If your top priority when looking for your next gaming monitor is getting the most bang for your buck, the $159.99 Viotek GN24C is a great starting option. This no-frills, back-to-basics 24-inch display is all performance-focused, sacrificing extra features on the cabinet and connectivity fronts for great gameplay out of the box. Its VA panel looks better than some at twice the price, and the GN24C’s gaming performance is strong enough to keep it in contention with the best mainstream gaming panels around.
Sticking to the Basics
The Viotek GN24C is a curved 24-inch, full HD (1,920-by-1,080-pixel) monitor with a 144Hz refresh rate, built around a standard VA panel. I’ve reviewed some stripped-down monitors in my time, but only a few have been as feature-light as this one.
The GN24C is all about the business of going fast before all else, shedding just about everything you’d expect in a gaming monitor these days, even in the budget category. You get no RGB lighting, no height or swivel adjustment, not even a joystick to navigate the onscreen menus. The back of the unit contains a lone Viotek logo, along with vents for the two 3-watt (and entirely bass-free) speakers, as well as a mounting bracket for the stand.
Speaking of the stand, you’ll be assembling it manually using some screws that look straight out of your local Ace Hardware. None of that process is gussied up or hidden.
The stand is mounted metal-to-metal on an unpainted bracket, and only features a tilt of -5 to 20 degrees—no left-to-right swivel, height adjustment, or landscape-to-portrait pivoting allowed. However, the monitor does include a VESA-ready bracket adapter, so if you have a compatible stand of your own or plan a wall-mounted solution, the GN24C’s light 9.8-pound weight should make for an easy lift.
Going through the monitor’s onscreen display (OSD) menu was a bit of a slog, as it uses an old-fashioned four-button array instead of a mini joystick. That’s not to say there’s a lot to navigate through, anyhow, as many features we expect to find in current gaming monitors—backlight controls, dark boost, or heck, even an OSD-based crosshair—are missing.
Like its cabinet design, the Viotek GN24C comes to the table with the bare minimum in terms of controls: a few built-in gaming/movie profiles, adaptive sync controls, and brightness and contrast settings.
The Viotek is also light on ports, offering just two HDMI 2.0 ports and one DisplayPort 1.4b input. No USB ports or 3.5mm headphone jacks here; again, simplicity and savings are the order of the day.
Testing the Viotek GN24C: One Job, One Area of Expertise
As mentioned, this 1080p, 1800R-curvature display boasts a VA panel with a native refresh rate of 144Hz (no overclocks). The monitor is rated for 400 nits of brightness and supports AMD FreeSync anti-screen-tearing technology.
We put the GN24C through our standard gaming-monitor test regimen using a Datacolor SpyderX Elite colorimeter, a Murideo SIX-G signal generator, and Portrait Displays’ CalMAN 5 software. Here’s what we saw.
Testing the display in the default picture mode with an SDR signal, the Viotek showed a peak brightness of 326.9 nits (it’s rated for 350) and a black level of 0.14 nit, which works out to a contrast ratio of 2,380:1. (See more about how we test monitors.)
When it came to color fidelity, the GN24C came in a bit lower than advertised, covering 92% of the sRGB gamut, 71% of Adobe RGB, and 72% of the DCI-P3 palette. That’s hardly the best available, but just fine for this price category.
As for color accuracy, given that it’s a $159.99 monitor, I’m not going to fault the Viotek for its out-of-the-box Delta-E result of 2.62.
Color accuracy isn’t the GN24C’s strong suit. Where it shines is in media and gaming performance…
What It’s Good For: Watching Video and Playing Games
In SDR, our 4K Costa Rica test footage (output at 1080p to match the monitor’s native resolution) looked surprisingly great for a VA panel, with strong contrast and deep, rich blacks. I have to admit I wasn’t expecting a whole lot out of the GN24C when I first laid eyes on it, but at almost every step it proved my preconceptions wrong.
Next, I booted up Red Dead Redemption 2 in SDR. The game was just as nice to look at as the Costa Rica footage, and maybe even a little better. (I switched to the built-in Game profile instead of Cinema, which might have had something to do with it.)
For testing traditional input lag (the amount of time between when a monitor receives a signal and the screen updates), we use an HDFury 4K Diva HDMI matrix. With a 60Hz test signal, the Viotek GN24C returned a result of 1.3ms—not the lowest we’ve ever seen, but by far the lowest per dollar spent.
As a 144Hz, 24-inch, 1080p display, the Viotek is tailor-made for games like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Valorant, Overwatch, and League of Legends, and in each one we tested it went above and beyond the…er…call of duty.
Despite its lower AMD FreeSync rating, I spotted very little ghosting or tracing artifacts, and the GN24C felt extremely snappy and responsive throughout. I remained in awe of both its color and speed during my practice matches with CS:GO bots. Although I’ve certainly seen other 24-inch monitors perform faster, none has come close at such a low price.
Verdict: Far From a Budget Bummer
Admittedly, it took us some time to work through our review backlog and get to the Viotek GN24C, which has been on the market for some time. But it proved well worth the wait—since the monitor’s debut, Viotek has trimmed its MSRP from $250 to $159.99, and at that price its decidedly modest feature set doesn’t matter. Performance conquers all, so if you’re looking for gaming in vibrant color at frame rates up to 144fps—and nothing else—the GN24C is a better value than nearly any other low-end gaming model we’ve tested. Just resign yourself to a complete lack of creature comforts beyond a snappy panel.
