The 4 Best Monitors Under $500 - Spring 2025

The best monitor we've tested that you can get for around $500 is the Acer Nitro XV275K P3biipruzx. It often goes on sale, so it's worth getting when it drops in price close to $500. It offers many more features and better performance than other monitors in this price range. The main advantage is that it has Mini LED backlighting, which helps provide a decent local dimming feature that makes blacks look deep in dark rooms. This is great if you want to sit back and watch videos with good picture quality, and it also delivers a ton of details thanks to its 4k resolution.

It has features for various uses, which is great if you want something for work during the day and gaming at night. One of those perks is its USB-C port, which supports 90W of power delivery and DisplayPort Alt Mode, so you can easily connect a laptop and charge it at the same time. It's also good for gaming, as it has a fast response time and HDMI 2.1 bandwidth to take full advantage of gaming consoles.

While the Acer Nitro XV275K P3biipruzx is great for gaming, if you want the best gaming monitor for under $500 and don't need the most versatile option for other uses, check out the AOC Q27G3XMN. While it costs a lot less than $500, it provides great value, making it a better choice than higher-end and more costly monitors that perform worse. The main advantage of it versus the rest of the market is that it has Mini LED backlighting, similar to the Acer, meaning it delivers good picture quality with deep blacks and bright highlights. It also has a high native contrast ratio with good black levels, even if you don't use the local dimming feature.

It has a fast response time, but there's smearing with fast-moving objects. You can also overclock its 165Hz native refresh rate to 180Hz for a slightly smoother feel. Its 1440p resolution isn't as detailed as the 4k display on the Acer, but it's still good enough for most gamers. It also downscales 4k @ 60Hz signals on consoles, which are slightly more detailed than native 1440p signals. 

If you're looking for a more simple entry-level gaming monitor and you don't want the Mini LED backlighting of the AOC Q27G3XMN, you can save some money by looking into the Dell Alienware, which you can get for cheap directly from Dell's website. It has worse picture quality than the AOC, as blacks look gray against bright objects, and highlights don't pop in HDR, so it's a bad choice for HDR gaming. That said, you have to expect this from an entry-level display.

Besides that, it offers sharp motion handling that's consistent over its refresh rate range, and it's better than other entry-level displays for this. This means that fast-moving objects look sharp, and it supports all common VRR formats to reduce screen tearing. Besides that, it's a good choice for gaming in a bright room as it gets bright enough to fight glare and has good reflection handling.

If you aren't a gamer and don't need any of the gaming features of the monitors mentioned above, there are a few work-focused monitors you can get for under $500. The best 4k monitor under $500 for work is the ASUS ProArt Display PA279CRV. While it has the same resolution as the Acer Nitro XV275K P3biipruzx, which is also great for work, the ASUS has a few extra productivity perks. Firstly, it has a bigger USB hub with three USB-A ports and two USB-C ports, so it's easy to connect various devices. One of the USB-C ports supports DisplayPort Alt Mode with 90W of power delivery, which is enough to charge most laptops while you're using them.

This monitor is also a great choice for content creators, as it has different picture modes meant for various color spaces, from the basic sRGB color space to the wider Rec. 2020 space. It's also very accurate in the sRGB color space, so you won't need to calibrate it unless you need perfectly accurate colors.