LG UltraGear 32GK850F 32 " black

144Hz refresh rate and WQHD resolution

The gaming monitor market has seen an unprecedented revival in the last year and a half. If earlier manufacturers conventionally divided their models into “simple and affordable” or “gaming and expensive”, now this boundary is being erased, and the $400 mark has become a conditional watershed. Just below it lives a bunch of interesting monitors with a large diagonal (27 – 32), high refresh rate (144 Hz and higher), and WQHD resolution. Well, everything above this mark is already an overpayment for bells and whistles.

HDR, AMD FreeSync 2 and 4 port USB hub

In the case of the LG 32GK850F, which costs a little more than $400, this overpayment is small, but bells and whistles. Perhaps the most important is HDR support. For a gaming monitor of this size, this is a big plus, as the extended HDR colour range allows you to display overexposed parts of the image with more contrast, and darkened parts of the image a little lighter. All this makes the picture richer and more detailed. However the implementation of HDR here is the simplest, so you should not expect a riot of colours as in a monitor advertisement. Next on the list of goodies is a 3-port USB hub that allows you to quickly connect a mouse, keyboard or gaming headset. In addition to them, support for AMD FreeSync 2 frame synchronization and several purely gaming chips are announced that allow you to display a sight on the screen, highlight excessively dark areas, or turn on dynamic motion synchronization mode to help you aim better.

Serious competition

If we remove all this, then we get just a high-quality gaming matrix with excellent colour reproduction, a refresh rate of 144 Hz, a response speed of 5 ms and, in general, a rather juicy and eye-pleasing picture. Of the minuses, only the stand catches the eye, which, on the one hand, allows you to adjust the height, angle of inclination and rotation, and on the other, it looks flimsy and unreliable for such a massive model.

Considering all this, the direct competitors of the model from LG will be other popular frameless models from AOC and Samsung. The first has a matrix of a similar level, but no bells and whistles at all and the usual Full HD resolution. Price lower by $100. The monitor from Samsung has everything the same, but without HDR, a USB hub and a flexible stand. The price difference is more modest, about $40. The question here is who needs what. All three options are excellent.