Best Black Friday monitor deals: 4K displays and gaming monitors

Yes, absolutely, you can find some great deals on monitors during the week of Black Friday—as evidenced by the great deals in the article above. Mind you, in some tech categories—like say, wireless earbuds or phone chargers—you’ll see discounts on off-brand gear we’d never recommend. But when it comes to monitors, highly reputable brands like HP, Dell, Samsung and Lenovo will drop prices on great models. PCWorld strives to only recommend deals on solid monitors that are experiencing legitimate pricing drops. To this end, we look for models that have reached or fallen below their all-time-low prices.

No, there’s no reason why the monitor deals you find during Black Friday should be lower quality—at least if you focus on the big-name manufacturers like Samsung, Philips, LG, Dell, HP, Lenovo and so on. It’s true that some of the discounted monitors may be 2021 models, but there’s nothing wrong with that. Monitor tech moves rather slowly and there won’t be major quality differences between 2021 and 2022 models. The important thing is to get a monitor at a legitimately lower price—and we have done the heavy lifting to curate those legit deals.

Ah, we’ve arrived at the question of the hour.

Let’s first talk about refresh rate, which is important if you’re looking for a gaming monitor. The refresh rate is how fast a monitor can redraw the image on its screen. The faster the refresh rate, the smoother your visuals will look. 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 the 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, 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 of 2022. 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.

Amazon’s going to have a slew of awesome deals. That’s a given. However, for monitors, you should definitely peruse the main pages of HP, Dell and Lenovo. Personally, I find myself going directly to the manufacturers more often than not. You can also widen your net and scope out other online retailers like Best Buy and Newegg.

Black Friday is on Friday, Nov 25th 2022. 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, Nov 28th 2022. For the best deals, we’d recommend logging on at midnight, as stock tends to deplete rather quickly.