Recent updates
December 2: The $600 MSI 1440p OLED deal that had gotten me giddy has now gone the way of the dodo bird, but there remains a $700 deal that's still worth your while. The Alienware AW2725DF has everything that makes the MSI great, it just costs more: $700 (from a $900 MSRP) as opposed to the MSI's $600 ($800).
Updating our guide to Black Friday monitor deals has seriously tempted me to upgrade my display, and none of them have gotten my goat more than the MSI MPG 271QRX at 25% off on Amazon—$600 from a list price of $800.
I'm rocking an RTX 3070 you see, and even with the 50-series (and a hopefully impactful AMD equivalent) dancing on the horizon, I'm a mid-tier hardware lifer at this point. I still game on a 1280x960 CRT sometimes, and if they even made 1080p OLED monitors of a reasonable size, you better believe I'd be the first in line to buy one.
👉 We're curating the best Black Friday PC gaming deals right here 👈
But we live in a fallen world, so it looks like 1440p will be as low as I'm allowed to go if I want to sample God's own OLED technology, the display standard of the future. With blacker blacks and more vibrant colors the likes of which we haven't seen since the heyday of those bulky CRTs I still love so much, OLED represents a more enticing advancement to me than just packing more pixels onto a panel, and I've been enticed by reports of the Switch and Steam Deck OLED models leaving their LCD older siblings in the dust.
Even aside from my purely theoretical recommendation—channeling my desire for a setup upgrade in this off-cadence year for hardware into a deal highlight—the MPG 271QRX has some more tangible bona fides you can trust your money with. Contributor Jeremy Laird awarded the monitor an 85% in his review of the panel, with his primary complaint being its price point relative to high-end 1440p LCD displays. That high review score also secured the MPG 271QRX a spot on our list of the best OLED gaming monitors as our 1440p recommendation.
So if you're 4K-skeptical like me but still see the appeal of OLED displays, it might be worth pulling the trigger on the MPG 271QRX while it's on sale. And if this deal should go under before you shoot your shot, consider the Alienware AW2725DF as a compelling runner-up. The Alienware (bought through Dell's own site) has almost identical specifications and the same 85% review score from us as the MSI, it's just $100 more expensive on its own Black Friday discount. The Alienware on sale still beats the MPG 271QRX's $800 MSRP though, making it worth your attention.
