TN vs IPS vs VA Monitors for Gaming
Finding a good gaming monitor is all about knowing what your priorities are and which specs to look at when deciding on a panel. You can have a limited budget and get a great monitor for gaming, and you can also spend a lot of money for a subpar experience.
The single most important aspect of a monitor is the type of panel it is using and this is the very first thing you should be looking at. Depending on what you want your monitor to do your panel choice will vary.
TN Panels
TN panels (Twisted Nematic) are the most used in monitors designed for gaming. The reason for this choice is the fact that TN panels are fast and produce a clear image without ghosting or blur. A lot of the competitive 240Hz monitors are still using TN panels, in fact, the most popular eSports monitor the Zowie XL2546 is still recommended to this day because of its incredible response times and clarity.
At the same time, TN panels are quite outdated by modern standards and produce a very flat image that lacks colors while also having below-average viewing angles. Compared to IPS or VA panels it is impossible to do color-accurate work on a TN panel meaning that you should not invest in a TN panel for productivity or work.
TN panels are the cheapest and fastest, therefore, are the most common budget-friendly gaming monitors on the market.
IPS Panels
IPS panels (In-Plane Switching) were designed with the idea of surpassing TN limitations and making monitors with far better viewing angles and color accuracy. Currently, IPS panels are the best when it comes to color accuracy and consistency and offer the maximum possible viewing angles.
Initially, IPS panels were far slower than TN panels introducing extra response times and ghosting but the current generation of IPS panels have gotten insanely good at being fast (240-360Hz, 480Hz soon) and blur-free. IPS panels are also quite often paired with bigger sizes and resolutions (1440p 240-360Hz) for a better gaming experience.
Right now most decent gaming monitors are all IPS (the best 240Hz monitor recommendation is IPS) since the technology was able to progress to a stage where it could produce vibrant, color-accurate, and blur-free images during a lot of motion on the screen.
IPS might still not be quite on par with TN panels when it comes to response times but it is already 99% there while boasting a lot of other advantages compared to TN.
VA Panels
VA panels (Vertical Alignment) are the most suitable for media consumption because of their inherent properties of having the best contrast and black uniformity. VA panels are not the best when it comes to viewing angles (about the same as TN but worse than IPS), color accuracy (better than TN but worse than IPS), and response times/ghosting/blur (Worse than TN and IPS) making them hard to recommend when it comes to gaming.
A lot of VA panels come as curved monitors which might look cool, but no matter the amount of time invested in optimizing settings or testing overdrive modes a VA panel will always have visible ghosting and offer less clarity than TN/IPS monitors.
In short, while being great for content consumption, VA panels are quite bad for gaming so you should stay away from them.
Basic Advice
Considering all of the information above this is how you should choose your gaming monitors: IPS>TN>VA.
IPS: best color accuracy, best viewing angles, fast panels that can reach 360 Hz and more, amazing visual clarity, almost on par with TN panels when it comes to response times.
TN: best response times, bland colors, not the best viewing angles, fast panels – 240 Hz, amazing visual clarity.
VA: best contrast, best black uniformity, average viewing angles, not the fastest panels (can reach 240 Hz), slow technology resulting in blur and afterimages during fast movements – avoid for gaming, use for media consumption.