How to pick a PC monitor — three things you can't get wrong, plus one to taste

2026 update: ported from the old VuePress blog. The backbone — the three things to look at — still holds, but the product picks and price ranges are anchored to 2021. Verify current prices and model numbers, and swap the links to the latest equivalents.

Remote work settled in, and more people are adding a PC monitor at home. What sits on the shelves at electronics stores runs from under 10,000 yen to well past 100,000 yen, and it’s hard to tell what to compare against what.

For long office-style use, the call comes down to three things: panel type, size, and surface finish. Built-in speakers belong in the “to taste” column, and most of the time you can skip them.

The short answer — three things to get right, plus one to taste

Short version: you don’t need to compare brands or chase fine-grained specs. Tick these three boxes and you’re unlikely to end up with a monitor that gets in your way at work.

1. Panel type: IPS (image quality) or VA (price)
2. Size: 22–24 inches
3. Surface finish: matte (non-glare)

The “to taste” addition is whether the monitor has built-in speakers. If shaving one cable off the desk matters, fine; if you care about sound, buying a separate speaker is the more honest call.

Brand doesn’t matter much. The quality gap between makers has narrowed in recent years, and as long as you can handle the rare initial defect, the real-world impact is small.

Pick the panel type by budget — VA or IPS

Short version: VA if price comes first, IPS if you want the image to look better. Pick between these two and your panel-type decision is done for office use.

The reason: most of what you actually notice about how a monitor looks comes from the panel type. Numbers like response time and color gamut don’t translate into a felt difference unless you game or edit photos.

The price gap runs roughly 10,000–20,000 yen from VA to IPS. If you’d rather not gamble, IPS is the safer pick.

VA — cheap, with deep blacks

VA tends to be the cheapest tier at any given size. Black levels are strong, which suits video with a lot of dark scenes.

The weakness is viewing angle. Step off-axis and colors wash out, so it’s not a great fit for TV duty or for more than one person looking at the screen. Sitting alone, square to the panel, you won’t notice.

IPS — clean color, wide viewing angle

IPS holds color more reliably. Colors don’t fall apart when viewed from the side, which helps when more than one person is looking, or when the layout of your desk puts you at an angle to the monitor.

It costs around 10,000–20,000 yen more than VA. If this is the screen you stare at all day for work, that markup is easy to feel.

VA vs IPS at a glance

Size — 22–24 inches, the office sweet spot

Short version: 22–24 inches sits well on a desk and keeps text readable. Smaller gets cramped; bigger starts to crowd the desk.

The reason: 22–24 inches lands at roughly 49–53 cm wide and 27–30 cm tall, which plays well with the depth of a typical PC desk. It’s also the size band offices and schools standardise on.

Before you set it on your desk, measure the spot with about 5 cm of slack on top of the panel width. Recent models have thin bezels, but older models and business units can have thick ones, so always check the listed exterior dimensions on the product page.

”Bigger is better” is a separate question

27 inches and up looks tempting because of the extra screen real estate. But sit too close and you’ll move your eyes more, not less, and it gets tiring. If your desk depth is under 60 cm, start at 24 inches and see how it feels.

Surface finish — matte (non-glare)

Short version: for office use, matte is the only sensible pick. Glossy panels pick up reflections from lights and windows, and long sessions wear on your eyes.

The reason: a glossy surface reflects ambient light, which pushes you to crank the brightness. Higher brightness loads your eyes more. Phones use glossy screens because they’re built for short bursts outside, which is a different problem from sitting at a desk all day.

Unless you’re doing final photo or video review at home, you’ll never regret picking matte.

Built-in speakers — usually unnecessary

Short version: monitor speakers tend to sound mediocre. A laptop or external speaker is going to leave you happier.

The reason: built-in speakers are constrained by how thin the chassis is, and at price-conscious tiers there’s not much room to tune them. For “I just need voices to come out” — meeting audio, for example — they’re fine. For sitting down with music or video, they’re weak.

Who built-in speakers fit, and who they don’t

• You’d like one less cable on the desk; meeting audio is enough → built-in is fine
• You listen to music or video regularly and care about sound → skip built-in and buy a separate speaker

A few-thousand-yen USB or Bluetooth speaker usually beats a built-in one.

Spec targets that meet the criteria

These are not specific product names but spec targets — “pick a model that meets these.” Verify actual products and prices at purchase time.

IPS — 23-inch class

The entry-tier target that ticks 23-inch, IPS, and matte. If you want decent image quality without spending more than you need to, use this spec as your baseline.

No VESA mount, so if there’s any chance you’ll want a monitor arm later, look at a different model.

VA — 23.6-inch class

23.6-inch, VA, matte, with VESA support. The target when you want to keep the price down and leave room to add a monitor arm later.

FAQ

Q. Full HD or 4K? A. For office use at 23–24 inches, Full HD is plenty. 4K starts to earn its keep at 27 inches and up, but it brings display-scaling and GPU-load tradeoffs. For a first monitor, Full HD is the safer call.

Q. Are curved monitors good for work? A. They help if you sit alone, head-on, and want wide screen real estate or multiple windows side by side. For text-heavy office work the benefit is small and the price is higher. As a first monitor, flat is enough.

Q. Anything to watch when connecting to a laptop? A. Match the laptop’s video output (HDMI, DisplayPort, or USB-C) to the monitor’s input. A model that handles power and video over a single USB-C cable cuts down the clutter and feels noticeably tidier.

Q. Do I need a monitor arm? A. Not required, but it helps a lot when desk depth is shallow or when you want to adjust height. If there’s any chance you’ll add one later, pick a VESA-compatible monitor up front.

Wrapping up

For an office-use PC monitor, three axes — panel type, size, and surface finish — get you most of the way there.

VA if price comes first, IPS if image quality does. Size at 22–24 inches, surface matte. Built-in speakers are usually unnecessary; if you need sound, buying a separate speaker leaves you happier.

People who care deeply about image quality, or who want to push response times for gaming, have their own way of choosing. Outside of those cases, these three things are enough to avoid the bad picks.