My wife was out shopping late last week and happened upon a nice sale: a 32” curved gaming monitor for just $150. I wasn’t sure if it would make a good Christmas gift for my teens…turns out, it made a great early Christmas gift from my wife to me!
I’ve been using the big display for a few days now. First, I plugged it into our Windows gaming laptop, then my Chromebook, Nintendo Switch, and MacBook. Everything from each device looks huge, vivid, and overall great. It doesn’t take long to adjust your eyes to the curve, and with the giant 31.5 inch screen pretty much in your face, it really makes gaming more immersive.
Minecraft and Tears of the Kingdom look awesome on this thing. Oh, I should try a racing game — Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. The other game I’m focused on lately is Sea of Stars. After playing handheld-only for the first 20 hours, the game’s beautifully lit pixel-art graphics are a sight to behold on the big screen. The games’ level-design, a real highlight of this retro-RPG, stands out more than ever.
The monitor excels at gaming. As for computing, it’s great overall. I even notice my M1 MacBook Air’s 120Hz refresh rate is smooth on the display that goes up to 250Hz. At 32 inches and maxing at 1080p resolution, the computer’s UI — windows, icons, etc. — is a bit oversized at first. But I’ve quickly adjusted, and the upscale makes all text more legible, which is great for my 47 year-old eyes. I plan to get a deeper desk though so I can better fit or adjust my viewing distance and keyboard/mouse placement. Imagine that: bigger monitor, bigger desk. So much for Minimalism?
Another noteworthy feature of the MSI G32C4X is the on-screen settings UI is the best of any monitor I’ve ever used. It’s intuitive and easy because there’s one joystick button, reachable on the back-right side. You can press it in, up, left, right, and down to navigate the menus, which have a simple layout.
It also has two HDMI inputs, one Display Port, and a 3.5mm audio output. My Switch and Hub/Dock are connected to it, which lets me swap in my MacBook or Chromebook with the same mouse and keyboard. The monitor auto-finds the input signal, and you can easily select the one you want with the joystick. It lacks speakers, so any volume adjustment must be via the device that’s either sending or receiving audio.
The sturdy stand is metal (not plastic), and while it lacks telescoping or pivoting, it does have great tilting. Bezels are very thin, there are zero dead pixels out-of-the-box, and it has a 1ms response time. With a wide color gamut, it isn’t half bad for editing photos on — which I love because they’re so huge; I don’t need to zoom 1:1 on them.
The only downside might be that it’s full-HD instead of 4K. For my gaming needs, I’ve not moved to 4K and am still impressed with 1080p (mind you, I started on CRTs that were like 640×480, so my eyes see FHD as amazing). That said, the next Switch is rumored to be 4K. And given the 32” size, I think 4K for computing would be better to display more UI. Also note the aspect ratio is 16:9, not 16:10, which some may prefer.
Overall, if you’re looking for a quality monitor at a good price, I can recommend this MSI. It’s been delightful to use so far. And I think it’s going to be nice in a few months to play Xenoblade Chronicles X: DE on it.
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