Best monitor for photo editing and video editing (2026)

1. Colour coverage

A monitor can only display part of the visible colours. Three spaces serve as references: the sRGB, the web standard; the DCI-P3, the standard for cinema and modern displays, about 25% wider; andAdobe RGB, historically tied to print, more extensive in greens and cyans.

Today it is DCI-P3 that counts most: it is the working space of iPhones, Macs and HDR video streams. The G27P, G32P and Q32S cover 99% of DCI-P3, the P40K 98%. Remember that below 95%, a monitor simply cannot display certain colours in your files — it replaces them with the closest approximation, without telling you.

2. Colour depth

An 8-bit panel displays 256 shades per channel, or 16.7 million colours. A 10-bit panel displays 1024 per channel, or more than a billion. The difference is invisible on an ordinary photo: it shows on wide gradients — a sky, a gradient background, skin in soft light — where 8-bit produces visible banding while 10-bit stays continuous. Every monitor in this selection is 10-bit.

3. Real contrast

This is the most often overlooked number, and yet the most visible day to day. An ordinary IPS panel tops out around 1000:1: black appears dark grey. The IPS Black technology in the G27P and G32P doubles that ratio to 2000:1, which changes how you read shadows in an underexposed photo or a night scene. The QD-OLED in the Q32S goes far further still, to 1,500,000:1, but with lower sustained full-screen brightness.

4. Sustained brightness

Mind the nuance: a monitor advertised at 1000 nits generally only holds that figure over a small area of the image, for a few seconds. What counts for work is sustained full-screen brightness — 600 nits for the G27P, 500 nits for the G32P. These values let you work in a bright room without the image looking washed out.

Why resolution also counts in editing

People associate 5K and 6K with crisp text. For a photographer the benefit lies elsewhere: it is the ability to judge grain, sharpness and compression artefacts at 100% without the zoom filling the whole screen. On a 32-inch 4K panel, an image shown at 100% quickly overflows; on a 6K, you see the photo at full resolution with the tools around it.

For a video editor the reasoning is comparable: a 6K panel lets you show a program monitor in native 4K, at real scale, while keeping the timeline and panels visible.

Matte or glossy?

The question divides opinion, and the right answer depends mostly on your room. A mattecoating, like the P40K's, scatters reflections: it is the choice for a desk facing a window. It also scatters very slightly the light emitted by the panel, which imperceptibly softens the rendering. A glossy anti-reflectivecoating, as on the G32P, preserves maximum contrast and saturation — provided there is no direct light source behind you.

In practice: bright room or window behind you, choose matte. Controlled room, indirect lighting, choose glossy.

Should you calibrate, and how?

The G27P and G32P are individually factory calibrated, which is enough for a large share of uses. Personal calibration remains useful in two cases: if you print and need screen and print to match, or if several of you work on the same graphics chain and need to align workstations.

• A probe is enough — an off-the-shelf colorimeter and its software generate an ICC profile that macOS or Windows applies automatically.
• Set the brightness before anything else. For print work, the usual reference is around 120 cd/m², well below the monitor's maximum. The DDC/CI protocol lets you set that value from the computer; we detail the available tools on the brightness control.
• Take the measurement again two or three times a year. Every panel drifts slowly; that is normal and it takes ten minutes to correct.