One of the things that is very important for competitive gaming is the response time of the gaming monitor, but there are other things that need to be considered.
Response time of the monitor can greatly effect the gaming experience, and in this article, we will first explore the importance of the response time, and we will review the best 1ms gaming monitors on the market.
Response time simply explains how long it takes for monitor to switch colors. In this case, it could be the transition between the shades of gray or between different colors.
This duration is important to measure, since quicker updates will cause a lot less blur and will provide displaying more frames per second based on the monitor's refresh rate.
For typical computer monitors response time is usually between 8 and 9 milliseconds. For gaming setups, anything below 5ms is considered a good response time.
Even though they sound very similar, input lag and response time measure completely different things.
Input lag measures the time it takes for any user input, such as mouse movement or key press to have an impact on the screen.
Similar to response time, input lag is something gamers pay attention as well. However, input lag measure the latency of the whole system, starting from the mouse, processor, and monitor.
That is why, when buying a monitor, input lag isn't a criteria, however the monitor you pick will impact on the system's overall input lag.
Response time usually only matters if you are building a competitive gaming setup. However If the main purpose of your setup is productivity, response time won't have a visible impact.
In high performance competitive gaming setups, such as e-sports competitions, players like to see as many frames as quickly as possible to detect the environment around them faster compared to other players.
In these setups, high performance Graphics cards will push as many frames as It can process to the screen, and It will expect monitor to keep up with those.
These high refresh rate setups is when the response time of the monitor matters, as longer refresh rates will cause visuals to appear more blurry.
Especially if the gaming setup is designed for 120Hz or higher refresh rates, then the response time of the monitor is extremely important, as It could create a bottleneck for the whole system.
4K is the highest emerging resolution on the market, and 4K resolution has been around for a while now.
However 4K gaming and gaming monitors just started to take off due to next generation of gaming consoles and graphics cards.
Panel technology has improved so that the 4K resolution monitors can now be optimized for gaming, and support 1ms response time in addition to other gaming features.
1440p resolution is the most common screen resolution with 2560 by 1440 pixels, also referred as QHD resolution.
This resolution is very common, because there are variety of sizes that can support this resolution, which makes It highly preferred for gaming as well.
Not every gamer prefers the same size monitor, some like to have a smaller monitor for competitive gaming, some prefer a bigger monitor for more immersive experience and 1440p resolution gaming monitors can support both.
1080p (Full HD, FHD) is 1920 by 1080 and lower quality compared to the first two we have listed, however competitive gamers might prefer smaller screens with highest refresh rate and lowest response time as possible.
And that is why, there are some extremely competitive 1ms gaming monitors with 1080p resolution. For this resolution, the most common monitor size is 24-Inch.
Based on the factors we have explored, we have reviewed some of the best low response time gaming monitors on the market. Here are our top picks.
We have reviewed some of the best 1ms response time gaming monitors on the market. However response time is something that most monitor manufacturers are trying to improve.
This is why we have created a complete list of 1ms response time monitors on the market with different sizes and different resolutions for you to explore before making a decision.