1440p vs 1080p Monitors: Is Upgrading Worth It? 🔍

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Is 1440p A Waste? - 1080p vs 1440p Monitors
Yes it’s true 1080p has been the preferred resolution for professional gamers for a long time, but are they just clowns, or is there a good reason to stick to 1080p for competitive gaming in 2023.

Now this video idea came to me like a fever dream when I saw a popular streamer giving his thoughts on the idea.

But is he right, well to find out first we need to understand the real difference between 1080p and 1440p

So 1080p or 1920x1080 has a total pixel count of 2,073,600 whereas 1440p or 2560x1440 has a total pixel count of 3,686,400 pixels.

That's an enormous nearly 78% increase in resolution, which let me tell you looks much much more clear in person. This also means that targets at a distance and heck even up close will be far more detailed theoretically allowing you to potentially track and recognize targets with greater accuracy and on a personal note I get less eye fatigue when the image is clearer as well.

Now many people will say that 1440p is a waste for competitive gaming because it's much harder to run, the displays tend to have lower refresh rates, and I’ve heard some say that the PPI of 1080p on something like 24” is good enough and there isn’t much benefit to moving to a higher resolution.

That last point is just false and I vehemently disagree with the PPI argument as sure at some point a screen is so small that you can’t tell the difference, but that's not even the case on 5” phone screens let alone 24” monitors. The visual difference between 1440p and 1080p at 24 and 27” is MASSIVE and no matter what size the screen is 1440p will always have roughly 78% higher detail making PPI a metric you should mostly ignore.

And yes 1440p is harder to run, but most graphics cards today can run any game at 1440p low settings at very acceptable frame rates and the harder games to run tend to have options like DLSS or FSR to help if you can’t quite get the framerate you want, plus with now 360Hz 1440p monitors becoming available with very diminishing returns in response and input lag already happening at 240Hz especially considering LCD struggles to take advantage of framerates of 360Hz and beyond in terms of motion clarity I don’t see any reason to choose a 1080p monitor over 1440p or heck even 4K in 2023 unless the monitor and equipment to run it is just too expensive, which is a legitimate argument.

For example at 1080p a 360Hz monitor may cost you $400 and a $250 RX 7600 may be enough depending on the games you run for a total cost of $650.
However a 360Hz 1440p Monitor may cost $900 and require a $500 7800 XT to run it for a total cost of $1,400 making it far harder for many to justify purchasing, but realistically guys I think 240Hz is the sweet spot to you may be able to get away with a cheaper graphics card as well as a MUCH less expensive $450 monitor which would probably put you at a total cost of around $900 which while more expensive is FAR more reasonable.

So whether or not you can justify the extra expense is up to you, but the massive increase in clarity is certainly worth it in my opinion, and spending the same for higher refresh rate 1080p monitors to get either very very diminishing or even no returns in terms of motion clarity and system latency is certainly not.


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