Hey, you there. How many pixels currently make up these words on your screen? If it’s anything less than 8,294,400 (that is, 3840 x 2160), you’re having a basically neolithic experience: Outmoded, outdated, so old-school they’re teaching in Latin.
Or at least, that’s what all the whizzbang tech ads tell me, anyhow. To tell you the truth, I’m actually writing this on a 1440p monitor, but I gotta tell ya: I’m pretty tempted by this Prime Day deal on a 28-inch Gigabyte M28U over at Newegg, which is not Amazon, but I guess words don’t mean anything anymore.
It’s one of PC Gamer’s best gaming monitors, and for a mere $400 (that’s $200 off its usual price), you can pick up a monitor our own Jacob Ridley scored an impressive 86% in our Gigabyte M28U review, praising it for its beaut of a screen for “exceptional colour depth and clarity,” and black and white levels that mean “even the slightest dip in contrast” is easy to spot. It’s sharp and colourful, in other words, in ways that are very impressive for a non-OLED screen.
It’s also butter-smooth. The M28U boasts a 144Hz refresh rate as well as a 4K resolution for those with the graphics beef to drive both at the same time in demanding games. I have to say it’s worth it. Whenever I’ve played games at 4K and 144 frames per second, it’s felt like a borderline religious experience.
Still, even if you can’t quite push that many frames at that resolution, the screen still looks great, and it’ll be nice to have whenever you get around to upgrading your GPU. Plus you can have loads of fun just seeing how smoothly your cursor glides around your desktop. You won’t even need videogames.
- We’re curating the best Prime Day PC gaming deals right here.
That’s not to say it’s all perfect, of course. For one thing, you might do well to pick up a decent monitor arm alongside the M28U if you don’t have one already. The screen’s great, but the stand it comes with looks a little cheap. In our review, we noted that the pads on its underside came away after just a little movement, risking the stability of the screen on a desk. It also comes with a speed overdrive setting to jack up response times, but it is—if anything—a tad overenthusiastic, sometimes sacrificing picture quality for speed. Our advice? Switch it off and stick with Smart OD.
But those are both minor, and very avoidable, trifles. Overall, the M28U is a banger of a screen at a banger of a price, and you could do much worse with your money this Prime Day than picking one up.
