I spent a lot of time trying out a 600 Hz esports panel recently, and I thought that it was about as good as you could get on the refresh rate front, at least for 1080p. But now, LG has announced the world’s first 1,000 Hz FHD (1080p) gaming monitor.
The new LG UltraGear 25G590B is a 24.5-inch IPS panel that’s expected to launch in “select markets” in the second half of this year. The company claims it delivers “ultra-fast visual response, motion clarity and consistent performance, enabling players to react more quickly and maintain precision in high-speed gameplay.”
There’s been a spate of 1,000 Hz monitors announced within the last few months, but these are dual-mode ones that can only achieve the full 1,000 Hz if you drop things down to 720p. Even for competitive gamers, that resolution is a little low.
1080p is a much better shout for the kinds of competitive games that will benefit from the high refresh rate here—games like CS2, Valorant, and PUBG. Most pro gamers in CS2, for instance, play at either 1080p at 16:9 or 1280×960 (4:3, stretched), and either way they’ll be out of luck with 720p.
During my time testing the 600 Hz Zowie monitor (a TN panel, not IPS), I was surprised to find that, for competitive gaming at least, the benefit to using this refresh rate is definitely noticeable, even if only slightly so once you get above 360 Hz. That panel also has Zowie’s DyAc 2 anti-motion blur tech, and here LG is claiming its own anti-blur tech called Motion Blur Reduction Pro. It also has a matte film to prevent reflections, which can be important for competitive gaming, depending on your environment.
A Zowie XL2586X+ 600 Hz gaming monitor. (Image credit: Future)
Saying all this, I can’t help but wonder just what kind of a rig you’ll need to actually make the most of this monitor, even in less graphically intensive esports games. I, for instance, can ‘only’ hit about 500–600 fps in CS2 using an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D and AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT. Given this, presumably 1,000 fps would only be possible when using a tippity-top tier CPU like the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D, and even then I’m not too sure.
Assuming you can get the frame rates to make the most of 1,000 Hz, it’ll be a great choice for those who are very serious about competitive FPS gaming and have a bunch of money spare (presumably it’ll be an expensive monitor), but apart from that niche it might be a hard sell. Unless you really like that stand and bezel, I suppose—and I wouldn’t blame you, it’s certainly more refined than the chunky Zowie design.
