Amazon Basics 24-inch FHD Monitor Review UK 2026

Display tech is genuinely exciting right now. OLEDs are getting cheaper, mini-LED backlights are appearing in monitors that don't cost a kidney, and even budget IPS panels have quietly got better than they had any right to be. So when Amazon slaps its own name on a 24-inch 1080p IPS monitor and pitches it squarely at the budget bracket, you have to ask: is this a smart buy, or is it just cheap? Having dug through the spec sheet, compared it against the competition, and read through what 203 owners are actually saying, the answer is more nuanced than the price tag suggests.

The short version: this is a solid, no-drama office and casual-use monitor that does exactly what it promises. It won't blow your mind. There's no HDR worth talking about, no fancy adaptive sync branding, and the stand is about as adjustable as a park bench. But the IPS panel, the 100Hz refresh rate, and the HDMI plus DisplayPort connectivity make it a genuinely useful bit of kit at a budget price. If you need a second screen, a home-office workhorse, or a casual gaming monitor that won't make your eyes bleed, this is worth a serious look.

One thing before anything else: owners consistently mention a protective film on the panel that needs removing before use. It ships with a date-code film over the screen surface to prevent shipping scratches, and if you don't peel it off, the image will look washed out and slightly milky. Amazon's own listing highlights this. Peel it. Then you'll see what the panel actually looks like.

Connectivity is where things get interesting for a budget monitor. You get one HDMI port and one DisplayPort. That's a proper dual-input setup, which means you can have a PC plugged into the DisplayPort and a games console or laptop into the HDMI without swapping cables. A lot of monitors at this price level give you two HDMI ports and call it a day, so having DisplayPort here is genuinely useful. The DisplayPort standard also handles higher bandwidth than HDMI 1.4, which matters if you're pushing 100Hz reliably. Built-in speakers are included too, though we'll come back to those.

VESA compatibility is confirmed, which means you can ditch the stand and mount this on a monitor arm if you want. Given the stand's limited adjustability (more on that later), this is actually an important feature. The 100Hz maximum refresh rate is the headline spec that sets this apart from the flood of 60Hz budget panels still being sold in 2026. Below is the full spec breakdown.

Compared to VA panels, IPS trades some contrast depth for better colour consistency and faster pixel response. VA panels can deliver deeper blacks and higher native contrast ratios (often 3000:1 or more versus a typical IPS 1000:1), which makes them better for dark-room movie watching. But VA panels at budget price points often suffer from "smearing" in dark scenes, where fast motion in dark areas looks like something's dragging behind it. IPS avoids this. For a monitor that's going to be used for office work, web browsing, and some casual gaming, IPS is the right call. Amazon made the right choice here.

One thing IPS panels are known for is IPS glow, that slightly luminous haze you see in the corners of the screen when displaying dark content. It's present on virtually every IPS panel and becomes more noticeable in dark rooms. Owner reviews don't flag this as a major issue on this particular monitor, which suggests it's within normal IPS limits rather than being an outlier. The matte anti-glare coating (standard on monitors in this class) helps in bright office environments, reducing reflections from windows and overhead lighting without the sharpness penalty of a glossy screen.

Owner feedback on image quality is broadly positive. The 4.5-star average from 202 is higher than you'd expect for a budget monitor, and the comments consistently mention that out of the box (once that protective film is removed, which catches a surprising number of people out) the picture looks clean and well-balanced. Colours appear natural rather than oversaturated, which is actually what you want for an office display. Some budget monitors crank the saturation to make the colours pop in-store, but it makes everything look a bit garish in daily use.

Brightness uniformity is not specified by Amazon, which is typical for budget monitors. Published measurements on comparable budget IPS panels generally show some variation across the panel, with edges sometimes being slightly dimmer than the centre. This is normal and usually only noticeable on plain white backgrounds. For mixed-content use, office work, and gaming, it's unlikely to bother you. The matte coating does a solid job of keeping the image usable under office lighting, which is where this monitor is going to spend most of its life.

Adaptive sync is not explicitly confirmed in the product listing. Amazon doesn't advertise FreeSync or G-Sync compatibility for this monitor. That's if you're planning to use this for gaming with a variable-rate GPU. Without confirmed adaptive sync support, you may see screen tearing if your frame rate drops below the monitor's refresh rate. For casual gaming at consistent frame rates this is fine, but competitive players who care about tear-free output should factor this in. That said, at 100Hz, if your GPU is pushing frames consistently, tearing is less of an issue than it would be at 60Hz.

The variable refresh rate ecosystem has become a standard expectation at even budget price points, so the lack of confirmed adaptive sync is a mild disappointment. Monitors like the AOC 24G2 and the Acer Nitro series both offer FreeSync at similar or only slightly higher prices. If tear-free gaming is a priority. But if you're buying this primarily as an office monitor with occasional gaming on the side, the 100Hz without adaptive sync is still a meaningful upgrade over 60Hz alternatives.

For context, the panels that genuinely achieve sub-2ms GtG response times are fast IPS panels (like those in gaming monitors from LG and ASUS at significantly higher prices) or TN panels (which sacrifice colour and viewing angles to get there). At this price point, with this panel type, you're looking at typical budget IPS response behaviour. Owner reviews don't flag visible ghosting as a problem in everyday use, which is consistent with what you'd expect from a modern IPS panel in this class. Dark-scene ghosting in fast-paced games might be faintly visible if you're looking for it, but it's not the smearing you'd see on a budget VA panel.

Motion clarity at 100Hz is genuinely better than at 60Hz even without overdrive settings, simply because each frame is displayed for a shorter time. For casual gaming, FIFA, some light FPS play, racing games, that kind of thing, this monitor is more than adequate. If you're grinding ranked matches in a competitive FPS and every millisecond of input-to-display latency matters, you probably already know you need a 144Hz or 165Hz fast IPS panel, and this isn't that. But for the vast majority of people buying a budget monitor, the response time here is a non-issue.

What budget monitors at this level don't do well is wide-gamut content. DCI-P3 coverage (the colour space used for cinema and increasingly for HDR content) is typically around 70 to 75 percent on panels like this. That's not enough for serious colour-critical work like photo editing or video grading. If you're a photographer or video editor, you need a monitor with verified wide-gamut coverage and a low Delta-E score, and this isn't positioned as that product. For everything else, the colour output will look perfectly natural and pleasing.

Factory calibration is not mentioned, which means out of the box you may want to nudge the brightness down a touch and adjust the colour temperature if the image looks slightly cool or warm to your eye. Owner reviews generally describe the image as looking good straight away, which suggests the factory settings are reasonable rather than wildly off. There's no colour profile included in the box, and no mention of per-unit calibration. For an office and entertainment monitor at this price, that's entirely expected and entirely acceptable.

The VESA DisplayHDR certification scheme has tiers starting at HDR400, which requires just 400 nits of peak brightness and no local dimming. Monitors with this badge don't look meaningfully different in HDR mode compared to SDR. So the fact that Amazon hasn't plastered an HDR badge on this monitor is, weirdly, a point in its favour for honesty. You're not going to be disappointed by fake HDR that doesn't deliver.

In practical terms, if you're watching HDR content on this monitor, your operating system or media player will likely tone-map it down to SDR anyway, and it'll look fine. HDR gaming will similarly be rendered in SDR. This is not a monitor for HDR content, and it doesn't pretend to be. For Netflix, YouTube, office work, and gaming in SDR at 100Hz, it's well suited. Just don't expect Dolby Vision-style contrast punch. That requires a very different (and much more expensive) display.

Brightness is similarly unspecified, but comparable budget IPS panels typically land in the 250 to 300 nit range at maximum. That's adequate for most indoor environments. In a bright office with windows, you might find yourself pushing the brightness slider higher than you'd like, but it should be manageable with the monitor positioned sensibly. Direct sunlight on the screen is going to be a problem regardless of monitor, and the matte coating helps reduce glare rather than eliminate it.

Owner reviews don't flag brightness as a significant complaint, which suggests the panel performs acceptably in real-world conditions. The 4.5-star average across 202 is a useful data point here: if the panel were genuinely too dim or washed out in normal use, that rating would be lower. The contrast and brightness performance appears to be what you'd expect from a competent budget IPS panel, nothing spectacular, but nothing that's going to make you regret the purchase either.

This is where the VESA compatibility becomes genuinely important. VESA mounting means you can remove the stand entirely and attach the monitor to a monitor arm, a wall mount, or a dual-monitor stand. A decent monitor arm costs around £20 to £40 and transforms the ergonomics completely, giving you full height, tilt, swivel, and reach adjustment. If you're planning to use this monitor for long work sessions, budgeting for a basic arm alongside. The VESA standard used is not specified in the listing, but 75x75mm or 100x100mm are the most common patterns for a 24-inch monitor.

Build quality at this price is predictably plastic-heavy. Owner reviews describe the build as feeling light but not flimsy, and assembly is reported as straightforward. The stand attaches simply, and the overall footprint is compact enough for smaller desks. The bezel is slim on three sides, which is what you'd expect from a modern monitor even at this price. There's no RGB lighting (good, it'd be pointless on an office monitor), no cable management channel in the stand, and no USB hub. All of that is fine for the price. The build does what it needs to do.

The HDMI specification version and the DisplayPort version are not confirmed in the listing. HDMI 1.4 supports 1080p at up to 120Hz, so it should handle 100Hz without issue. DisplayPort 1.2 supports 1080p well above 100Hz with bandwidth to spare. Either way, you should be fine running 1080p at 100Hz on both inputs. There's no USB-C port, no Thunderbolt, and no USB hub. For a budget monitor aimed at office and entertainment use, that's not surprising, but it matters if you were hoping to use this as a USB hub for peripherals.

The built-in speakers are confirmed. Amazon describes them as delivering "clean, clear audio performance," which is the kind of language that tells you they're functional rather than impressive. Built-in monitor speakers at this price are fine for video calls, background music, or YouTube. They're not going to replace a decent pair of headphones or even a small desktop speaker set for anything you actually care about listening to. But having them there means one less thing to buy if your setup is minimal. There's no headphone jack mentioned in the listing, so audio out options are not confirmed beyond the built-in speakers.

• 1x HDMI
• 1x DisplayPort
• Built-in speakers
• VESA mount compatible

The AOC 24G2 is arguably the benchmark for budget IPS gaming monitors. It offers 144Hz, confirmed FreeSync Premium support, and a well-regarded IPS panel with strong colour accuracy. Published measurements from display-focused outlets have consistently shown good sRGB coverage and reasonable factory calibration. The trade-off is price: the 24G2 typically sits a little higher in the budget bracket than the Amazon Basics monitor. If you're gaming and adaptive sync matters to you, the AOC is the stronger choice. The Acer Nitro QG241Y offers 75Hz IPS with FreeSync at a lower price, which makes it a competitor at the very bottom of the budget bracket, though 75Hz is noticeably less smooth than 100Hz in everyday use.

Where the Amazon Basics monitor holds its own is in the combination of 100Hz, IPS panel, and dual HDMI plus DisplayPort connectivity at a competitive price. It's not the fastest, it's not the most colour-accurate, and it doesn't have confirmed adaptive sync. But it covers the bases that matter for office use and casual gaming without making you pay for gaming-specific features you don't need. The 4.5-star average from real owners is genuinely competitive with the ratings those established alternatives carry. That's not nothing.

The weaknesses are real but predictable. No confirmed adaptive sync is a genuine gap if gaming is your main use case. The stand is basic and non-height-adjustable, which matters for long work sessions. Contrast is typical IPS rather than deep VA. There's no HDR, no wide-gamut coverage, and no USB hub. If any of those things are important to you, you already know you need a different monitor. But if you're fitting out a home office, setting up a second screen, or just want a solid everyday display that won't give you grief, this is a smart buy in the budget bracket.

Who is this for? People who need a reliable, good-looking 24-inch display for office work, web browsing, streaming, and light gaming. Students. Home workers. Anyone setting up a secondary screen. People who want 100Hz without paying gaming-monitor prices. Who should skip it? Serious competitive gamers who need confirmed adaptive sync and 144Hz or higher. Content creators who need verified wide-gamut colour accuracy. Dark-room film enthusiasts who want deep blacks (look at a VA panel instead). And anyone who thinks "Amazon Basics" means "scraping the bottom of the barrel" should know that this particular product punches noticeably above its price.

If you genuinely don't need 100Hz and just want the cheapest functional IPS display you can get, something like the Acer Nitro QG241Y at 75Hz costs less and covers the basics. That's the honest cheaper alternative if your use case is purely office work and you're not fussed about the smoother refresh. But if 100Hz at this price sounds like good value to you, that's because it is.

Overall rating: 7.5 out of 10. Strong for the price, honest about what it is, and backed by owners who are genuinely happy with it. That's about as much as you can ask from a budget monitor in 2026.