The 4 Best Mini LED Monitors - Summer 2024

The best Mini LED monitor we've tested is the Samsung Odyssey Neo G8 S32BG85. It's a premium 32-inch, 4k monitor that's great for a variety of uses, whether you want to sit back and watch your favorite content or want something for gaming. Its Mini LED backlighting has 1,196 dimming zones, more than most monitors, but the number of zones doesn't guarantee good performance either. Regardless, it has a decent local dimming feature that helps deepen blacks and makes highlights pop against the rest of the image, but really small highlights are muted, and it has black crush. Still, it has great picture quality and displays a wide range of colors for a vivid HDR experience.

In terms of gaming, it has a fast response time for sharp motion, but there's some ghosting. It also offers a high 240Hz refresh rate that's great even for competitive gamers, although you'll need a powerful graphics card to take advantage of it at its native 4k resolution. Besides that, it has HDMI 2.1 bandwidth, and there aren't any compatibility issues with the Xbox Series X|S and PS5.

If you find the Samsung Odyssey Neo G8 S32BG85 out of your price range, check out the lower-end Samsung Odyssey Neo G7 S32BG75. It's very similar to the Neo G8 in picture quality because it features the same Mini LED backlighting with 1,196 zones, and the local dimming performance is the same. This means that blacks are deep, and highlights also pop. It's even a great choice if you want to use it in a well-lit room because it gets bright enough to fight glare, but one difference with the Neo G8 is that it has a different screen coating with worse reflection handling, so it isn't ideal to place opposite a bright window.

Another difference from the Neo G8 is that it has a lower 165Hz refresh rate, which is the trade-off you must make to get something cheaper. This only matters if you want to play PC games at high refresh rates. Otherwise, the Neo G7 is still a great choice. It has the same HDMI 2.1 bandwidth to take full advantage of consoles, and besides some ghosting, motion looks sharp.

Although you can likely find the Samsung Odyssey Neo G7 S32BG75 on sale for a low price, the Acer Nitro XV275K P3biipruzx tends to cost less, especially when it's on sale. It's different in a few ways from the Samsung because it has a smaller screen, but with the same 4k resolution, images still look sharp. It also has a lower native contrast ratio, but its local dimming feature does enough to compensate for that, as it displays deep blacks. Even though it has 576 dimming zones, which is less than the Samsung, it still provides great picture quality with local dimming enabled, and there isn't much blooming either.

This monitor actually gets much brighter than the Samsung, so highlights truly stand out. It's also a great choice if you want to use it in a well-lit room. It has a similar 160Hz refresh rate to the Samsung, but motion looks better as there's less smearing. While it works well with the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, it has increased input lag with 60Hz signals, which is disappointing, especially for playing games at a fixed 60Hz refresh rate.

Mini LED monitors like the AOC Q27G3XMN are becoming more accessible at budget-friendly prices. The main trade-off is that it has a lower 1440p resolution than the Acer Nitro XV275K P3biipruzx, so images are less detailed. On top of that, it has fewer features, as it lacks HDMI 2.1 bandwidth to take full advantage of gaming consoles, and it doesn't have a USB hub like the Acer, but that only makes a difference if you want something for productivity, too. That said, if you're after pure picture quality, this monitor punches above its weight as it features a good local dimming feature, even better than the monitors mentioned above, despite having 336 dimming zones. It displays deep blacks with very bright highlights, but there's some blooming around bright objects.

It has a slightly higher 180Hz refresh rate than the Acer. However, although it has a fast overall response time, there's some smearing with fast-moving objects; this could get distracting. One thing to note is that this monitor sometimes goes out of stock and is hard to find, so if that's the case, the Acer Nitro XV275U P3biipx is a good alternative with similar picture quality but worse motion handling.