Monitors at CES 2025: Expect display tech to push the bleeding edge

CES 2025 officially begins on Tuesday, January 7, 2025, and we’re excited to see all the newfangled consumer tech products that are slated to be announced. But we already have a good idea of what the show has in store when it comes to computer monitors.

Leaks and early announcements hint that CES 2025 will see the debut of several pixel-dense OLED panels, a continued focus on faster refresh rates, the debut of a new HDMI standard, and more. If you ask me, 2025 is shaping up to be the best year ever to buy a monitor.

27-inch 4K OLED monitors go mainstream

While some 27-inch 4K OLED monitors already exist, they’re prohibitively expensive and don’t offer enhanced refresh rates. Most people are better off considering the dozens of 27-inch OLED monitors with 2560×1440 resolution instead — yet, while those are great displays, 1440p can look a bit soft compared to 4K, and the lack of 4K is a dealbreaker for anyone who needs to edit 4K video or high-resolution photos.

Thankfully, 2025 will be the year mainstream 27-inch OLED monitors make the leap to 4K. Asus posted (and quickly removed) a teaser referencing a 27-inch 4K version of the Asus ROG Swift OLED PG32UCDM before a formal unveiling last week, while MSI and Samsung joined in on starting the CES blitz early by announcing 4K, 27-inch OLED monitors with 240Hz refresh rates.

That’s just three companies, but as anyone who follows OLED monitors knows, most OLED panels used in PC monitors are manufactured by either Samsung or LG, and both companies make their new panels widely available to most monitor makers. So, once they appear in one monitor, they’re virtually guaranteed to appear in others as well.

It’s likely we’ll see several 27-inch 4K OLED monitors at CES 2025, though it could be months before they’re actually released.

The refresh rate war is cooling down

Monitor refresh rates have greatly increased over the past decade, and CES 2025 will reinforce that trend. The rumored 27-inch 4K OLED with a refresh rate of 240Hz — if it proves true — will put immense pressure on every premium monitor to deliver a similar refresh rate experience.

I also expect CES 2025 will deliver more news on Nvidia’s G-Sync Pulsar tech, which pairs high-frequency backlight strobing with adaptive sync to improve motion clarity. Nvidia announced Pulsar at CES 2024, but it still hasn’t truly launched. The Asus ROG Swift PG27AQNR is the only monitor announced to support it so far, and that one isn’t yet available. That makes CES 2025 an obvious stage for Nvidia to re-introduce Pulsar and, hopefully, announce a few more compatible monitors.

While the refresh rate wars will certainly continue at CES 2025 and beyond, the cutting edge will be blunted. The highest refresh rate monitors in 2024 reached 540Hz, and I haven’t seen signs that monitors will push any faster than that at CES 2025.

LG’s flexible monitor panel

LG kicked off CES a bit early this year when it announced its LG UltraGear 45GX990A. This 45-inch OLED monitor has a flexible panel that can be used flat or curved to a radius of up to 900R.

It’s not the first flexible OLED monitor, though. Corsair’s Xeneon Flex, released in early 2023, also had a flexible 45-inch OLED panel — and that one even bent into a more aggressive curve radius of 800R.

But LG is pushing the envelope on resolution. The 45GX990A is a “5K2K” monitor with a resolution of 5120×2160. That’s a pixel density of about 124 pixels per inch (versus the Corsair Xeneon Flex’s resolution of 3440×1440 and much lower pixel density of 83 pixels per inch). The Corsair’s soft image was my only major issue with that monitor, so it’s exciting to see a new flexible 45-inch ultrawide with a higher resolution.

While LG is the first to announce a flexible 45-inch 5K2K OLED monitor, it won’t be the last. The existence of the 45GX990A means LG has a 45-inch 5120×2160 WOLED panel that it wants to sell to others. LG didn’t offer pricing or availability for the 45GX990A, however, which hints that it could be quite some time before the monitor releases.

Yes, more AI is coming to monitors

Artificial intelligence was a major theme at last year’s show, and it will once again be a highlight at CES 2025. After all, companies are pitching AI for everything these days, from spice grinders to mattresses.

A few monitor companies already leaned heavily into AI in 2024. MSI, for example, debuted a monitor that uses AI to track off-screen enemies in League of Legends. That feature was more widely mocked than praised, but I don’t think it has scared monitor makers away from AI.

One lesser-known brand, Sansui, will show off an AI-powered gaming monitor that promises to not only “optimize for stunning visuals” but also use “integrated posture detection” to scold you if you’re slouching. If you’re skeptical of that, well, I’m right there with you. Still, it’s an example of the types of AI features monitor makers might adopt.

There’s one legitimately useful feature I’d like to see in more monitors at CES 2025: AI resolution upscaling. Televisions have been using machine learning to upscale video for years, and 2024 saw the debut of several smart monitors (like the Samsung OLED G8) with similar upscaling (though only in specific apps). I hope to see this become a trend this year.

New display standards proliferate

HDMI 2.2 will be announced at CES 2025. While the specs for HDMI 2.2 are still under wraps, it’s fair to expect they’ll improve on bandwidth, which will translate into higher supported resolutions and refresh rates.

But the announcement doesn’t mean we’ll see many monitors support it yet. Specs announcements are slow beasts, so while it isn’t unfathomable to think an HDMI 2.2 monitor might appear, it’s very unlikely.

DisplayPort 2.1, on the other hand, will have a more tangible presence. A handful of DP 2.1 monitors (like the Sony Inzone M10S) made it out in 2024, and I expect CES 2025 will bring a new wave of options.

Unfortunately, both HDMI 2.2 and DP 2.1 are a bit confusing, as both are tiered specifications that lump together display connectors with significantly different capabilities. (HDMI 2.2’s specifications aren’t yet available, but HDMI has used this tactic for its previous two versions and there’s no reason to think HDMI 2.2 will be different.)

This means understanding the connectors and cables can be difficult. Fortunately, our guide to HDMI cables can help you with that.

Keep up with more CES 2025 coverage

The doors of CES 2025 officially open on Tuesday, January 7, 2025, but most companies make their biggest CES announcements in the week prior to the show’s public exhibition. That means the CES news blitz has already started and will only continue to ramp up.

Make sure to bookmark PCWorld’s CES hub to keep up with all the key PC hardware and software announcements as they happen!