Last year, a Prime Day special price monitor (opens in new tab) caught my eye and I vowed to treat myself if I ever had the extra cash (and if it became special again): the Aorus FO48U (opens in new tab), a 48-inch 4K 120Hz OLED gaming monitor with was exactly the last thing I needed to complete my little office-cum-gamer-dad study.

Since I currently do all my work and gaming on a 32" ROG 4K gaming monitor, I was looking for something to put in my gaming-only home office, away from my desk after work to relax after a long day of writing about smelling in VR (opens in new tab) I wanted something larger that could also double as a TV for playing games and streaming movies.

I've never owned an OLED gaming monitor before, but every time I receive one for review, I often feel a tremendous amount of jealousy and say, "I wish my games looked this good." OLED has it all: image quality, response time, and viewing angles. Because even the cheapest OLEDs of this size and specs cost about $800-900 on sale.

After spending some time with the FO48U, I think I made the right choice. I played it for the first time since moving to Unreal Engine 5 (opens in new tab). My Master Chief looked good beating up a bunch of soccer players with a giant gravity hammer. The OLED display shines when projecting brightly colored games and images, and colorful games like "Fornite" look bouncy on this display.

Of course, I'm a sucker for sports cartoons and have watched too much "Blue Rock" with its bright colors and effects; watching HBO's "The Last of Us" slowly was a great way to show off the contrast on my TV. Because it's OLED, you see nearly perfect blacks and very little blooming around bright objects on the screen. This makes two very different viewing experiences equally stunning.

I was torn between this, the LG 48GQ900-B (opens in new tab), or the very popular LG OLED C1 TV, which often ranks high on the Best Gaming TVs page All three are fairly close in specs and picture quality, with similar glass panels. The final deciding factor was that the Aorus has DisplayPort (G-Sync and FreeSync support), which works better with my gaming PC than an HDMI 2.1 port.

Since the LG OLED C1 is also a TV, it has a lot of smart TV features that I frankly don't need, since all the streaming apps I use are either Nvidia Shield Pro or a gaming console I don't want a bloated TV OS that requires a WiFi connection. . On the other hand, if I'm looking for something to put in my living room, the C1 would have the edge: the LG 48GQ900-B is almost identical to its sibling, but the awkward bottom stand is a turnoff. Looks are still important. Another feature of the FO48U that LG (and other gaming TVs) don't have are additional features that make it better for me as a PC gamer, such as a black equalizer, a dashboard that displays important PC information (FPS, CPU/GPU temperature, etc.), and a KVM switch. As with all OLED displays, the only downside to the Aorus is the risk of permanent burn-in to the still image. This means that even when used as a second PC display, it simply must be turned off when not in use. The only drawback of Aorus is that, as with all OLED displays, there is a risk of permanent burn-in on still images. This means that even when used as a second PC display, it must be turned off when not in use.

We also wish there were more HDMI ports instead of just two HDMI 2.0 ports. With one input, it's difficult to connect two gaming consoles at any given time; the FO48U's front-facing speakers also leave something to be desired.

I'm glad I got over my shopaholic fears and purchased as a reward to myself something nice that showcases the graphic power of gaming hardware and, more importantly, pulls me away from my work desk, even though 1440p 240Hz displays are starting to show up at CES, I don't think they are suitable for me or the types of games I play. I am also stumped as I don't think I can put this huge thing back in the box.