The 3 Best 24

We’ve updated this guide with a new top pick, the Asus ProArt PA248CNV, and added a new version of the monitor to the section on what to look forward to from CES 2023.

A 24-inch monitor can be a great companion to a laptop, offering a larger, space-efficient second screen that charges your device while you’re using it. The Asus ProArt PA248CNV is an especially good monitor for most people because it has a larger 16:10 display, USB-C charging, a USB hub for peripherals, and fantastic color accuracy. Because desktop users can easily link as many as four together for a multi-monitor setup, it's also a versatile pick for PCs with limited ports.

If you’re looking for a less expensive 24-inch monitor, we recommend the Asus VA24DCP, typically priced around $170. It also has a USB-C connection that can charge most laptops, but it lacks features like a fully adjustable stand, and it doesn't have a USB hub or the ProArt's great color accuracy.

The PA247CV combines an accurate screen with a range of nice features, including a USB-C port with 90 watts of charging power and a USB hub.

*At the time of publishing, the price was $270.

The USB-C port on the Asus ProArt PA248CNV makes it a fantastic 24-inch 1080p IPS display to use alongside a notebook PC. It has a 16:10 aspect ratio, which gives you more space to work and generally looks a bit nicer. The 90 watts of charging over USB-C means it will charge most laptops, and the sturdy, adjustable stand means you can use the monitor in a variety of configurations. It's fairly color accurate out of the box, with great contrast and especially nice reproduction of white and grays, so you shouldn't notice weird tinges of color when staring deeply into your blank Google Docs page. It also has a USB hub that can add four USB ports to your laptop.

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The Asus VA24DCP is an inexpensive monitor that still delivers nice colors, high contrast, and a USB-C port that can charge a laptop at full speed.

*At the time of publishing, the price was $150.

For less than $175, the Asus VA24DCP is a capable 24-inch 1080p IPS display that has full USB-C charging at 65 watts. It's a great basic monitor for those who want something to hook up to their laptop or PC to browse the internet and get some office work done, as its colors look good for day-to-day use, and it has better contrast than many higher-cost monitors. For $100 less than our top pick, you’re giving up a better, more adjustable stand, a USB hub, and some color accuracy, but if those aren't important to you, this is a nice monitor for a great price.

The Dell U2421E has a taller aspect ratio than our other picks, which means it offers extra vertical space that's useful when scrolling through big spreadsheets or long web pages and documents.

The Dell UltraSharp U2421E is a 24-inch monitor with a 1920×1200-pixel resolution, rather than the typical 1920×1080. These extra 120 vertical pixels mean a little less scrolling in large documents or spreadsheets, and more room for your apps and games without taking up more space on a desk. The U2421E comes with a higher price than our 1080p picks, but it has impressively accurate colors, a USB-C port with 90 W of charging for high-powered ultrabooks and MacBook Pro models, and a USB hub that includes an additional USB-C port.

The PA247CV combines an accurate screen with a range of nice features, including a USB-C port with 90 watts of charging power and a USB hub.

*At the time of publishing, the price was $270.

The Asus VA24DCP is an inexpensive monitor that still delivers nice colors, high contrast, and a USB-C port that can charge a laptop at full speed.

*At the time of publishing, the price was $150.

The Dell U2421E has a taller aspect ratio than our other picks, which means it offers extra vertical space that's useful when scrolling through big spreadsheets or long web pages and documents.

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.

A 24-inch monitor is perfect for those who want a second screen for their laptop that won't take over their desk, or for desktop owners who want a dual-screen setup while saving space and money.

Our picks are especially good for laptop users, as they all have a USB-C connection with at least 65 watts of charging power. Our 2022 round of testing was the first time we’ve been able to find this feature for all of our picks.

These monitors also represent a good value for those with a desktop. They all have enough color accuracy and contrast to look great for day-to-day use, and the more you spend on our picks the better picture you’ll get. Our top and upgrade picks can also be daisy-chained when using two or more monitors, meaning you can connect the second display directly to the first, instead of having to run two cables from your computer. This saves some clutter, and can be helpful if you have a limited number of display outputs on your machine. (Laptop owners can also do this, but you’ll need to make sure your laptop has a DisplayPort, and not just an HDMI port.)

This class of 24-inch monitors is also generally cheaper than 27-inch, 32-inch, or ultrawide monitors, making them a good budget option. But if you have the space and budget and are looking for a sharper, higher-resolution display, it might be worth checking out our guide to the best 27-inch monitors.

Monitors with a 1920×1200-pixel resolution give you 120 more vertical pixels than a 1080p monitor, making the screen slightly taller but giving you enough extra room to view a few extra rows in a spreadsheet, or to read another paragraph in a document or article without scrolling.

Generally, you can't find 24-inch monitors with a 4K resolution (or 3840×2160 pixels). For those, you’ll need to step up to the 27- and 32-inch models we recommend in our guide to 4K monitors. The higher resolution can display sharper text and more detailed images, and you can make the picture larger or smaller without losing detail or making things look blurry or overly pixelated.

Size and resolution aside, there are a lot of factors that determine whether a monitor is pleasant to look at and whether it will meet your particular needs. When we research monitors, we’re looking for the following:

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

We then tested the accuracy of each monitor's color—a screen with too-bright, oversaturated color might look good to the naked eye, but if it isn't representing colors accurately, then photos, videos, and web pages won't look the way their creators intended. We tested 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 former Wirecutter senior staff writer 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 less than 1.0 is perfect. Under 2.0 is good enough for print-production work, and you wouldn't notice a difference 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 used our Calman tests to determine how much of the sRGB color gamut each monitor's screen could 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 ones inside it. More expensive monitors and laptop screens sometimes support a wider color gamut called DCI-P3, but you won't find budget monitors that display all of those colors.

For each round of tests, we adjusted the monitor's brightness to 140 cd/m2 (candelas per square meter) and set its contrast as high as it could go without losing white details. We tested different built-in color presets for the monitors that had them, noting the ones that produced the most accurate colors.

The PA247CV combines an accurate screen with a range of nice features, including a USB-C port with 90 watts of charging power and a USB hub.

*At the time of publishing, the price was $270.

The Asus ProArt PA248CNV blends a sharp 1080p display with features such as 90-watt USB-C charging, a USB hub, and a sturdy stand for less than $300. The monitor also impressed us with its grayscale accuracy, as its shades of white and gray weren't noticeably tinged with red, green, or blue.

We previously recommended an older version of this display, the Asus ProArt PA247CV, as a top pick in this guide. Both monitors are fantastic, but the newer PA248CNV offers a larger, more accurate display and a higher charging wattage for only around $40 more, an extra expense that we think is worth paying. If the PA248CNV is out of stock or has jumped in price when you’re shopping, or if you don't have a high-powered laptop that requires 90 W charging, we recommend getting the PA247CV instead.

That said, the PA248CNV is an especially good monitor for a wide swath of laptop owners. It has a USB-C port with 90 W of charging output, which can charge most laptops at a normal rate, even some higher-powered laptops like the Dell XPS 15 and MacBook Pro. The PA248CNV also has a USB hub with four USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, perfect for connecting more devices to a laptop over the USB-C connection. (We like these ports for adding accessories such as webcams and wireless mouse dongles.)

We also like the ProArt PA248CNV's stand, which is sturdy and fully adjustable. You can tilt or swivel the monitor, lift it up or push it down, and rotate it into portrait mode. A small clip on the back of the stand helps with cable management, as well.

Like all of our picks in this guide, the PA248CNV is a 24-inch IPS display. We measured a contrast ratio of 1017:1, which makes images with variation between light and dark look realistic and vibrant. The monitor can reach 300 nits of brightness, about the threshold for getting a good-looking picture in a typical office with some sunlight.

This monitor has accurate-enough color for most uses, especially for those writing documents, making presentations, and doing other office work. This is where the grayscale accuracy factors in—when you’re staring at a blank page wondering how to start that paragraph, at least you won't be noticing a strange red tint that sends you down a Google rabbit hole and further delays that project you were supposed to turn in last week. Luckily, this display is exceptionally color-accurate, even better than our previous Asus ProArt pick. It even rivals our upgrade pick in some areas, though the Dell monitor still wins out for creatives because it offers more adjustability in calibrating the display in professional settings. The table below outlines the color accuracy of this monitor in comparison with our other picks.

The ProArt PA248CNV also has a few extra features that are nice, such as a 75 Hz display with FreeSync. This makes the monitor marginally better for casual gaming, as movement and animations seem smoother than on a typical 60 Hz display. If you’re gaming online or playing more competitively, you should choose a display with at least 144 Hz.

For those who are considering a multi-monitor setup, the ProArt PA248CNV also supports daisy-chaining up to four displays. One DisplayPort cable connects your desktop to your first monitor, and then you can run a cable directly out of that monitor to the next one. You can link up to four PA248CNV units together this way (though you can't mix in other monitor models). This flexibility is great if your desktop has only one DisplayPort, and it can reduce the nest of cables coming from your PC.

Asus covers the PA248CNV with its Zero Bright Dot policy: The company will swap out your monitor if any stuck bright pixels appear on the display during the three-year warranty period. One of the best warranties in the industry, this policy helps guard against one of the most annoying monitor defects.

If you’ve been reading our other monitor guides lately, you might notice that this is the 24-inch version of the top pick in our guide to the best 27-inch monitors. Although many home-use displays under $500 have fallen short of their advertised color accuracy, contrast, and brightness in our tests, we’ve found that the ProArt line often lives up to its claims (or at least gets much closer than the competition). It also prioritizes features that are essential, such as USB-C charging for laptop owners and sturdy, adjustable stands.

We generally like this monitor and haven't found issues with it. However, as we mention in our How we picked and tested section, if you’re planning on using this monitor as your main work display, you might want to consider a higher-resolution 27-inch monitor. (Our top pick in our guide to the best 27-inch monitors is just a larger, higher-resolution version of this same monitor.) On that kind of monitor, you have more screen space, and text is a bit sharper and easier to read. But if you’re already working on a 1080p laptop screen or monitor and satisfied with the image quality, that's great! The Asus ProArt PA248CNV will be a quality replacement or upgrade.

The Asus VA24DCP is an inexpensive monitor that still delivers nice colors, high contrast, and a USB-C port that can charge a laptop at full speed.

*At the time of publishing, the price was $150.

The Asus VA24DCP is a 24-inch 1080p monitor that has nice contrast, reasonable color accuracy, and a USB-C port capable of 65 W for charging a laptop. It also has an HDMI port and an audio jack.

Typically, IPS monitors less than $200 exhibit some display weakness, like poor contrast or backlight brightness. The Asus VA24DCP surprised us, performing fairly well at everything. Its 975:1 contrast ratio is just a smidge lower than the 1000:1 standard for IPS monitors. Our previous budget and top picks measured at a 500:1 contrast ratio, meaning this monitor will have deeper blacks and generally look punchier and more appealing. The VA24DCP also kept up with more expensive monitors when it comes to display brightness, maxing out around 270 nits. Our top pick and upgrade picks measured around 300 nits, a difference most people wouldn't notice in daily usage. While images and video looked natural on the display, we would caution that it's not a great pick for people that need accurate colors for creative work. The monitor is bright and the colors look nice, but they’re not the exact same colors you’ll see on every other calibrated display in the world.

The Asus VA24DCP is missing some features you’ll find in more expensive monitors. The biggest is the lack of a fully-adjustable stand. Instead, the small stand included with the display only tilts up and down, and you can't change its height, orientation, or swivel it side to side. But you can always stack some books or a riser underneath the display if it's too low, or mount it on a VESA-compliant monitor arm for a more flexible setup.

We also don't recommend using the speakers—they sound cheap and tinny. You’d be better served spending $30 on some external speakers that will undoubtedly sound better.

The Dell U2421E has a taller aspect ratio than our other picks, which means it offers extra vertical space that's useful when scrolling through big spreadsheets or long web pages and documents.

The Dell U2421E is one of the most color-accurate displays we’ve tested and also has 90-watt USB-C charging capability, making it a perfect display to accompany a high-performance laptop for creative work. This IPS display has a 16:10 aspect ratio and 1920×1200 resolution, meaning it has 120 extra pixels of height compared with standard 1080p monitors. This results in a slightly sharper-seeming image and a bit more working room on the screen.

If you’re looking for a monitor that will extend the ports on your laptop, the U2421E also has a competitive selection. It has a USB hub that includes three USB 3.2 Gen1 ports and a USB-C port with 15 W of charging. (This USB-C port is part of the hub, and separate from the 90 W port used to connect the monitor to a computer.) The monitor also has an ethernet port, which gives your laptop the benefit of a wired internet connection while connected to the display over USB-C.

At $450, this monitor is expensive compared with our other picks, though we’ve seen it on sale for a more reasonable $360. We still recommend the U2421E—it has nearly perfect color out of the box in our tests, comes with Dell's fantastic three-year warranty, charges pro laptops, and has a USB hub like our top pick.

The U2421E has nice contrast, and we measured that the display exactly hits its advertised 1000:1 contrast ratio. But color accuracy is where the monitor shines. As outlined in the How we picked and tested section, our tests produce a DeltaE2000 score that describes the distance between a color that your computer sends to the monitor and what the monitor actually displays. A score under 1.0 is perfect color, under 2.0 is good enough for print production, and above 3.0 is visible to the naked eye. The U2421E scored under 1.0 in every metric tested, something very rare in consumer monitors. If you’re working with 4K content or need the sharpest image available, we’d recommend checking out some higher-resolution displays in our guides to the best 27-inch monitors and the best 4K monitors. But if you’re using a 1080p display currently and want or need a more color-accurate upgrade, this is a great choice.

Another part of the U2421E's price tag is Dell's three-year Premium Panel Guarantee, which means that if you find even one bright pixel the company will swap out the monitor for a new one. This monitor is also in Dell's Advanced Panel Exchange program, meaning a replacement will be sent out the next business day.

Just as we were updating this guide to recommend the fantastic ProArt PA248CNV, Asus announced a new version of the display at the CES 2023 trade show. It's called the ProArt PA248CRV, and it has a higher, 96 W charging wattage that should make it compatible with even more laptops. It also has a new navigational knob, which we menu addicts love, and it's made with recycled materials. It also offers HDR10 support and a slimmer design. We don't know exactly when Asus will release this model, but we’ll test it as soon as we can.

For gamers who want the most frames per second: We also tested the Dell Alienware AW2523HF, a newly released 1080p IPS display with a 360 Hz refresh rate. Many professional esports players prefer 24-inch, 1080p monitors because the lower resolution compared with 1440p and 4K means less of a load on your GPU and, in return, more frames per second. The AW2523HT delivers a consistent 360 Hz refresh rate if your computer is fast enough to keep up, along with a bunch of features we like on our main picks, including a USB hub, nice contrast, and a sturdy stand.

For more information on the 24-inch 1080p monitors we’ve tested, read our guide to the best budget monitors.

We re-tested the previous budget pick for this guide, the ViewSonic VA2447-MHU, as well as the previous top pick, the ViewSonic VX2485-MHU. In direct comparison to our new picks, both ViewSonic monitors had less than half the advertised contrast, worse color accuracy, and did not include USB-C connections. Our new picks are slightly more expensive but offer far better features and quality.

The BenQ GW2485TC is another 24-inch 1080p IPS monitor with a USB-C connection and 75 Hz refresh rate that's prominently advertised on Amazon. In our tests, it couldn't reach 200 nits of brightness and only measured at a 318:1 contrast ratio, which is significantly below our picks.

The LG 24MP400-B is a 24-inch 1080p IPS monitor that we also saw highly advertised on Amazon that lacks USB-C and most other creature comforts. We tested it to see whether you could save about $50 on this ultra-budget monitor and still get a nice display for desktop users. It turns out you can't, at least not with this monitor: this display has a much dimmer backlight and far worse contrast than our budget pick.

The Dell S2422HZ is a decent 24-inch 1080p IPS monitor that includes a webcam and microphone for video calls. We think you’d be better served buying one of our picks and a standalone webcam, as the quality of the S2422HZ's webcam was beat by the midrange Dell laptop we were using to test the monitor. We were also surprised by the 200-nit brightness of the screen and low 417:1 contrast that we measured, as Dell displays usually perform a bit better.

The HyperX Armada 25 is a 240 Hz gaming monitor with a 25-inch 1080p display. We liked this monitor and the fact that a monitor arm is included, but for the same price the Alienware AW2523HT mentioned above provides more frames per second and a USB hub for peripherals.

This article was edited by Signe Brewster and Arthur Gies.

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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