CES 2026 might have been a damp squib in many areas but not when it comes to gaming monitors

Although CES 2026 wasn't the most exciting of the Vegas consumer electronics events of recent years—and heck, with all the big AI talk, there didn't seem to be much 'consumer' about it—there was at least one area of PC gaming hardware to get excited about: monitors. So rather than another day of doom and gloom talking about the rise of AI and the memorypocalypse, let's look at some positives.

Probably the most important area we saw really exciting developments in was OLED monitors. One of the biggest problems with these that has probably stopped a lot of people from taking the plunge and buying one—alongside high price tags and worries about burn-in—is text fringing. OLED panels look fantastic for gaming, but for other things, they haven't always been the best choice, because small, thin, and wriggly little shapes such as letters (the most common little digital wrigglers) have tended to look a little fuzzy when displayed on an OLED panel.

That's because of the way OLED displays its pixels. As a refresher, there are two main types of OLED panels: QD-OLED, from Samsung, and WOLED, from LG. These do things slightly differently at the sub-pixel level—QD-OLEDs have square red, green, and blue OLEDs organised in an RGB triangle, while WOLEDs have rectangular red, green, blue, and white OLEDs lined up in a row—but they're all less than perfect at displaying text.

Neither QD-OLED nor WOLED subpixel layouts have been able to give the clarity of a traditional LCD monitor's subpixel layout. Both of them have tended to make text either slightly fuzzy or shadowy around the edges. Things have improved with newer generations, but the problem hasn't been eliminated.

Now, though, new OLED panels from both LG and Samsung are coming out with a different subpixel layout. Samsung's taken a leaf from LG's book of OLED and arranged its sub-pixels into rows. LG, on the other hand, has decided to drop the white sub-pixel altogether.

Samsung is still using quantum dots with a blue backlight, so such monitors are QD-OLED, while LG is sticking to WOLED branding as it will still be using a white backlight that passes through colour filters. Despite these differences, though, the fundamental layout is the same: vertically lined rows of red, green, and blue subpixels for each pixel, which should reduce fringing.

We first saw this solution at the tail end of 2025 with the announcement of LG's new OLED panel. We haven't seen this solution in person yet, but we have seen Samsung's, as used in the MSI MPG 341CQR QD-OLED X36, an ultrawide 2K monitor with a refresh rate of 360 Hz and 300 nits of brightness.

The revised subpixels do make text look sharper, although there's a limit in this case, due to the low pixel density. Even so, our Jeremy found his overall experience using the monitor so pleasant that he scored it a mighty 92% in his review.

For CES, HyperX also announced a monitor that uses Samsung's latest 'V-Stripe' panel, this being the HyperX Omen OLED 34—and yes, HyperX having a monitor is a first, although it's HP that's making them. It's the same deal as the MSI one: 360 Hz, 21:9 aspect ratio with WQHD resolution, and so on.

At CES, we also saw Asus launch two new gaming monitors, one using Samsung's tech and the other LG's. The Samsung panel monitor, the ROG Swift PG34WCDN, is the same deal as the MSI and HyperX, but the LG panel monitor is a 27-inch, 240 Hz, 4K affair, called the ROG Swift PG27UCWM. The LG one will, presumably, fare even better on the fuzziness front thanks to incredible pixel density.

LG announced the UltraGear Evo 39GX950B at CES, which doesn't use its very latest striped panel tech, but does use its 4th gen tandel OLED tech, and our Jeremy reckons it might end up being a pen-in for the best gaming monitor of 2026. It boasts a ridiculous 5,120 x 2,160 resolution, and at 39 inches on the diagonal, those pixels are kept nice and dense.

Then there's Intel and Samsung's CES-announced partnership to work on improving OLED power efficiency. Specifically, the two companies are pushing out a technology called SmartPowerHDR, which, when in HDR mode, adjusts the screen's voltage on the fly to help reduce overall power consumption depending on what's on screen.

Both LG and Samsung have also upped the ante in the OLED TV sphere by announcing new panels that can reach 4,500 nits of brightness—though it's worth noting that figure is for small screen areas, and full-screen brightness is much lower, though still brighter than desktop OLED monitors. It's not got any of that fancy subpixel stripe stuff going on, but it's a nice improvement for the couch gaming crowd.

So, there have been some genuine improvements to OLED monitors released in and around CES, from both major panel providers. But OLED isn't the only panel tech that's had something exciting pulled out of its sleeve: IPS has, too.

That's thanks to the improvements to Nvidia's G-Sync Pulsar blur reduction technology. Monitors can cause a kind of perceived motion blur that occurs when pixels hang around in their previous spots for too long. Pulsar is a form of backlight strobing, like Ultra-Low Motion Blur (ULMB), that strobes the backlight between frame refreshes to help your eyes not perceive such persistence blur and view the moving image more clearly.

G-Sync Pulsar was officially announced at last year's CES, but there have been no monitors capable of using it until the ones just announced at this year's CES from MSI, Asus, Acer, and AOC. More importantly, though, the technology itself has actually been upgraded. Originally, Pulsar was going to strobe the backlight in full between each monitor refresh, in line with a variable refresh rate. Now, however, just one horizontal strip of pixels at a time strobes right ahead of the rolling 'scanout' that writes new pixels to the screen with each refresh.

Nvidia claims all this leads to "4x the effective motion clarity" and that the rolling strobing should reduce flickering compared to, say, ULMB. Which is all great on paper, of course, but we've not just seen it on paper. Our Andy got his lucky eyeballs on G-Sync Pulsar, and said the experience has "kinda ruined all other gaming monitors for me" because of just how clear those in-game movements are.

But don't take my word for it, take his: "The picture overall, with both fast-moving and static objects, seemed to beam straight into my retinas with impressive precision—resulting in a moving image quality that looks miles ahead of anything I've seen to date … As someone who's stood in front of hundreds (likely thousands, at this point) of extremely good gaming monitors, the way G-Sync Pulsar changes how you perceive fast moving images is downright profound."

I suppose the difficulty from here will be deciding between the two. Do you want amazing motion clarity, or some seriously vibrant colours? I suppose much might come down to cost. OLEDs have been steadily decreasing in cost over the past year, but that new one from MSI is $1,099, which ain't exactly cheap.

On the positive—perhaps optimistic—side though, now that there are newer, better OLED panels on the market, the older ones might drop even lower in price. So, perhaps an indirect effect of the new striped subpixel panels will be cheaper older OLEDs, making them genuinely viable for the average gamer on a moderate budget. We've already seen decent recent monitors that have panels using the older triangular subpixel layout go for around $400 on sale, and perhaps such monitors will go for even cheaper moving forward.

At any rate, it feels good that we've at least got one area of PC gaming hardware that isn't seeing skyrocketing prices and lacklustre improvements—memory shortage be damned. Once we sift through the performative AI rubbish that took up most of CES 2026, there's a definite gem hidden in there, and it's the promise that this year holds out for gaming monitors. Though let's just hope I haven't spoken too soon.