Many of us have been using home offices for months now, but it seems like now is the best time to upgrade your setup. While there are offerings built for professional artists and gamers, the ViewSonic VX3276-2K-MHD is a widescreen QHD monitor designed for anyone looking for a solid monitor that provides a good amount of workspace.
The ViewSonic VX3276, one of the best budget 1440p monitors, gives you precisely that. Similar to the 32-inch ViewSonic VX3276-4K-MHD (3840×2160), the manufacturer has cut the features on this monitor down to the bone without cutting out key specs. This is a widescreen monitor with a native 1440p resolution and HDR10 support, coming in far less than competing monitors.
Just keep in mind that the VX3276-2K-MHD isn’t built to compete with the best gaming monitors, but its 250cd/ms peak brightness allows for some healthy viewing, and its image quality is good, so long as you don’t demand pixel-perfect color out of the box.
This might easily be the best candidate for households, offices, or businesses looking for a nice-looking and affordable widescreen monitor.
ViewSonic VX3276-2K-MHD Specs
- Monitor Size: 32”W (31.5” Viewable)
- Panel Technology: SuperClear PS TFT LCD
- Resolution: 2560 x 1440
- Display Area: 698.11mm (H) x 392.68mm (V)
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Brightness: 250 cd/m² (Typ)
- Contrast Ratio: 1200:1 (Typ)
- Response Time: 4ms (GtG
Design
Ready for your 2021 work environment, whether still working from a home office or an office, the VX3276-2K-MHD’s ultra-slim frameless design, as well as the silver stand and arm, add a premium feel. The silver hue will blend nicely anywhere, and I like how the side and bottom bezels are matched.
Bezels aren’t offensive here and are barely noticeable at about 0.1-inch on the top and sides and a slightly bigger 0.4 for the bottom bezel. The stand provides stable support to the massive 32-inch screen and has four VESA holes for mounting the cabinet to a wall. However, the stand doesn’t offer swivel, height, and pivot adjustments, like the ViewSonic VP3268-4K PRO that offers all those ergonomic adjustments.
All ports on this monitor are located at the back, facing downward. Here you find one HDMI 1.4 port, a VGA port, and a DisplayPort, alongside an audio output. Also, at the rear of the cabinet, on the right side, is a power switch and five functions buttons, and a pair of 2-Watt speakers.
Picture Quality
The 32-inch IPS panel has a 2560 x 1440 resolution, a 250 cd/m2 peak brightness, a 1200:1 native contrast ratio, a 16:9 aspect ratio, a 50-75Hz refresh rate, and a 4-millisecond (gray-to-gray) pixel response.
You get significantly more picture adjustments with the VX3276-MHD than you do with most midrange monitors, including additional settings for Brightness, Contrast, and Sharpness with eight color space presets, among other calibration presets which is ideal for connecting even to your smart home security systems.
It also has advanced color settings to select one of six Color Temperature presets. Included in the box are a Power cable and an HDMI cable.
ViewSonic VX3276-2K-MHD performance
The ViewSonic VX3276-2K-MHD delivers an impressive 1440p picture out-of-the-box. Its brightness level of 250 cd/m2 looks much better than ViewSonic’s quoted figure, and its bolstered with a 1200:1 contrast ratio. The high contrast is essential, as it makes pictures vibrant and helps this monitor deliver a wide array of shades –even closely matched tones are easier to tell apart.
You won’t run into any dead pixels on this monitor, a common issue among gaming monitors, and backlight bleeding and IPS glow are not issues you’ll experience here. As with all good daily use IPS monitors, the ViewSonic VX3276 provides wide viewing angles without color variations or loss of luminance when viewed from any angle.
For gamers, the panel’s 4-millisecond (gray-to-gray) pixel response and 75Hz refresh rate won’t suffice for many games, but it isn’t the worst either. You may notice screen tearing while playing GTA V on the PC and Fallout on the XBOX 360.
Many gamers will be hard-pressed to find graphic solutions to handle 4K gaming, especially with the new Nvidia RTX 30 Series graphics cards. If you need to enjoy smooth gaming, the 32-inch Samsung Odyssey G5 offers a few excellent features that appeal to gamers.
The panel’s 14-millisecond input lag (time taken for the monitor to react to a controller command) is relatively short, though it doesn’t beat the 9.6-millisecond standard for most gaming monitors. The monitor consumes about 29 watts of power while set to Text mode and 26 watts while set to Movie mode, and a paltry 24 watts in Power Save mode.
Bottom Line
For less than $300, the ViewSonic VX3276 is a great monitor for work and entertainment. Compared to other 32-inch 1440p monitors, the VX3276-2K-MHD stands up pretty well. It’s best suited for being the single monitor in your home office setup, letting you work on those documents before switching over to enjoy some Spider-Man: Miles Morales on PlayStation 5.
The monitor does get a few compromises to keep its sweet price point. Serious gamers will need a higher rate, for example. And, you’ll have to do some tweaking if you want to achieve the best color accuracy possible. While at it, remember you’re buying a productivity monitor, so we can appreciate that this monitor works as it should.
That said, considering the price and benefits of these monitors, those drawbacks might not be a problem for you. If that’s the case, the ViewSonic VX3276-2K-MHD should have no problem earning its keep in your home office.
Our Pick
ViewSonic VX3276-2K-MHD 32 Inch Frameless Widescreen IPS 1440p Monitor with HDMI DisplayPort and Mini DisplayPort
1 used from $179.99
