TVs, including LCD/LED, plasma, OLED, and more. Ask for buying advice, or help others, share experiences etc.
#7966
So televisions have come a long way and are fairly close to monitor's now days, but there's still a few key differences.

Most of the cheaper televisions do not have very fast refresh rates/response times. This is a big deal for gaming on PC. TV's tend to focus more on brightness, size and viewing angles also, while computer monitor's are typically more focused towards clarity, refresh rates and resolution as well as viewing angles, brightness and size. Computer monitor's tend to not have built in speakers usually, or built-in TV tuners for that matter. Computer monitors usually offer a wider variety of Inputs as well, such as display port, VGA, DVI, and HDMI. While TV's tend to normally only offer HDMI, some will have VGA as well.

Now having said all of this, I personally used a 40" LED 1080p 60Hz TV as my PC monitor for a few years and it did fairly well. And it was a very cheap 40" TV, we are talking $250 or so. So you can use a TV as your monitor to save money.

However, if you are big on PC gaming, a TV will not offer the same experience as an actual monitor can. I recently upgraded from my 40" 1080p LED TV as my monitor to the Acer Predator X34. This is a very expensive monitor and the difference is night and day. Not only is my new monitor a curved Ultra-wide (21:9), it runs at a much higher resolution of 3440x1440 and at 100Hz. It also has Gsync, which paired with my GTX 1080, offers a much more amazing gaming experience even though the monitor is a little smaller than the 40" TV was. I can say now after experiencing both for a while, that I will never go back to a TV as my display. I do have a 50" 4k HDR TV now though which I will probably try playing some games on, but I have yet to try it.

Whatever you decide though, at this point in display technology, you should have a decent experience either way. But in general a monitor will be better. The other issue I didn't touch on was size. My 40" TV was HUGE when I used it as my monitor. I sit about a foot and a half to two feet away from my display so I would literally have to turn my head to see either edge of the display. Which isn't horrible in gaming, because it's literally like looking through a window basically. But while just at your desktop and browsing, it's pretty bad. Just TOO big if that's possible. Also, TV's don't always display small text very well and can be hard to read.

I still have to turn my head now with my Ultra-wide monitor to see either end, but for gaming it feels more natural because it fills up my peripheral vision better. And the curved screen is hard to explain, but is more immersive.

For the specific links you posted though, the monitor has an 8ms response time, which really isn't that great. And the TV is VERY off-brand. Neither of those are going to really be much better than the other, so I would suggest just going with the cheaper TV really.

If you wanted a decent monitor for a decent price though, I would very much suggest checking out some monitor's on Amazon. You can get curved 34" monitors for fairly cheap now days.

Like this for example: https://www.amazon.com/LG-29UC88-B-Ultr ... ed+monitor
34" curved 2560x1080 IPS display. Meaning it will have a better picture because of the higher pixel count, and because it's an IPS.

I'd take that over a 55" 1080p TV any day. The other thing you need to keep in mind is that the bigger the TV you get, the more stretched your picture will be. So a 20" 1080p monitor is going to offer a MUCH more crisp picture than a 55" 1080p monitor. This is because there are more pixels per inch (PPI) on smaller monitors. The bigger you go without upping the resolution the worse the picture may turn out. Especially when you sit close to the display.