Ever since obtaining a PS5 and XSX, I had difficulty identifying a monitor that could support both simulatenously, at 4K, at high refresh rates. With my MacBook, work laptop and the above consoles - needless to say, I required a lot of inputs.

Enter the MPG321 UR-QD. With bonus of added KVM! This monitor has made my life exponentially easier to deal with, switching inputs seamlessly with the KVM following a few seconds later.

Tossing up between the M32U, I'm stoked that I took a punt on this monitor instead of. The colour, auto-brightness are excellent features. The Monitor DOES HAVE A BUILT-IN MICROPHONE, which worked excellently for me in work. Only gripe is manually switching the Mic Input when gaming, but this is a very minor issue.

The Display is amazing. Simply amazing - accentuated with the HDR600 display, this makes the screen pop! Even my partner (who is not an avid gamer) could appreciate the vibrancy of the display. This monitor is a dream to use and has my highest recommendation.

With the "new normal" of working from home I was looking for a second screen to complement my 5 year old 32" 4k Samsung display. I was tossing up between a Gigabyte M32U and the MSI Optix MPG32UR-QD, and decided to with MSI's monitor because everything the Gigabyte could do, the MSI could do better.

The MSI's display is gorgeous with excellent colour space coverage and accuracy thanks to its quantum dot technology providing accurate colours even at peak brightness. That peak brightness of 400-600 nits also outperforms Gigabyte's display, but still offers satisfyingly deep blacks especially for an IPS panel. Gigabyte heavily advertised the KVM feature of their monitor, but the MSI Optix offers the same feature, letting you use the monitor as a hub for your keyboard and mouse and switch seamlessly between input devices. Both the Gigabyte and MSI Optix support a peak refresh rate of 144Hz and have VRR/Freesync support, but only the MSI Optix has full bandwidth HDMI 2.1 making it the better choice for anybody planning to hook a PS5 console up to their monitor.

While the primary reason for my buying a second monitor was to improve productivity at work, I also wanted the new monitor to be my primary gaming monitor, and the MSI Optix doesn't disappoint. I play a lot of fighting games and the input lag between making a button press and seeing the result on-screen is important. Input lag is unnoticeable to me, and if the "Hardware Unboxed" Youtube reviews are to be believed, this screen takes less than a millisecond to get image from source to screen whether at 60Hz or 144Hz, and any display lag after that is down to the speed of the panel refreshing. So unless IPS panel technology dramatically evolves over the next few years, you'll be on an equal or better footing with anybody you compete with online.

Finally the panel supports HDR600. While the peak brightness is not as high as I'd like for HDR and more local dimming zones would help provide blacker blacks, these would also drive up the cost. The HDR support is a nice-to-have feature when using the monitor for games and movies. There isn't any other panel in this price range that is going to look better for content consumption.

The MSI Optix provides an excellent balance of price to performance and has to be the pick of monitors for gamers or professional artists/editors in 2022.