Who plays games in Australia? Australians’ love for video games is well known. Australians spend more on games than they spend on films, streaming services, pay TV, music, books or any other creative or entertainment activity.
Over 90% of Australian households own a video game device. The average age of a video game player is 34 years old and nearly one-half of those playing games are women. Older Australians love their games as well with over 40% of those 65 and over identifying as gamers.
All of this creates a market for video games and specialized video game hardware. Perhaps one of the most important pieces of kit for a gamer is the gaming monitor.
Gaming monitors are designed to make the output of your graphics card and CPU look as good as possible. This is where you see the final result of all that computing power.
Resolution
Resolution is a critical feature of any monitor. It measures the width and height of the screen in terms of pixels or picture elements.
Monitors are available with a wide variety of resolution choices. Sometimes manufacturers reference only one measurement. If you see only one number like 180p or 1440p these numbers refer to the height of the monitor in pixels. If you see 4k that is a reference to the width of the monitor in pixels.
The more pixels on your screen, the sharper the image and the smoother the on-screen action will be.
Another benefit of higher-resolution monitors is more screen real estate. You get more desktop to work with. You get a larger workspace on which to arrange windows and applications.
Screen Size
Computer monitors and gaming screens are measured diagonally from corner to corner. A larger screen combined with higher resolution means more useable screen space and a more immersive gaming experience.
Most gamers sit close to their screens. This means that the screen fills more of their vision than watching a movie on an HDTV while seated on the couch. The benefits of high-resolution screens are immediately apparent in a close-range situation.
Refresh Rate
This is the frequency at which your screen refreshes the image. Higher refresh rates make on-screen motion look smoother. This makes it easier to track fast-moving objects in a game setting. It also makes the screen more responsive in non-gaming applications.
The standard refresh rate used to be 60hz but now you are seeing rates of 120hz to 144hz. Make sure your GPU can process images at faster rates before you invest in a high refresh rate monitor.
Colour
Monitors need to be able to display thousands of subtle shades of colour. Colour depth refers to the amount of data the screen can use to build the colour of one pixel. 8-bit colour means that each colour channel uses eight bits. The total number of shades possible is over 16 million.
There is a lot more to know about gaming monitors but this brief primer will help you understand the basics and get more out of your gaming experience.
