With the holidays here, it's time to look back on the monitors I?ve seen in the past year and determine what really stands out. This year has seen the availability of 4K displays rise while the price has fallen dramatically. Where the first 4K display we reviewed cost over $3,000, now I see a 4K monitor at Costco for under $600 when I go shopping, or you can even find them for $400 at Monoprice.

This rapid rise in availability of panels has not been without issues, as DisplayPort and HDMI hardware are still playing catch-up, while Windows continues to lag with DPI scaling. With these two issues, my advice on 4K remains to wait until you can buy a display with HDMI 2.0 and/or DisplayPort 1.3 chipsets so you are not stuck using MST and other work arounds to drive them past 30Hz. This also gives software vendors more time to bring their software up to speed with HiDPI resolutions and scaling inside of OS X and Windows.

My recommendations for displays focus on general use and not on gaming or professionals. This next year will see more gaming display reviews coming, so people after those will be happy to see more reviews in that area soon.