The 2 Best 4K Monitors of 2023

After new testing, we’ve updated the picks in this guide. Our new top pick is the Dell S2722QC.

When people shop for a TV, a high-resolution, 4K screen is practically a given. But 4K computer monitors are still a luxury, unless you’re editing photos or videos professionally, or if you specifically want to watch 4K content. The Dell S2722QC is our favorite 4K monitor because it's a quality, color-accurate display that can charge your laptop over USB-C, and it's not terribly expensive. We also like Dell's sturdy stand and fantastic warranty. But if you don't need 4K, you can find all kinds of great monitors and pay less.

Anyone who needs to work with images in their native resolution benefits from a 4K monitor.

A 4K monitor lets you fit more information on your screen at the same time.

If you want to see sharper text and more-detailed images on your screen, a 4K monitor provides that.

One of our picks would please pixel peepers who watch 4K movies or TV shows at their desk.

The S2722QC has a color-accurate 4K display, USB-C, and a USB hub. It even has a one-year version of Dell's warranty that is typically reserved for higher-end displays.

*At the time of publishing, the price was $400.

Resolution: 3840×2160 | Refresh rate: 60 Hz with FreeSync | Ports: two HDMI, one USB-C | USB-C charging: 65 W | USB hub: two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports

The Dell S2722QC is a great high-resolution monitor that balances high-end features with a competitive price. The monitor offers impressive contrast and color accuracy, plus USB-C connectivity to keep your laptop charged while it's attached to the display. The S2722QC also comes covered by Dell's Premium Panel Exchange policy, so if you open the box and find a defect in the monitor such as a bright pixel, the company will ship a replacement the next business day.

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The HP Z27k G3 has a sleek, minimalist design and near-perfect color accuracy. It can charge a 16-inch MacBook Pro and even has a built-in Ethernet port.

Resolution: 3840×2160 | Refresh rate: 60 Hz | Ports: one HDMI, one USB-C, one DisplayPort 1.4 in, one DisplayPort 1.4 out, Ethernet | USB-C charging: 100 W | USB hub: four USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports

The HP Z27k G3 (not to be confused with many other HP monitors that have some version of "Z27" in the name) is a 4K display with accurate colors and great contrast. The Z27k G3's USB hub also includes an Ethernet port for a wired internet connection, and it provides up to 100 W of power through its USB-C port—enough to charge a 15- or 16-inch MacBook Pro at full speed. And HP offers a three-year warranty that includes a zero-bright-subpixel guarantee similar to Dell's. But even though we like this monitor's fully adjustable stand and its sleek, minimalist design, we found some areas where "minimalist" edges into "flimsy." The screen is prone to wobbling on its slender stand, and the plastic cable-management loop on the back detaches under too much stress (usually you can reattach it, but still).

The S2722QC has a color-accurate 4K display, USB-C, and a USB hub. It even has a one-year version of Dell's warranty that is typically reserved for higher-end displays.

*At the time of publishing, the price was $400.

The HP Z27k G3 has a sleek, minimalist design and near-perfect color accuracy. It can charge a 16-inch MacBook Pro and even has a built-in Ethernet port.

Senior staff writer Dave Gershgorn has reviewed and covered technology since 2015 at publications such as Popular Science, Quartz, Medium, and now Wirecutter. He covers all computer displays for Wirecutter and is a certified display calibrator through the Imaging Science Foundation.

Andrew Cunningham, who wrote previous versions of this guide, has been testing, reviewing, and otherwise writing about PCs and other gadgets for AnandTech, Ars Technica, and Wirecutter since 2012.

Our monitor guides benefit from the expert advice of Chris Heinonen. He helped us figure out the best hardware and software to use for our testing, and during his time with Wirecutter, he designed the evaluation process.

If you use your computer only for browsing and video calls, or if you’re looking at your screen for just a couple of hours a day, you don't need to spend extra money on a 4K monitor. But if you’re doing professional video or photo editing and want to view 4K photos and videos at their native resolution, if you want to be able to fit more stuff on your screen at once, or if you want to see sharper text and more-detailed images on your screen, a 4K monitor is worth the investment.

"4K" is a loose term that refers to the number of pixels present horizontally across the screen; the most common 4K resolution is 3840×2160 pixels (yes, it's rounding up, but 3.84K is not as catchy). That's four times the pixels in a 1080p display and 2.25 times the pixels in a 2560×1440-pixel display. The increased pixel density allows for sharper text and more-detailed images and videos, as well as an increase in usable desktop space—you can view a bunch of information on a 4K screen at once, depending on your operating system's scaling settings.

If you’re doing professional video or photo editing, a 4K monitor is worth the investment.

To push all of those pixels, you need a newer and faster computer; most laptops and desktops released in or after 2015 should be good enough to handle your web browser and other basic apps. Your computer needs to support DisplayPort 1.2 or later or HDMI 2.0 or later to run a 4K display at the typical 60 frames per second (or 60 Hz). Settings such as 30 Hz or 24 Hz will look slower and more stuttery than you’re used to, since most phones, laptop screens, and other monitors refresh at 60 Hz. If you’re playing high-end games, you also need a powerful graphics card, such as an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070, 3080, or 3090, or an AMD Radeon RX 6800 or 6900. Streaming 4K video also requires a relatively fast internet connection; Netflix recommends at least 15 Mbps speeds for 4K streaming, and if other people are using your network at the same time, you should have more than that.

If a 4K monitor isn't right for you, we have guides for lower-resolution budget monitors and 27-inch monitors, which are still great for browsing the web, multitasking, and gaming. A good budget monitor will run you between $100 and $150; a good 2560×1440 27-inch monitor will cost between $250 and $400.

We researched and tested cheap monitors and found options for less than $200 that are good enough for most people.

For those who have the desk space, 27-inch monitors hit the sweet spot of screen size and resolution, and we have recommendations for almost every scenario.

These are the features you should look for in a 4K monitor:

For each round of research and testing, we look through the websites of 4K monitor manufacturers, including Acer, Asus, BenQ, Dell, HP, LG, and ViewSonic. And we eliminate models that don't meet our criteria, aren't readily available through established retailers, or are too expensive relative to other models with similar features.

To test the monitors, we use each model for typical desktop work for a few hours, noting the sturdiness and quality of the stand and how easy the monitor is to adjust using the on-screen controls. We test for some common issues that can afflict LCD monitors, such as low-light flicker (also called PWM flicker) and image retention.

We then test the accuracy of each monitor's color and contrast—a screen with too-bright, oversaturated color might look good to the naked eye, but photos, videos, and web pages won't look the way their creators intended. We test each monitor using an X-Rite i1Basic Pro and an X-Rite OEM i1Display colorimeter, as well as custom tests in the Calman software calibration suite designed by Wirecutter's Chris Heinonen. The Calman tests produce DeltaE 2000 numbers, which show how much the displayed color deviates from what it's supposed to be: The lower the number, the better the result. A DeltaE value lower than 1.0 is perfect. Under 2.0 is good enough for print-production work, and you wouldn't notice a difference even if you had a perfect reference to compare against. Ratings above 3.0 mean you’d probably see a difference with your naked eye.

Color gamut, or the range of colors that a device can accurately represent, is also important (color accuracy doesn't mean much if your screen shows only a portion of the colors meant to be displayed), so we use our Calman tests to determine how much of the sRGB color gamut each monitor's screen can reproduce. The ideal score is 100%. Our numbers don't go past that because reporting numbers larger than 100% can give the impression of full gamut coverage even in cases where that isn't true—for example, if the monitor displays many colors outside the gamut without displaying all the colors inside it.

Often, 4K monitors include support for a wider color gamut called DCI-P3, which is primarily used in film production but is also supported by most of Apple's recent phones and computers and a number of high-end Windows laptops. It's rare to come across 100% DCI-P3 coverage, at least in our price range, but anything higher than 80% is better than average.

For each round of tests, we adjust the monitor's brightness to 140 cd/m2 (candelas per square meter), a good value for everyday use, and set its contrast as high as it can go without losing white details. We test different built-in color presets for the monitors that have them, noting the presets that produce the most accurate colors.

The S2722QC has a color-accurate 4K display, USB-C, and a USB hub. It even has a one-year version of Dell's warranty that is typically reserved for higher-end displays.

*At the time of publishing, the price was $400.

We recommend the Dell S2722QC as a stellar 27-inch 4K monitor because it's a bright, high-resolution display with USB-C connectivity and charging available at a relatively low price. You can often find the S2722QC on sale for less than $400, and it gives you most of the features of Dell's more expensive 4K monitor models, as well as a great warranty that ensures you won't get a flawed panel out of the box.

The monitor has all of the standard ports you’re likely to need on a day-to-day basis, including two HDMI 2.0 ports, a USB-C port with 65 W of power delivery, a headphone jack, and two USB-A ports that support USB 3.2 Gen 1. The USB-C port is the big-ticket item here, as it allows you to connect a compatible laptop with only one USB-C cable for both displaying the image and charging the laptop. The monitor's 65 W of power output is sufficient for most laptops, including non-Pro MacBooks and Dell's XPS 13 line.

The Dell S2722QC's out-of-the-box color accuracy looks great for handling productivity tasks and watching 4K content, though if you’re doing color-critical work you should either calibrate the display or opt for our upgrade pick, the HP Z27k G3, which is much more accurate. We were able to calibrate the S2722QC to get DeltaE 2000 scores of less than 2.0 for most metrics, which is good enough for casual to semi-professional media work. That's about the limit of this model (and many other comparable monitors), though, since Dell doesn't provide granular controls for adjusting gamma and color beyond basic RGB sliders on the Custom Color setting.

The display has a 60 Hz refresh rate, which means it updates the image on the screen 60 times per second. This refresh rate is standard for most computer monitors, but because the S2722QC is also FreeSync compatible, your computer can vary the display's refresh rate to reduce video stutter and jagged motion; this generally makes objects moving on the display look better, especially while you’re playing games.

We generally like Dell's monitor stands, which it uses across many models, and the stand for the S2722QC is no different. The stand is a sturdy support that raises and lowers the monitor, swivels it side to side, tilts it up and down, and rotates it 90 degrees into a portrait orientation. The rest of the monitor offers a similarly sturdy build quality while maintaining a sleek and simple look.

Compared with more expensive 4K monitors from Dell, the S2722QC loses a few USB ports and has a downgraded warranty. Dell's warranty for this monitor lasts for only one year, in contrast to the three-year warranty of more expensive models. Critically, however, the S2722QC's warranty still includes the company's Premium Panel Exchange policy, so if you find even one bright pixel on your monitor, Dell will replace it with a new unit. Although this less expensive monitor loses two years of coverage, the warranty still covers the period when you’re most likely to find a defect, which is right when you power on the display for the first time.

The S2722QC lacks adequate color-management controls to fine-tune and calibrate the display, a shortcoming of many Dell displays. While we were able to improve the monitor's color with the simple RGB controls provided, some ability to adjust the gamma response and RGB settings with more granularity would help this monitor punch above its weight.

This monitor also has speakers, which unfortunately don't match the high resolution of the screen. They’re fine for participating in video calls or watching presentations, but we wouldn't recommend them for listening to music or watching a movie.

The HP Z27k G3 has a sleek, minimalist design and near-perfect color accuracy. It can charge a 16-inch MacBook Pro and even has a built-in Ethernet port.

The HP Z27k G3 has great contrast, nearly perfect color accuracy, an adjustable stand, and a good three-year warranty. Its also has a wealth of ports, including a Gigabit Ethernet port. But due to its minimalist, angular design, it doesn't feel as sturdy as other monitors we’ve tested, and the plastic cable-management loop in the back will detach if you apply much pressure to it (although it usually reattaches easily, we worry that the plastic retention clips could break over time).

In addition to its USB-C port, which can provide up to 100 W of power (enough for a 15- or 16-inch MacBook Pro), the Z27k G3 has one HDMI 2.0 port, plus a DisplayPort 1.4 input and output. In contrast to our top pick from Dell, it also offers a Gigabit Ethernet port and a total of four (versus two) USB ports with USB 3.2 Gen 1 data-transfer speeds. The Z27k G3's color accuracy and charging power make it a great monitor for photo editors, graphic designers, or other people who work in a visual field with higher-powered laptops.

Using the Z27k G3's sRGB color preset, we measured a contrast ratio of 1180:1, coupled with exceptionally good color accuracy. Our tests showed DeltaE values at or below 1.0 across the board—remember, anything under 2.0 is excellent, and anything under 3.0 is good enough to get by with.

The Z27k G3's stand can swivel, tilt, pivot, and raise and lower the monitor's height; that's everything we look for in a decent built-in stand. The only downsides of the stand are its relative wobbliness and its more-fragile plastic loop for cable management. The monitor's three-year warranty includes a zero-bright-subpixel guarantee: Like Dell, HP will replace your display if it develops even a single bright-subpixel defect.

The Dell P2721Q, the previous top pick in this guide, is a fantastic professional-level display with Dell's best warranty. However, most people can save about $400 by choosing our new top pick, the Dell S2722QC, a very similar, slightly less-accurate display with a shorter warranty. The P2721Q does have two more USB-C ports. Since we published the last version of this guide, Dell has released a new version of the P2721Q, the P2723QE. We’ll test that version for our next update.

The Asus ProArt PA279CV is similar to the HP Z27k G3 in price and features—they both offer good color accuracy, USB-C ports and USB hubs, flexible stands, and good warranties, and they both cost around $500. This Asus model supports DisplayPort 1.2, not the more robust 1.4 version included in the Z27k G3. The PA279CV's 1048:1 contrast ratio isn't as good as that of the HP monitor, but if both of our picks are out of stock, or if you find the PA279CV for significantly less, it's the monitor you should buy instead.

The LG 27BL85U-W is a perfectly fine 4K monitor in the same category as the HP Z27k G3: It's usually around $500; it has a flexible stand that can tilt, swivel, pivot, and adjust the monitor's height; it includes a USB-C port and a USB 3.0 hub; and it has a three-year warranty. Its color accuracy is good, and its 1198:1 contrast ratio is as good as that of the Dell and HP monitors. But its USB-C port charges at only 65 W, instead of the 90 W we’d expect from a pricier monitor, and its USB hub has just two USB Type-A ports (the HP Z27k G3 and Asus ProArt PA279CV have four, and the HP monitor also includes Ethernet). And it simply doesn't look as good or feel as well made as any of those other monitors; it's more wobbly and plasticky, and it isn't as attractive on a desk. We’ve seen its price go as low as $430, though—that's when it's worth considering over the other options.

We also tested the LG 27UP850-W, which is similar to our top pick in its color accuracy, contrast, USB hub functionality, and USB-C port. The USB-C port, in fact, charges at a higher, 96 W rate, and this monitor supports 96% of the DCI-P3 color gamut. However, considering that this model is nearly $200 more than our top pick on sale, we’ve concluded that the Dell S2722QC represents a better value for most people. Meanwhile, our upgrade pick, the HP Z27k G3, is more color-accurate and thus more suitable for those who take color accuracy seriously.

The 32-inch Lenovo ThinkVision P32p-20 has less-accurate color and worse contrast, but it does include a built-in KVM switch. KVM stands for "keyboard, video, and mouse," and a KVM switch allows you to easily switch between two computers with the push of a button—the monitor and all USB accessories attached to it will quickly hop between the two computers. If you have a laptop and a desktop you’d like to use with a single monitor, for example, or if you regularly need to switch between a Windows PC and a Mac at your desk, a KVM switch can save you a lot of time. The P32p-20 can also provide 90 W of power out of its USB-C port; that's enough power to charge a 15- or 16-inch MacBook Pro at full speed.

The Dell S2721QS is a budget 4K display that typically costs only $50 to $75 less than our top pick and omits a USB-C port and USB hub features.

Dell's UltraSharp U2720Q was our main pick in an older version of this guide; compared with the S2722QC, it has a higher, 90 W USB-C charging rate and a slimmer border around the screen. If you can find it for around the same price as the S2722QC, it's still worth considering. But as of this writing, it's either out of stock or considerably more expensive than the S2722QC, and it's just not worth paying extra for.

The Asus TUF Gaming VG289Q was a budget pick in a previous version of this guide, and it's still a great monitor with decent contrast and color accuracy, an adjustable stand, and FreeSync support.

The biggest failing of the ViewSonic VG2756-4K is its mediocre 949:1 contrast ratio, which is okay in a budget monitor but harder to swallow in a model that usually costs around $500. Its performance in our color-accuracy tests was also mediocre. It has many of the other features we look for in a good 4K monitor, including a USB-C port, a USB hub (along with an Ethernet port), a flexible stand, and a three-year warranty. But its image quality is a step down from that of the Dell S2722QC and the HP Z27k G3.

The Acer CB282K smiiprx is a budget option in the $300 to $350 range. But it lacks a USB hub, and it had image-retention issues in our testing.

Lenovo's ThinkVision P27u-10 was our runner-up pick in an older version of this guide. It's similar to the Dell S2722QC and the HP Z27k G3 overall, both in design and in the number and types of ports it has (though its USB-C port provides only 45 W of power, rather than the 65 W of the Dell monitor or the 100 W of the HP monitor). When we tested it in 2019, we found its colors to be fairly accurate but its contrast to be mediocre, and we also observed minor image-retention issues. In addition, its stand doesn't swivel.

The LG 27BK67U-B and the LG 27BL55U-B are 4K monitors with good color that cost less than $400; the 67U-B has a USB hub and USB-C, whereas the 55U-B omits those features and generally costs less. But in our tests both monitors suffered from image retention, leaving behind noticeable afterimages that other budget monitors we tested didn't have.

We dismissed the ViewSonic VP2768-4K and the BenQ PD2700U for their lack of USB-C connectivity, which is a must-have in $400-and-up monitors these days.

We dismissed the NEC EA271U-BK in 2019. It has handy features like picture-in-picture and picture-by-picture, and its stand and port layout are fine. But it generally costs more than our other 27-inch picks, so we didn't test it in later rounds.

We passed on testing monitors from LG's consumer lineup, such as the 27UD68-P, 27UL850-W, 27UP850-W, and 27UD69P-W (now discontinued).

We also didn't test the 27-inch LG UltraFine 5K Display, an even-higher-resolution screen for Macs with Thunderbolt 3. It's very expensive, and getting it to work with Windows is either complicated or impossible depending on the PC you’re using.

Dell's UltraSharp U3219Q was our upgrade pick in an older version of this guide, and it's still a great monitor. It has a 90 W USB-C charging limit, and it includes a KVM switch, which makes the monitor easier to use with multiple computers at the same time. But it's usually either out of stock, back-ordered, or much more expensive than it used to be on most retailer sites.

HP's Z32 is a good monitor, with a respectable 1250:1 contrast ratio and decent color accuracy. It also offers a good port selection and a 65 W USB-C charging rate, though it doesn't include an Ethernet port. But the Z32 is often out of stock or back-ordered at many retailers.

The Acer B326HK and the BenQ PD3200U are sometimes cheaper than the 32-inch monitors we considered, but when we tested them in 2017 and 2019, respectively, we were disappointed by their mediocre contrast and color accuracy. They’re also missing newer features that we consider essential in a high-end monitor, such as a USB-C port.

We dismissed some 32-inch monitors without testing them because they were missing one or more of the features we were looking for. The ViewSonic ColorPro VP3268-4K lacked a USB-C port and didn't cost much less than monitors that had one, and the BenQ EW3280U omitted a USB hub and had a limited stand that tilted the monitor up and down only.

Most companies have stopped making new 24-inch 4K monitors, but we did test the LG 24UD58-B against the Dell P2415Q in 2019. The LG's screen was less accurate than the Dell's by a wide margin. This model also had fewer ports (two HDMI ports and one DisplayPort connection), and its stand tilted the monitor up and down only.

We didn't test the 24-inch LG UltraFine 4K Display, which Apple recommends for Macs that use Thunderbolt 3 ports. It also costs more than our other picks.

Additional reporting by Andrew Cunningham.

This article was edited by Signe Brewster and Arthur Gies.

Connect a display to your Mac, Apple Support, April 24, 2020

Setting the Contrast Control, 2nd Edition, Spears & Munsil

TN Vs. IPS Vs. VA, TN Panel

Shawn C. Steiner, Color Gamuts: A Quick Primer, B&H Explora, May 18, 2018

Dave Gershgorn

Dave Gershgorn is a senior staff writer at Wirecutter. He's been covering consumer and enterprise technology since 2015, and he just can't stop buying computers. If this weren't his job, it would likely be a problem.

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