The yearly fray of Black Friday consumerism is upon us. Yet, as I’ve been covering monitor deals in the days leading up to the post-turkey blitz, I’ve gotta say… this year’s deals are especially delicious. That’s doubly true if you’re searching for an OLED monitor upgrade, because we’re seeing the lowest prices ever for that expensive category.
We’ve checked all of the deals below for accuracy, value, and, you know, whether they’re actually worth getting in the first place. (We have decades of experience with monitor reviews, so we know our stuffing.) Since deals often come and go as promotions expire or stock runs out, we’ll also be regularly updating our deal picks to make sure they’re fresh.
Here, in no particular order a very specific and carefully considered order, are the best monitor deals you’ll find this Black Friday. Cheers!
My top pick: If you don’t care about the beep-boops of gaming, there’s no faster way to add utility to your laptop than with a travel-friendly USB-C monitor like the MNN portable monitor. The deal on this white-label product is unbeatable — I’ve spent more than that on a hotel breakfast, and it wasn’t anywhere near as good.
On the other end of the spectrum, you can power up your desktop productivity with the absolutely massive 45-inch Philips ultrawide, which is basically two mid-sized screens in one, plus integrated webcam.
My top pick: Here’s where you can find some seriously affordable monitors to upgrade your setup or expand it into multiple screens. The 27-inch Gigabyte 1440p is my early pick, despite its relatively anemic discount. That extra resolution of 1440p puts it at the current “sweet spot” of PC gaming, and the upgraded IPS panel means it can pull double duty as a standard office or media production monitor. That makes it a great pick if you game on your work-from-home PC.
My top pick: AOC’s 27-inch OLED monitor is one of the cheapest OLED monitors we’ve ever seen, but it’s been going in and out of stock as people rush to get the deal. Ditto for the 27-inch MSI OLED. For the best bang for your buck, the MSI 49-inch ultrawide OLED is the one you want — it’s about a thousand dollars less than these mega-sized monitors were when they first hit the market.
Black Friday is on Friday, November 29, 2024. If you consider yourself an avid deals hunter, we’d suggest going online in the early hours to take advantage of the best deals. Deals tend to change and expire at a breakneck pace.
Cyber Monday is on Monday, December 2, 2024. For the best deals, we’d recommend logging on at midnight as stock tends to deplete rather quickly.
Amazon is going to have a slew of awesome deals. That’s a given. However, for monitors, you should definitely peruse the retail shopping pages of HP, Dell, and Lenovo. Personally, I find myself going directly to the manufacturers more often than not. You can also widen your scope to other online retailers like Best Buy and Newegg.
Let’s first talk about refresh rate, which is especially important if you’re looking for a gaming monitor. The refresh rate is how fast a monitor can redraw the image on the screen. The faster the refresh rate, the smoother your visuals will look. Most office monitors work well at the standard 60Hz, though you’ll notice smoothness improvements at higher speeds. For competitive first-person shooters, we’d recommend 120Hz as the minimum rate. Anything higher is good enough for the esports realm.
Resolution is another important feature to consider. Much like refresh rate, the higher the number, the better. We’re talking about the quality of images and video here. 1080p is the bare minimum for most monitors. However, if you’re a video editor, bumping the resolution up to 4K makes a massive difference as it allows you to see more detail.
The final thing is the screen size. 27 inches is the most common and a good size for a home office. For gaming monitors, 24 or 27 inches is best. Sometimes a larger screen causes eye strain, and if you’re going to be staring at one for hours every day, it’s better to go a bit smaller. For 4K monitors, 32 inches is a good option as it gives you quite a bit of screen to work with.
PCWorld reviews new monitors every month. So, if you want to see the models we’ve rated the highest, check out our rankings for the best monitors right now. We also have more granular picks on the best gaming monitors, as well as the best 4K monitors for desktop workstations. Come Black Friday, a lot of our top picks may be on sale, so don’t limit your shopping only to the deals we’ve called out above.
Check out our roundups for the best PC-related deals in a wide variety of categories!
