PT June 22 (2:59 a.m. ET June 23). I'll update the list over the course of the Prime Day sale -- and with any good or better deals I find elsewhere.
You can find some 27-inch 4K monitors for a lot less today, but it's a minefield. I've liked the BenQ displays in this line -- I tested the dirt-cheap FHD version -- and a lot of what I liked there carries over here, including the better-than-average 5-watt stereo speakers. Don't expect real HDR: Its HDRi technology just simulates HDR the best it can given the small sRGB gamut and low brightness. It isn't awful, but BenQ deserves the complaints it gets for advertising it as such. This one's at the lowest price I've seen.
If you're looking to go big on the cheap, this Samsung is priced right at its all-time low of $480 and doesn't skimp on the resolution -- a lot of cheap models are only 2,560x1,440 rather than 3,440. If you ignore the "HDR10" spec, which just means it knows how to decode HDR video, not that it can display it at anything remotely like HDR quality (a common misleading monitor marketing tactic) and don't expect IPS-quality color saturation and viewing angle (it's a VA panel), you'll be happy for the extra screen real estate for working. It's not a gaming monitor -- it's part Samsung's business line, which has led to disappointment from gamers -- and includes a LAN connection, USB hub and the ability to output 90 watts for laptop charging.
I don't normally recommend a curved display for 27 inches (the curve is frequently more of an annoyance than a benefit on monitors smaller than 32 inches), but if you want to surround yourself with two or three for gaming the curve makes sense, especially with this model's "zero frame" design. This model also has a gaming-friendly 240Hz refresh rate, and at its all-time-low price of $250 you may be able to afford to surround yourself with them. It's got a VA panel rather than IPS, though, so it may not be the perfect choice if you're picky about off-angle viewing and sensitive to ghosting.
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