Ultrawide gaming monitors can be found for very reasonable prices these days, but you still need to be careful with the specs sheets when looking for the best deal. Ideally you want to pick a trusted brand with a good refresh rate, some useful features, and excellent specs before laying down your cash, even on a budget.
Which makes this LG UltraGear QHD 34-inch ultrawide a bit of a stunner, as it ticks all the right boxes for a great budget curved gaming monitor and you can pick one up right now for $250 on Amazon as part of its gaming week sale.
Specs wise, it's got a lot going for it. With a 160 Hz refresh rate (overclocked), a 3440 x 1440 resolution and FreeSync Premium for VRR support, it's got the ability to rapidly fire quality frames at your eyeballs across that 34-inch panel with excellent smoothness—especially when paired with a powerful graphics card—and the Dynamic Action Sync for reduced input lag should keep you up to pace with the action.
HDR10 support and an sRGB coverage of 99% should help black levels and colors pop, along with a decent 1ms MBR response time to keep blur to a minimum, although it does have a 5ms GtG rating, which isn't the fastest. It's worth noting that this is a VA panel, not a speedy IPS, so the usual VA caveats of potential black smearing or ghosting do apply.
It's also got a 3,000:1 contrast ratio, which is very impressive for this sort of money, and is rated for 300 nits brightness, which, while not exactly eye-searing, is reasonable for the price.
That 1900R curve is on the gentle side, and the substantial stand keeps things stable with height and tilt adjustments, although that's about your lot as far as ergonomics goes. Connectivity-wise there's a choice of two HDMI 2.0 ports (no HDMI 2.1 here, I'm afraid) and a DP 1.4 input.
While this LG UltraGear 34GP63A-B might not be the last word when it comes to ultrawides, for the money you're looking at some great specs for a lot less than you might expect. For a bit more you could upgrade to an IPS panel (or for a lot more, an OLED) and we've got plenty of ultrawide options on our cheap monitor deals to consider if you do—but if you've been hankering for a big, wide and great-performing display for a relatively small amount of cash, you'd struggle to do much better than this.
