Our favorite: The Viewsonic XG 2530

Update: We’ve made an in-depth article on this on our parent website. If you’d like to, you can go and check it out here. 

A 240 HZ Monitor seems to be THE gaming hardware of the year. Especially in gaming monitors we have noticed significant improvements when comparing 144 HZ vs 240 HZ monitors. Much like a couple of years ago when we compared 144HZ vs 60HZ the difference is quite staggering. This is definitely a topic for enthusiasts and competitive gamers but it is well worth it. Let’s have a look at the available options for a 240 HZ monitor.

240 HZ Monitor for Competitive Gaming

For competitive gaming we are mostly interested in quick response times and fast refresh rates. A 240 HZ monitor does offer an incredibly high jump in this regard. This jump can be a big improvement for your gaming performance. Most players are currently on 144 HZ or even 60 HZ monitors. We already picked our favorite: the ViewSonic XG2530. Do you want to make the jump as well? Lets get our facts straight first.

We want the clearest image possible. We play games at lightning fast speeds and high frame rates, so the visuals can be blurry at times. Higher refresh rates can have a big impact on this. So as a reminder on how the different refresh rates look and how much motion trails they leave behind, please have a look at the following image:

Comparison from testufo.com

Please note that the jump from 60 HZ to 144 HZ and the jump from 144 HZ to 200 HZ seems to be particularly noticeable. You can also see this comparison in motion on testufo.com

There are no ‘professional’ (as in displays with exact colors for pixel perfect creative work) or ‘enthusiast’ monitors (as in displays with 4K resolution rates for gaming or movie enthusiasts) with 240 HZ on the market. So we are looking at this from a gaming angle where we need the clear, responsive visuals of a high refresh rate monitor and are less interested in exact colors or high resolutions. We want the FPS anyway 😉

Now, 240 HZ monitors are not a new thing per se. You probably have even heard of them before. EIZO announced their first 240 HZ display in 2015 (at that time most people were still making the transition from 60 to 144 HZ) and there have been quite a bunch of other non-native 240 HZ+ TVs on the market. Most of these displays used techniques to give the impression of 240 HZ refresh rates by interpolating frames and pixels. These are not true 240 HZ monitors and need to be avoided. Which is why we gathered only native 240 HZ monitors in the list for you.

To take native 240 HZ monitors into the mainstream, BenQ offered their flagship 240 HZ monitor in 2016 and added it to their XL line of products. The BenQ Zowie XL2540 was met with decent reviews but worries about motion trails (overshooting pixels that create a blurry visual) made us look at different monitors. ASUS and Acer monitors were met with good reviews as well but the high price point was not very attractive.

At a significantly lower price, the same TN panel, and the obvious benefits of a 240 HZ, 1ms response time display, the ViewSonic XG2530 is our recommendation for the best 240 HZ monitor.

At about $100 cheaper than the competition the price/value of the Viewsonic display is unmatched in this price segment. Now, the cheaper price comes at a small disadvantage of course. The XG2530 is missing G-Sync which is Nvidias counterpart to FreeSync and a functionality to reduce screen tearing at variable refresh rates. We personally don’t use any of these functionalities in CS:GO or Overwatch, but if you want to pay a premium for this you can go with the other options as well. Additionally, if you are already using an AMD graphics card you can use FreeSync with the XG2530 to get similar results to G-Sync.

240 HZ Monitor – Can you feel a difference?

In our testing, we can feel a significant difference between our old 144 HZ display and the new 240 HZ one. The jump isn’t as noticeable as when we first took the leap from 60 to 144 but it is still pretty impressive. It is once again one of those things you never knew you wanted. After going back to my laptop to write this article I already missed the smooth motion of my mouse pointer.

For dedicated competitive gamers the decision on buying a 240 HZ monitor is very easy. We want every kind of advantage we can get. Now the high price may make people think twice about the purchase but with the Viewsonic XG 2530 we have found a very reasonable value proposition. We don’t fault anyone for waiting a year or two on upgrading to 240 HZ though. In the meantime we are playing with a significant advantage 😉

Thanks for reading. We have gathered the currently available 240 HZ monitors in the table below. Take your pick and let us know in the comments on your personal favorite. You might also want to have a look at our CS:GO Pro Settings and Configs. A couple of pros are already using 240 HZ monitors as well.