Why I upgraded to a 4K OLED PC gaming monitor

4 hours ago 3

4K OLED PC monitors have been out for years, but while some enthusiasts have made the move to OLED tech, some haven’t. Like any new technology, when the first OLED gaming monitor was released - the Alienware AW3423DW - it was expensive, with a launch price of $1,300, and it was price-prohibitive for an overwhelming majority of users. But compared to other PC gaming monitors (think VA and IPS-type panels), it was a Thanksgiving feast for the eyes. The LG UltraGear 32GS95UE, widely considered one of the first 4K OLEDs for gaming, was $1,400.

I eventually settled on the MSI MPG 321URX, which is currently $634 and, without a doubt, it's the best upgrade I’ve made to my system in a long time. There are a lot more affordable options available now, too: Models like the ASRock Phantom Gaming (PG032UFS) dual-mode 4K gaming monitor is on sale for $596, while the MSI 321UPX (similar to mine, but calibrated out of the factory) is $799. A year or so ago, the MSI was around $950, and the ASRock was over $1,000 in late 2025. So while sub-$700 is still a lot of money, prices have come down quite a bit on some quality panels. And while those offer the full-fat 4K resolution, there are even more affordable options if you're willing to step back to 1440p, like the Acer Predator X27U, for under $300.

I remember seeing them at CES and later walking past them in stores. The blacks were as black as could be, and the colors more vibrant than IPS panels. I recall thinking: "I have to have one." Then I looked at the price and walked away. Eventually, prices came down, and I upgraded, donating the 1440p IPS 165Hz panel to my kids, and I’ve been on a 4K OLED ever since. This article explains why I upgraded and offers advice on whether you should or shouldn't.

My journey to a 4K OLED started after seeing them at CES a few years ago, and more recently in stores. Seeing the deepest blacks and incredible colors was a sight to behold compared to my previous 27-inch 2560x1440 165Hz Acer Predator IPS panel, which many would consider a very good, fast IPS panel.

I worked on two 2560x1440 panels at my desk. On the left panel, I usually had video streaming, be it Hulu/news or Twitch, on one half of the monitor along with Chrome and several tabs ranging from personal email to a ‘scratch pad’ for work. On the right monitor, I had my ‘work Chrome’ on the right half (along with Slack), and I used the left area as free space to write articles in another Chrome tab and access File Explorer and other applications necessary for my job. This worked, but I quickly realized that I needed more screen real estate. I needed a higher resolution to fit more on the screen and a larger size so my old eyes could actually see what’s on the screen.

But I’m also a gamer at night. Generally, I'm an FPS (First-Person Shooter) guy playing titles like PUBG, Call of Duty, Battlefield 6, and more. Because I mostly play quick-twitch games, I need a high-refresh-rate monitor. Since I was already rocking 165Hz, the next natural upgrade for significantly higher refresh rates and lower display-related input lag was 240Hz. Sure, 180Hz variants are available, but I want a significant upgrade for something I will likely keep until it dies and cannot be replaced.

In the end, I upgraded to a 32-inch 4K OLED in early 2025 before RAM, video cards, and storage prices went nuts. The MSI MPG 321URX was $900 at the time (currently $634) and, without a doubt, the best upgrade I’ve made to my system in a long time. While I spent a pretty penny, not only was I able to get more screen real estate, both physically and in pixel count, but I also got true blacks and better color coverage (99% DCI-P3, 137% sRGB, aRGB 96%) than my IPS panel.

I also wanted to keep pixel density (Pixels Per Inch or PPI) the same or better. And if you do the math, the 27-inch 2560x1440 panel is about 109 PPI and, at least for my old eyes, I can’t see the pixels the way you could with, say, a 27-inch 1920x1080p monitor at a low 81 PPI. If we work out the 4K math on a 32-inch panel, that comes out to almost 138 PPI and even more dense than the 27-inch 1440p monitor.

Watching movies or videos in native 4K without scaling was an incredible experience. Seeing all the details and such bright, vibrant colors was such a drastic difference; I’m not sure I can ever go back. It also makes me thankful I’m not missing out in my living room, where it’s 90% movies and TV shows and around 10% console gaming (Xbox) and running an OLED TV (65” LG C4). The difference between these OLEDs and the 45” LCD TV in my bedroom is dramatic.

The refresh-rate bump was also game-changing. I'm lucky enough to have a

GeForce RTX 5090

, which is practically a necessity to drive a 240Hz high-refresh-rate OLED monitor and achieve frame rates well over 165 and close to the monitor's maximum refresh rate of 240 Hz. In some heavier titles, like Call of Duty, I need to enable DLSS to help reach that, or better, close to, that threshold, but it’s easier today with the

RTX 5080

and, in some titles, the

RTX 5070 Ti

to reach higher frame rates than it was in the previous generations. Nvidia’s DLSS and MFG (Multi-Frame Generation) and AMD’s FSR have both come a long way (with Nvidia’s implementation being arguably better), so don’t be afraid to use them if needed.

The short answer: 4K UHD (3840x2160) gives you sharper pictures and more usable space. Whether you're playing games, watching movies, doing photo/video editing, or working in the office, you can now run multiple windows across the 3840-pixel width, and the higher PPI makes text look better (printed rather than rendered); finer details in pictures, games, and video are more visible. Streaming services also support 4K or 1080p, so you can avoid scaling and view content natively compared to a 2560x1440.

It’s also much easier to run today than it was a year or two ago. DLSS, FSR, MFG, and other upscalers let mid- to high-end video cards produce good frame rates at 4K without rendering each pixel natively. With these technologies from Nvidia and AMD, even if you enable this feature and run below native 4K, the upscaled result looks as good as, or sometimes even better than native 1440p. While you still need a fair amount of graphics horsepower to drive it, especially for high frame rates, it is easier using scaling technologies.

You need more usable screen space for work or play
Desire sharper pictures in games, movies, photo/video editing, office work
True blacks, improved colors
Easier to run than in years past - DLSS/MFG/FSR looks good and really improves frame rates
Increasingly affordable - obviously affordable is in the eye of the beholder, but they are a lot cheaper today than even a year ago
Burn-in has improved, too - While it’s still a concern over time, especially for static images like taskbars, manufacturers have implemented mitigations to prevent the phenomenon

There are several reasons to hold off on upgrading to a 4K 240Hz OLED monitor. One is that your current GPU may not keep up. Driving 240 FPS on a 4K monitor isn’t easy. And even with improvements and upscaling from both camps, you can’t make a budget card play like a flagship. Now, if you don’t play games, any video card will output 4K on an OLED, so this reason not to is only for the gamers.

I know burn-in is part of the reason to upgrade, and modern panels handle this better than early OLEDs, but it hasn’t disappeared. If your day is packed with spreadsheets and coding, or you use permanent taskbars/toolbars, those pixels stay in the same place all day. Dark modes and manufacturer mitigations help, but it’s the main risk. Check your warranty, as some brands cover burn-in (think Dell/Alienware, MSI, Corsair, Asus, LG, Acer), while others do not (Lenovo, budget/generic brands), and consider it ‘normal wear’. In short, if you work on static images a lot, you could see burn-in down the road.

Text can look slightly off depending on the panel type. If you work with a lot of text or spreadsheets, both OLED panel types can struggle with text clarity because they use non-standard subpixel layouts instead of the traditional RGB stripes. QD-OLED generally provides sharper overall rendering with ClearType enabled, while WOLED can look a bit hazy if the screen uses a matte coating. The good news is that the pixel density is so high, it’s harder to notice (I don’t on mine, and I write on it in a browser tab for 8+ hours a day).

You don’t have a powerful enough video card - If you don’t have an RTX 4080/5070 Ti or greater or AMD Radeon 9070XT, you may want to wait until your next graphics card upgrade. Or, if less than 240 FPS is OK, a lower-end card will work.
If your day is packed with static images on the screen, burn-in can eventually become an issue, regardless of mitigation features from the panel or user.
Text can look slightly off - Coming from someone who writes on their OLED daily, this isn’t a big issue, but it's worth noting just in case. The higher the pixel density, the less of an issue this is.
It’s still expensive - Yeah, they are a lot cheaper than a year ago, but they are still costly. Prices will continue to drop.
Esports gamer - You want a higher refresh rate and less real estate. Smaller, faster panels are ideal for this user.

OLEDs have two subvariants, QD-OLED (Quantum Dot OLED) and WOLED (White OLED), and they differ in several ways, including how they generate light (WOLED: bottom emission; QD: top emission), their subpixel structure, and filtering. To summarize, WOLEDs generate white light from the bottom, which goes through four (RGBW) color filters, the backplane, and out. Whereas QD displays generate blue light and then turn it into green and red through a quantum dot layer.

What does all that mean? Without getting technical, it means QD-OLEDs excel in color volume and saturated highlights, with excellent color uniformity and tinting. WOLEDs offer the same benefits as traditional OLEDs (per-pixel control) but with an added advantage. Using a single white emitter with color filters means you don’t run into the problem of individual red, Green, and blue emitters aging at different rates, which can cause color shifting and burn-in. Now, WOLEDs don’t eliminate burn-in or image retention, but they can lessen the severity.

In the end, finding a bad OLED monitor is difficult, especially when you compare it to VA and IPS panels, since the

contrast ratio

, color volume, and response times put them in a league far above their IPS and VA counterparts. The biggest downside to any OLED panel is price (OLEDs cost more).

So what about the elephant in the OLED room, Burn-in? If you don’t know, burn-in is a phenomenon where the image on a monitor is retained and visible when other content is displayed. A good example is something static, like the ticker bar at the bottom of the screen or the Windows taskbar; these items tend to ‘burn in’ versus other areas of the panel that constantly change.

Over the years, this has improved. Most brands have mitigation features; for example, Philips (among others, like Samsung and MSI) uses pixel shifting technology to move displayed content one pixel up/down/left/right to reduce burn-in. MSI also uses pixel shifting, pixel refreshing, and OLED Care 3.0 to dim or turn off the screen when you step away. Each vendor has something to reduce it. Burn-in is real, but with today’s prevention features and a little bit of common sense from the user, it could take years to see anything visible on your screen, and something that I, so far, cannot see.

Tom’s Hardware’s own monitor expert, Brandon Hill, wrote a great article (

WOLED vs QD-OLED monitors: which panel technology is better

) covering the differences between OLEDs and which panel technology is better; it's absolutely worth a look if you want more detail on the panel types.

Jumping up from my 2560x1440 165Hz monitor to a 4K OLED at 240 Hz was, without a doubt, the best upgrade I made to my system in quite a while. For me, the awesome contrast and colors, plus the extra screen space, changed how I worked during the day and played games at night. Frankly, there’s no way I can go back. Prices, while still out of range for some, have come down considerably, and you can now get a 32-inch 4K 240Hz OLED panel for under $700. With upscaling tech like DLSS and FSR making it easier to run, you may not need a graphics card upgrade to reach your goals. If you want a sharper picture, more screen real estate, and a big jump in image quality, a 4K OLED is hard to beat.

That said, it isn’t for everyone. If your graphics card can’t keep up and your day is packed with static spreadsheets and toolbars, or the price is just too much ($700 is still a lot of money), you can wait or look at a 1440p OLED instead. You can find those, like the

Acer Predator X27U, for under $300

. If you’re a competitive esports gamer, a smaller, faster 1080p panel is likely the best choice. In the end, the price of entry was worth it for me. But affordability is in the eye of the beholder, so be honest with yourself about how you'll use it before you buy.

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Joe Shields is a staff writer at Tom’s Hardware. He reviews motherboards and PC components.

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