The Best Photo Editing and Gaming Monitor in 2025 - A Freelancer's Review

Photo Editing Monitors (and Gaming Monitors?) in 2025

Halfway through October and wedding season, tragedy struck. I was opening Lightroom Classic at midnight on a Wednesday and my main monitor simply shut off. I thought it was a glitch of some sort so I tried the classic IT Crowd fix. Unfortunately, on reboot, both displays sat dark. After much troubleshooting that I won't bore you with, it was clear that my BenQ SW270C was a goner. Dead-zo. No longer of this mortal Earth. This was very problematic for many reasons such as the 10,000+ photos in my editing backlog. The hunt was on for a new monitor.

This will read a little differently than your classic "best editing monitos of 2025" articles because I had specific needs and I didn't have the luxury of testing dozens of displays to find my favorite. If you're interested in my process, keep reading. If you'd like to skip to what I settled on, scroll to the last paragraph or two of this blog and it'll be linked below.

Also, please note that I'm not a tech review outlet and learned a lot of this as I went. I might be wrong on some of the technical info and if I am, I apologize. Also also, I included affiliate Amazon links to some of the models but I highly encourage shopping around for the best deal if you can.

Search Methodology, FAQ's, and Models Reviewed

Parameters: I am a full-time freelancer, and my workload is primarily weddings, architecture, commercial portrait work, and editorial portrait work. Color accuracy and panel consistency were my primary focus, but I'm not doing work where I need absolutely perfect colors (graphic design, product work, broadcast video editing, etc). Most people view my work on their screens so my color workspace is sRGB and I rarely have to handle print work myself. I do not do video.

Secondary parameters: I like gaming quite a bit. Ideally, I wanted a responsive and quick panel. This is what made the search so frustrating - it seems most good monitors are either super fast for gaming OR super accurate/consistent for color. If you look at most of BenQ and Eizo’s lineup, they’re all 60hz which isn’t ideal for online/fast paced gameplay. If you look at gaming models, their colors are all over the place and their displays are frequently inconsistent.

Things I learned/Questions:

• Why should I choose an IPS monitor instead of an OLED monitor? While OLED has come a long way, it still has some issues with burn-in and pixel degradation. When my Lightroom panels are up 8+ hours a day, I didn’t want to take that risk. Also, while OLED offers a superior viewing experience with improved contrast, blacks, and saturation, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s accurate or better for editing. Almost every professional photo resource I checked with recommended IPS, and there’s a reason high end photo editing monitors still use IPS panels. Last, running a business has a lot of productivity work and OLED 1440 has a reputation for soft text lines due to internal mechanics I barely understand and if I’m sending emails for hours, I’d like it to look sharp. Which leads to…
• Why 1440 instead of 4K? For me, I run a 3080ti and a Ryzen 5700x. It’s a great build. But after consulting Microcenter techs, Reddit mods, and IT buffs, everyone said the same thing: for gaming, it won’t run 4K great. Especially not with 2 monitors. It’s not that it won’t run it at all, but overall FPS will be lower and tax my system more. As for editing, quite frankly, 4K is overkill for photo work and at 2x+ the cost, I figured that money is better saving for a new PC build than buying a monitor I can’t use to its full glory. 
• What about ultrawides? Honestly, this is a personal choice. But it came down to how Lightroom would fit on my display and being used to separate screens vs 1 wide one. Lightroom is designed for a standard monitor size ratio and while some users have found creative ways to use the second screen feature on an ultrawide, Lightroom is not really designed with that in mind
• Ok so why not buy a cheaper gaming monitor, color calibrate it, and move on with your life? Aha! Great question. It’s not just about color accuracy on the label, but also about brightness, contrast ratios, and color consistency across the panel. Lots of cheaper panels don’t have a consistent display while advertising 140% sRGB coverage, which isn’t a good thing anyways because…
• 100% sRGB (or whatever color space you work in) is better than +100%. I was fooled by this marketing technique too. But from what I’ve read, you want as close to 100% as possible. Under 100 means you’re undersaturated and not displaying enough color, but over 100 just means you’re oversaturated. It’s not the flex I thought, unfortunately. Which makes sense when again, BenQ and Eizo advertise 100%, not 2589230%. But wait, if I keep referencing BenQ and Eizo, why not just look at their product lineups?
• Eizo is expensive and I’m just not on that level. Spending $2k+ on a monitor is a totally valid business expense but quite frankly, neither me nor my level of clients will be able to tell the difference no matter how much I tell myself I needz my precious. As for BenQ, I had the SW270c for 3 years until it just turned off one evening and never turned back on. It could be a one-off situation but for $800+, repairs that cost as much as a monitor, and a crummy 1 year warranty, I was just disappointed. I was never impressed by the panel anyways and repairs cost as much as a new one which sent me down the rabbit hole of what else exists. Likewise, the low refresh rates didn’t satisfy my requirements.

Stats I looked for:

• For editing: an IPS panel, 1440 resolution, 27in display (personal choice), 100% sRGB. Matte/anti-glare screens were a bonus. While I didn’t have a specific contrast ratio or display color number in mind, I did compare models.
• For gaming: At least 120hz refresh rate, 1-5ms response time. Not the best, but a compromise considering I’ll never be a pro esports competitor and it’s time I came to terms with that.
• Budget: preferably less than $1000, but I was prepared to spend up to $1500 for an ultrawide to replace both of my current monitors. This is more than average consumer panels cost but since I do this for a living, skimping on my monitor which affects my entire end product felt silly when I’m ready to drop double that on a lens. 

Monitors I noted above the rest (note, I reviewed 4K, ultrawides, and everything in between before settling on the above stats):

• Dell Ultrasharp models. I ended up passing because they have terrible specs for gaming, though they have incredible specs for productivity. I highly recommend them if you need a hub and monitor combo and aren’t concerned with gaming. 
• BenQ DesignVue/PD/SW models. Aside from the aforementioned bad taste, this is what the B&H techs recommended over the phone. They’re super consistent across the panel which is a standout feature and color accurate out of the box. They have a good rep. But they’re expensive, top out at 60hz refresh rates, and I came to the decision that you’re paying a premium for a name that doesn’t have as much of an industry lead as it used to. Other brands have started to catch up.
• Apple Studio Displays. Honestly I didn’t really look at these but they have an amazing reputation. Problem is, I’m on windows. They’re also expensive and I was curious if anyone else competes for a lower price point.
• Asus ROG Swift OLED, HP Omen Transcend 32 OLED, and other sick gaming monitors with RGB lights and cool features. Man was I tempted. But it all came down to OLED longevity and burn-in concerns.
• And a bazillion other models I can’t even remember. While this isn’t a helpful sentence, it covers just about all of the brands I don’t name that are in the $100-$500 range and sold by Best Buy, Microcenter, and Amazon. Common complaints include cheap panels that break right outside of their warranty windows, horrible customer service issues, panels with inconsistent production lines, panels with inconsistent displays, panels where the entire screen was tinted green, panels that ship and arrive damaged, panels that advertise specs that they don’t really live up to, terrible IPS glow, and more. It really boiled down to if you try to cheap out, it’s very easy to get a cheap product that you’ll need to replace soon anyways.

My Photo Editing Monitor of Choice

What I decided to buy (shockingly) was from the Asus ProArt Series. If you haven’t heard of this production line, it’s Asus’ creative hardware for PC’s. I have their motherboard as well and it serves my custom PC build quite nicely. I originally blew these off as budget line monitors that couldn’t possibly be good (no idea why I made this judgement) but the more reading I did, the more often I saw the name come up. While they seem like they’re trying to capitalize on the “broke artist/student who wants to buy something labeled ‘art’”, they’re actually meant for exactly that demographic WHILE STILL actually delivering a quality monitor. It’s like when you try a gluten free cookie and for once, it’s shockingly just as good as a gluten full cookie.

I’ll sum up hours of Reddit threads and random photo blogs for you. Several professional colorists and editors way way way above my paygrade said that their office staff were outfitted with these monitors and that straight out of the box, they outperformed almost everything else they tested for color accuracy and consistency. While the high end editing monitors still score excellently well, they’re expensive to outfit an entire staff with. And at a broadcast level of production, professional colorists are using displays that you can’t buy at B&H and cost as much as a Honda Civic.

Specific models I reviewed because there are a ton and it got confusing quick:

• PA278QV Gen2: this is the cheapest one I found still worth buying. At $249, it’s a steal but it lacked the higher refresh rate I wanted for gaming. That said, it’s still 120hz which is double what the BenQ monitor had. If I was on a tight budget, this would be pick number one.
• PA278CGV: This is the one I ultimately bought (spoiler alert). It’s only a little more expensive ($369) but the refresh rate was 144hz and it included additional ports. But…that’s really it. Theoretical brightness, contrast ratio, display colors, response time, color space coverage, and screen quality were all the same. Which is nuts. Maybe I should have bought the Gen2…
• PA27UCGE: This is the 4K big daddy. At $949, it’s priced alongside other professional editing monitors and rightfully so. It has better PPI, improved DCI-P3 coverage, brightness, and even more ports. It comes with a hood and the screen has additional anti-glare coatings. Response times are faster at 1ms and 160hz refresh. Interestingly though, the sRGB coverage and display colors are the same as the previous 2 models.  

After much deliberation, I did the opposite of what I usually do. Instead of just going for the shiny expensive model and charging it to the card, I ended up getting the PA278CGV. As amazing as the PA27UCGE sounded, it was more than double the cost for no change in arguably the most important criteria - color accuracy. And yes, I know that specs like brightness and contrast ratios are also arugably more important, it wasn’t enough for me to tip towards it. The gaming specs were better but only modestly so, and if I want a hood that badly, I can make one out of cardboard from the shipping box. Lastly (and if I’m honest this is the main reason I didn’t buy it) as sexy as 4K is, if my PC can’t run AAA games smoothly at 120fps, I’ll just stick to 1440p which is still absolutely stunning to look at. 

A few weeks later...

After a few weeks of using the Asus ProArt PA278CGV, she’s beautiful. I don’t regret the purchase so far and if anything, I’m more certain that I made the right choice. The display is easy on the eyes for prolonged periods and the colors are rich. The screen brightness keeps up in my obnoxiously bright office room even midday. Games look phenomenal and play very smoothly even when it’s more frantic and fast paced online gameplay. And most importantly, editing is a joy. I did note that images on this monitor do appear slightly more saturated than they do on my phone and backup monitor (which are both cheap displays) but I’m planning on calibrating it with a Spyder soon to double check how close it is out of the box. Maybe one day I’ll get a fancier model but for the value of this one, it might be a while before I feel the need to do so.