The 4 Best Budget Monitors of 2025
Top pick
This monitor has a USB-C port that can charge most 13-inch laptops with no other cables or power adapters required.
The BenQ GW2486TC is a budget monitor that punches above its weight (and price) in features and aesthetics, and it shows details clearly, with fairly natural colors. It offers a USB-C port that supplies 65 watts of power to a laptop that supports video over USB-C, so you can connect and charge with that single cable. It also has an adjustable stand, which is rare for a budget monitor.
Its 24-inch screen is versatile enough for getting work done or gaming. The GW2486TC has a 1080p resolution, which is good enough for sending emails, watching videos, or gaming. We spent multiple workdays using it without issue. If you’re accustomed to higher-resolution displays, application windows and text will look a bit large, because a higher resolution lets you change the scale of your operating system to look smaller and more detailed. If you’re building out a work-from-home setup, we recommend a higher-resolution 1440p monitor, which makes it easier to read text and fit more detail on the screen.
It has all the ports you need, including USB-C with power delivery. The main selling point of the GW2486TC, aside from its price, is its ports. It has a USB-C port capable of 65 W of charging, which means that, if your laptop supports it, you can connect it to the monitor with just a single USB-C cable. That cable will transmit the video data and charge your laptop at the same time. This monitor also has DisplayPort and HDMI ports to connect to computers or game consoles, plus a DisplayPort-out to daisy-chain a second monitor without connecting it directly to your computer.
It’s well designed for the price. The GW2486TC looks much sleeker than a lot of other budget monitors, with a slim bezel on three sides and white trim. It would look professional on any desk.
Flaws but not dealbreakers
It doesn’t have the brightest display. We measured the GW2486TC’s brightness at 241 nits, a tad lower than its advertised 250 nits of brightness. The screen might look a bit washed-out in bright light, especially in a room with lots of direct sunlight. For brighter options, check out our guide to 24-inch monitors.
It isn’t suitable for design or media editing. The GW2486TC supports only 8-bit color, so it can produce only 16.7 million colors, rather than the 1.07 billion colors possible on a 10-bit display. It also really covers only the sRGB color space.
