If you’re shopping for a budget gaming monitor, we highly recommend the LG UltraGear 24-inch Gaming Monitor (24GL600F-B). At only P12,599, you’re getting the features a Full HD gaming display should have: a 23.6-inch 1920×1080 TN panel with 144Hz refresh rate, 1ms response time, and FreeSync. These features make this monitor optimized for games where split-second decisions are crucial. The fast refresh rate and 1m response time allow you to “take in” the battlefield immediately and respond at once (no delays; great for First Person Shooter titles). The 24GL600F-B comes with Radeon FreeSync, which lets you enjoy fast-paced action without tearing and visual stutter. These same features also make this UltraGear monitor perfect for real time strategy games (RTS). The anti-glare screen also greatly reduces glare and helps in reducing eyestrain where gaming or working for hours.
If you don’t have a lot of space on your table, then this could be the smallish gaming-optimized display to get. I know it fits well on my table, allowing more space for items I tend to want within immediate reach. The monitor is also light and easy to set up that I can easily pack it away when I need to do some spring cleaning.
And now we’re moving outside the expected features of a gaming monitor, and stepping into LG’s own little touches that make the work, video binging, and gaming experience a little better for the user.
Easy set up. Out of the box, there’s not a lot to do. Just screw the V of the base into the tube, whose top end, in turn, you’ll screw behind the monitor; then connect the power cable and HDMI to your computer, and you’re done. I like it that the ports (see picture) are designed to face you, and not pointed down. This helps you to connect cables faster and more conveniently (no neck-craning to see which ports are which). The V stand, by the way, make for a securely standing base. I know so since our cats nudged the screen and the wobble wasn’t enough to topple it down.
Cutomized Gaming Mode is good. You can access it via the toggle switch under the LG logo. Without fiddling with software in your computer, and without deep (and confusing) menus to deal with, you can switch between presets tailored both FPS and RTS games. In the settings (via the toggle), you can fine tune those presets, or if you need some easy on the eyes set up for long reading, access Reader Mode. I love this feature. There’s nothing to download and install and the settings UI is intuitive (again, you don’t feel like you’re dealing with hard-to-remember items buried in folders).
Black Stabilizer essentially pulls out details from the shadows (brightens them up) so that you see where enemies are hiding. Very helpful in FPS games.
Dynamic Action Sync allows for “real time combat”, meaning input lag is cut down so that the gaming experience in RTS and FPS games feels more responsive. Low input lag in FPS games is a good thing.
Crosshair puts a crosshair in the center of the screen. If your FPS game benefits from that, that’s all good. However, the FPS games I play all allow for the “center sight” to be moved all over the screen, so I wasn’t able to test the Crosshair.
The anti-glare display is of great help. Others would call it “matte” but the effect is the same – less glare (annoying reflections) when under bright light sources (daylight, bright indoor bulbs) and a certain muting or non-blowing out of bright parts of whatever is being shown on the display. This helps a lot in increasing your eyes’ comfort and therefore you can work and play longer. It helps, a lot, in reducing eye fatigue when I have to wrestle documents for hours on end. When coupled with the monitor’s own Reader Mode, accessing via settings via the toggle, it’s even better for long document/website reading.
The LG UltraGear 24GL600-B can also be Vesa-mounted.
Now let’s wrap this up.
The Surely Good
The bannered features work just as advertised, and these are the 144Hz refresh rate, 1ms response time, Freesync, Black Stabilizer, Dynamic Action Sync (low input lag), Customized Game Mode.
Good enough color rendering and good enough contrast to keep gamers alive. (That said, this is a budget gaming monitor where tight color accuracy is not of the highest priority; so, illustrators, animators, photographers, 3D artists, videographers, please cut it some slack.)
Value for money, given that it has the “required” features of a gaming monitor, plus LG’s own user-convenience touches (the intuitive toggle and settings UI). Also, this is priced within the same range of a midrange Android smartphone.
The Customized Game Mode is accessible via an always-within-reach toggle switch right under the LG logo. There’s no software to download or manual to read (the UI is very intuitive).
Ports behind the display “face the user” instead of pointing down, making it easier to plug in cables.
While Windows 10 has “Night Light” (accessible via Notifications Panel), which drastically removes blue color to make it easier for reading, the LG UltraGear has, within toggle-reach, Reader Mode, which is better than Night Light, in my opinion.
Good, tight, sturdy build despite being predominantly of plastic construction.
The Maybe Bad
Noticeable bezels, but through long use the bezels “disappear”. Plus, this is a small thing considering the bannered features work flawlessly.
Very slight color shift and contrast loss when viewing from the side and vertical viewing angles. Other brands with a similar price have it worse.
Fixed height, but a monitor stand solves that.
No speakers, but there’s a headphone out where you can connect your headset or external speaker. This absence doesn’t bother me since I can use my laptop’s speakers and switch back to headset mode (audio from the display) as needed.
The Final Word
All the bannered features work as advertised – excellent motion handling, low input lag, great reflection handling, 144hz refresh rate, great response time, etc. – and you get all that at an affordable price. That said, like many TN panels, there are some viewing angle problems (color shifts, contrast loss) but there’s less of those on the LG UltraGear 24GL600F-B compared to other budget gaming monitors. Again, for gaming, it’s very good – it supports Freesync VRR (variable refresh rate) so even when hooked up to a new NVIDIA graphic card via DisplayPort, you still get a wide VRR range. I think the other complaints (bezels, relatively low-resolution screen, not the best color fidelity, no height adjustment) don’t smear the value-for-money and gaming experience the LG UltraGear 24GL600F-B delivers. It’s a great gaming monitor for the price and for the gaming-relevant features it has.
