There aren’t many bargains popping up in the PC tech world right now, but this Asus gaming monitor is a genuine steal at its current price. With a 180Hz refresh rate, support for both Nvidia G-Sync and AMD FreeSync Premium, and even ELMB support, you get a fantastic array of gaming goodies for just $119.
Asus TUF Gaming VG249QL3A
$169 $119 / £88.99
“The 180Hz refresh rate decimates lag and motion blur to give you the upper hand in first-person shooters, racers, real-time strategy, and sports titles.” – Asus
The screen in question is an Asus TUF Gaming VG249QL3A, and that $119 price on Amazon gives you a 30% discount on the usual $169 cost. In fact, this monitor would have set you back $192.50 in June 2024, which isn’t that long ago.
For your paltry $119, you get several of the latest features. One of them is Asus’ Extreme Low Motion Blur (ELMB) tech, which cleverly strobes the backlight on and off at an incredibly fast speed to improve motion clarity. It does a remarkably good job of reducing ghosting and making objects look sharper as a result. It’s a great inclusion in a monitor at this price.
Its variable refresh rate support also helps when it comes to fast motion, ensuring you don’t get any nasty tearing artifacts when your GPU is pumping out fast frame rates. Providing compatibility with both AMD FreeSync and Nvidia G-Sync, your monitor’s refresh rate will be lined up with your gaming frame rates, resulting in smooth action.
Meanwhile, the 180Hz refresh rate ensures this monitor can keep up with fast frame rates and still display all the action. What’s more, it uses a fast IPS screen, rather than a VA panel. The latter usually offers better contrast and deeper blacks, but suffers from ghosting in fast action. IPS, on the other hand, gives you superior viewing angles, responsive action and more accurate colours. Indeed, Asus says this discount screen even provides 99% sRGB coverage.
You don’t get a super-high resolution and massive panel at this price, but the VG249QL3A’s 23.8in screen is ideally matched with its 1920×1080 resolution. Pixels don’t look too chunky on a screen of this size at 1080p, and you won’t need an expensive GPU to play games at this resolution either.
Even the stand is decent, giving you tilt, swivel, pivot, and height adjustments. You get three display inputs as well, with a pair of HDMI 2.0 sockets and a DisplayPort input, so you can easily plug a console into this screen as well as your PC.
It all adds up to a genuinely good monitor deal for just $119, and it has an even better price in the UK of just £88.99 at the moment. It’s listed as a limited-time deal on Amazon US, though, so you’ll need to be quick.
