Best 32-Inch Gaming Monitor in 2021
Five of the Best 32-Inch Monitors that Will Take Your Gaming to the Next Level
- Last Updated Jun 2, 2021
32-inch monitors have seen a massive boost in popularity as of late, and that’s largely due to those particular dimensions lending themselves to both 1440p and 4K gaming. Resting on the borderline between these resolutions, the duality of the 32-inch monitor gives it multiple footholds on the market and thus production is expanded to accommodate demand.
While 1080p is still the go-to resolution for the average gamer and even for most competitive gamers, thanks to ever-falling prices and advanced tech, making the jump to 1440p or even 4K has never looked so enticing.
So, if you’re starting to question the 1080p life and are considering your options, a 32-inch monitor being one of them, you’ll be happy to hear that we’ve composed a brief consumer guide and reviewed five of the best 32-inch monitors currently available.
Products at a Glance
How We Picked
We love 1080p, and while a lot of us here at PC Guide HQ would consider ourselves competitive gamers, gaming isn’t just our job…it’s what we do in our downtime as well. When we’re gaming in a leisurely manner, we too like to luxuriate in front of large screens with high-resolution displays.
As such we’re constantly experimenting with the latest and greatest computer monitors in order to improve our own personal gaming experiences, and through our own product exploration, we discover some real diamonds, and it’s our pleasure to pass them on to you.
Being that 32-inch monitors have such a wide appeal across gaming communities, there’s a good possibility we’ve tested more of them than any other monitor size as of late, and we’ve learned a lot about what makes them great or slightly underwhelming along the way. We’ve done the legwork, cut the wheat from the chaff, and presented our findings below.
Best 32-Inch Gaming Monitor in 2021
This 1800r curved 1440p monitor is designed for knife-edge competitive gaming and does everything in its power to immerse you in your virtual world. With an insane refresh rate for a large 1440p screen, 1ms response times, and VA paneling, this is more of a portal than a monitor. Not only are its core fundamentals truly pristine, it comes with all the awesome extras you need to take your gaming to the next level.
Featuring a 1800r curvature, this Asus monitor arches around you, embraces your field of vision, and locks you into gameplay, providing the most immersive experience possible. Curved monitors are proven to reduce eye strain, so with this beast on your desk, you can game harder and for longer. What’s more, it filters harmful blue light, offering a second line of optical defense.
With a maximum refresh rate of 144Hz, you’ll be able to pair this monitor with an awesome GPU for face-melting, true-to-life graphics, and thanks to the 1ms response time, color-shifting is efficient and accurate.
Let’s take in some of these special features for a moment. Simultaneous adaptive Freesync and ELMB sync technology ensures your peripherals and monitor are working harmoniously towards buttery smooth graphics, and Shadow Boost, an intelligent, adaptive, localized contrast function brightens shadowed areas independently of light spots…Pretty amazing.
This monitor turns your desk into a full-on gaming cockpit, but as breathtaking as it is, it’s not for everyone simply because to get the most out of it, the rest of your setup has to be pretty high-end.
Our second 32-inch gaming masterpiece comes from BenQ. The EW3270U is a high-quality 4K 60Hz monitor ready to bring some photorealism to even the most outlandish games. With HDR capabilities providing extensive illumination, alive, vivacious colors, eye-care technology, AMD Freesync, and ambient light sensors automatically maintaining display acuity, all you have to do is sit and let the crisp visuals wash over you.
What immediately jumps out at you as soon as you sit down with this thing is just how dynamic and vivacious the color profile is, and really it’s no surprise considering it covers 95% of the DCI-P3 color gamut with 10-bit color channels for gentle shading and features a 1ms response time.
The HDR support is fantastic on the VA panel, achieving such clarity that clarity seems rather an inadequate word for it. That said, if we were to be picky, blue hues get too much of a boost in HDR mode, which is strange considering DCI-P3 gamuts normally lean towards yellows and reds.
It’s a 60Hz refresh rate monitor which is pretty much the norm for 4K at the minute as not many GPUs are capable of pushing out frames beyond that, but even if you’re GPU is somewhat lacking in the 4K arena, as long as it musters something in the region of 40fps averages, the adaptive Freesync will really iron the graphics out.
In terms of design, you get pretty impressive connectivity, but flexibility is a little underwhelming and definitely a weak point of this monitor. You get a slight up/down tilt, but no swivel or height adjustment.
We’re getting curvy once again for our third pick, the Samsung LU32R590CWNXZA, but when we say curvy, we mean CURVY! This 1500r monitor basically wraps around your head like a facehugger and mainlines super-fine pixels through pupils. What makes gaming with this monitor even more enjoyable besides the 60Hz 4K display – although it is pretty amazing – are the practically non-existent bezels helping to ensconce you even deeper into the gaming scenario. After that, the elegant, neutral design is just icing on the cake.
Although Samsung isn’t really considered a specialist brand in the world of PC gaming, with decades of experience in the business, they certainly know how to build a quality monitor. There are some aspects of this design that betray their gaming greenness such as the lack of sync technology and USB ports, but all things considered, it has the core qualities you need for some 4K phantasmagoria!
The most striking feature of the LU32R590CWNXZA is just how curved the 4K 60Hz display is. The 1500r arc amounts in a hauntingly immersive thrill ride that does all but grab you by the collar and pull you into the gaming universe.
Featuring bezels so impossibly thin, it looks like less of a monitor and more of a floating tear in the space-time continuum, you’re treated to a generous amount of screen real estate that only makes gaming that much more enjoyable.
As well as boasting some quality features such as Game Mode, which is essentially Samsung’s rendition of Asus’ Shadow Boost; UHD upscaling that gives low res content that 4K polish; and Eye-Care mode; the physical design is both elegant and space-friendly.
There are no two ways about it, folks. This Acer monitor is a stone-cold killer. If you’ve been dreaming of what gaming in 4K with 144 frames per second might look like, now’s your chance to find out! That’s right. The XB321HK has a 4K 144Hz display and it plays AMAZING. It’s not cheap, but then again, top-quality IPS panel monitors never are.
Covering 100% of the sRGB color space and 73% of the Adobe RGB space, colors are rich and refined. The 4ms response time is a little disappointing, but realistically, is fairly negligible for gaming.
Notable features include Nvidia G-Sync technology for finding a balance between refresh rate and frames per second, eliminating motion blur and screen tears; constant-current flicker-free visuals; and super low latency.
Obviously, you’re going to have a pretty stacked setup to make use of this ridiculously powerful monitor. We’re talking top-tier Nvidia RTX 30-Series or AMD 6000-Series GPUs. Even they probably won’t be able to reach anywhere near 144fps in 4K during demanding titles, but other gear aside, this Predator is powerful as they come, and it eats other monitors alive!
If you experience the perceptual phenomenon, synesthesia, you might want to cover your eyes when around this monitor because its color profiles are so breathtaking, it might just blow your mind. Designed with creatives in mind, it has an almost accidental affinity for gaming, but whether it means to or not, that 4K 60Hz display is primed for all your favorite titles.
So what’s so great about these colors then? Well, for one thing, the PD3200U doesn’t just cover the entirety of the typical sRGB color space, but 100% of the Rec. 709 color space as well. So accurate and varied is the color pallet on this monitor that it earned certification from both Calman and Pantone.
It might not seem to be the case when you first set eyes on it, but this monitor also has the most adjustability of any others on our list. With an expansive 20° upward tilt function, 150mm height adjustability, and the ability to swing a full 90° around into portrait mode, this thing can really pull some shapes!
Things To Consider
Our Verdict
It’s an exciting time to be a gamer. Finally, 1440p and 4K resolutions are falling into the mainstream, which means companies are working harder than ever to make monitors that push for excellence, monitors that will carry gaming into the future. In our opinion, each of the monitors listed in this article are part of this category of boundary pushers.
For those with bank accounts big enough, or perhaps a piggy bank they’ve been squirreling change away in since the 80s, we can’t stress enough how great the Predator is.
If your peripherals can’t quite conquer the 4K arena just yet, why not give the Asus TUF monitor a try? It’s by far one of the best 1440p monitors around and definitely the best all-round 32-inch monitor on the market. Failing that, if you have fairly strong hardware, you’re clear to enjoy some 4K 60Hz gaming on either the Samsung or the BenQ EW3270U.
For more of a versatile jack of all trades type monitor you can use in a professional capacity for working hard before you inevitably play even harder, our second BenQ offering is top of the 32-inch pecking order.