With 1440p monitors getting cheaper and cheaper over time, it’s easy to see why some gamer are upgrading their monitors, but I still use a 1080p panel as my second screen, and it’s for a specific reason: price.
If you’re on a budget or looking for a cheap secondary monitor, you can get the Acer KC242Y Hbi for just $80 at Amazon right now. As someone who updates our cheap gaming monitor deals guide almost every single week, this is the absolute cheapest I’d go for a gaming monitor as of the time of writing. Any less, and you risk poorly designed stands, high response times, and panels that just aren’t built for gaming.
It’s a 23.8-inch 1080 16:9 screen with AMD FreeSync, which should help with screen tearing.
Considering it’s so cheap, you still get some decent specs with this Acer choice. The 100 Hz refresh rate is solid, and the 1 ms response time makes it snappy enough for a quick game of Counter-Strike 2.
Being a VA panel, you won’t get as wide a viewing angle or as clean a color reproduction as an IPS screen, but you will get a nice contrast performance, and great blacks.
The ports on the back of this monitor are just okay, with one HDMI 1.4 port and one VGA port. At a pretty low 250 nits of brightness, this screen won’t perform great with light shining on the surface, but should do just fine in standard or low lighting environments.
Though some on the PC Gamer team proselytize about the greatness of a widescreen panel, my favourite setup is one with two smaller screens. Right now, I have a 1440p OLED screen that serves as my central gaming panel, then a secondary screen for information, browsing the internet, and maybe the occasional game.
My 1080p screen has served me well, and this nifty Acer model would be my choice if I needed a replacement.
