TechRadar Verdict
You won’t find a 32-inch 4K monitor much cheaper than the Westinghouse WH32UX9019. You’ll miss out on HDR, any refresh rate fanciness, and any design flare. But, you get a perfectly competent monitor that can handle gaming, media and work all well enough.
Budget pricing
Bountiful screen space
Sharp as can be
Basic features
Screen tearing in games
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Two-minute review
The Westinghouse WH32UX9019 is a $379 (about £320, AU$640), 32-inch4Kmonitor that checks a few of the boxes people might be looking for in a new monitor right now. It has some gaming extra perks, like a pop-out headphone holder, but otherwise offers up a fairly simple display that bets it all on three specs: size, resolution and price.
At its price, the Westinghouse WH32UX9019 is a lot cheaper than many of thebest 4K monitors, even smaller ones. For instance, the $649 (about £490, AU$900)LG 27UD88-Wis only a 27-inch display but costs nearly twice as much. The Westinghouse WH32UX9019 is even close to the price of the MonoPrice 27” 4K UHD, but still a significantly bigger screen. ThePhilips Brilliance 328Pmay be stronger competition with a similar size screen and a few higher specs, but it costs about $655 (about £499, AU$925).
Clearly the Westinghouse WH32UX9019 is standing on firm ground when it comes to affordability. The story gets better. For gamers and users just after that simple 4K resolution for an extra sharp picture on a large display, the Westinghouse WH32UX9019 successfully delivers.
We love the crisp visuals we can get in games. We’ve been finally gliding through Batman Arkham Knight, and the 4K resolution combined with a fluid 60fps makes for a shockingly compelling gaming experience despite the age of that game. We don’t notice any latency. The solid contrast ratio of display aids experience. Movies and TV shows look great as well. It’s all even better when trying to get some work done. The 32-inch display effectively offers four laptop displays’ worth of space, and we can put a window in each corner of the display for some serious multitasking with each window getting its own 1,920 x 1,080 pixels. The display even supports 10-bit color depth.
There’s a limit to how much a monitor this price can offer though. The 60Hz refresh rate can be a bit limiting on higher-end hardware. As there’s a lack of any variable refresh rate tech like FreeSync or G-Sync, we’re confronted with the occasional screen tearing on this display. Switching from Arkham Knight toCall of Duty: Warzone and Rainbow Six Siege, we quickly see how 4K’s offer can struggle to keep up with the allure of a high refresh rate. In faster-paced games, the sharp pixels are less noticeable than the lower frame rates.
You won’t find any specialHDRfeatures on the Westinghouse WH32UX9019 either, especially considering the monitor is rated at 220 nits. That brightness level isn’t a severe drawback though, as the anti-glare finish keeps the display perfectly visible in even a well-lit room.
The simplicity of the monitor also extends to its design. While the stand appears to be more functional, it actually just offers simple angling of the display up or down. There’s no rotation, swivel, or height adjustment – of course, a display this size stands pretty tall anyway. The wide-legged may offer good stability, but it also takes up an obnoxious amount of our desk. The controls on the back are as basic and obnoxious as any. On the plus side, there is high-speed USB passthrough, something even more expensive monitors can fail to include.
The Westinghouse WH32UX9019 definitely nails the fundamentals. At its price, it’s easy to overlook the features it lacks. It’s definitely 4K, it’s absolutely large, and it can do the job it’s meant to do. Its half-hearted targeting of gamers may be misguided, though.
Buy it if…
You want a big, sharp displayThe Westinghouse WH32UX9019 absolutely nails its 32-inch, 4K promise. There’s a ton of screen space for games, movies, and work. And, all of it looks perfectly crisp. Everything from small text to tiny detail on characters in video games shows through cleanly on this display.
You want an affordable 4K monitorYou won’t have an easy time finding a 4K monitor, especially on this scale, that comes at such a low price. Sure, you can find a bigger 4K TV, but a monitor and TV are not the same thing. This monitor offers properly low response times and doesn’t suffer from any blurry text.
You like to multitaskThe combination of screen space and a 4K resolution let this monitor stand in for a multi-monitor setup. You can easily view four (or more!) windows on the display at the same time, and all of them will have plenty of space to show you the information you’re working – no need to shrink fonts or worry about the resolution making things blurry.
Don’t buy it if…
You want the best gaming featuresIt might have a headphone holder and a crosshair feature, but this monitor lacks almost any proper gaming features. There’s no variable refresh rate, no higher refresh rate, and even the response time isn’t rated as highly as other gaming monitors. You can game on it, but for the best experience, there’s plenty more it could stand to do.
You want a TV substituteThe first way this monitor fails to fill in for a TV is its complete lack of speakers. It might have the size to fill in for a TV, but it may not have the brightness to hold up in an extra bright room. It also lacks any exciting HDR implementations that evenaffordable 4K TVsare now offering.
You don’t have a powerful computerIt takes a lot to render a game at 4K. Even without a high refresh rate, hitting that 60fps cap in 4K on modern, AAA games is a serious task for even high-end graphics cards. If your computer is running a more mid-range card, you’ll likely need to dial a bunch of graphical settings down to get a stable frame rate, and that won’t look good even at 4K.
Over the last several years, Mark has been tasked as a writer, an editor, and a manager, interacting with published content from all angles. He is intimately familiar with the editorial process from the inception of an article idea, through the iterative process, past publishing, and down the road into performance analysis.
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