Monster gaming monitors are a dime-a-dozen these days. 

Every second day it seems like there’s a new entry in the ultra-wide end of the best gaming monitor market. Most come hand-in-hand with some fancy new technology that promises a more immersive gaming experience. With so many models, jargon and acronyms buzzing around, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. 

What is important to remember is that there are some key factors you need to be across in order to ensure you’re buying a solid big-screen display, suited for racing & flight sims. 

In this post, we’re going to outline what those factors are. We’re also going to provide you with some recommendations for what we feel are the best 49 inch gaming monitors on the market right now.

WARNING: Pick the right monitor for your needs (or you could regret it big time!

Building a racing sim rig is a costly endeavor that can easily go awry when you don’t pick up the hardware that best suits your needs. 

What makes racing sims different from other games is that they aim to be as immersive an experience as possible. 

That means they need to feel realistic not just on-screen but in their gameplay as well. 

That’s why you spend so much damn money on other equipment like steering wheels, peddles and bucket seats. However, if you’re going to put in a good chunk of money for a monitor, you have to make it count.

For this article, we’ve picked three 49 inch gaming monitors. We’ve chosen them as being some of the best in the market for racing sim aficionados such as yourself.

Here are the elements that factored into our choices:

• Response time - You might have heard about display lag. In a nutshell, it’s the amount of delay between actions happening in the game and when you see them on-screen. For sim racing drivers who take their experience seriously, even a slight change in the delay is a big deal. There are a number of things one can do to reduce this delay but they’re beyond the scope of this article. The best starting point is your choice of monitor. For our selection, we’ve aimed for screens that don’t go over a 4ms response time.
• Refresh rate - Racing sims are all about speed which means your reactions have to be on point. The last thing you want is to turn at the wrong moment when you hit the next hairpin. You’ll be wondering, “isn’t this covered by response time?” Not entirely. Response time is one piece of the puzzle. The other piece is the refresh rate of your panel. Monitors essentially display images changing in rapid succession. In order to achieve this as quickly as possible, they refresh what is being displayed. The faster this happens, the quicker you see what’s going on. This is why high refresh rates are coveted by hardcore gamers and that include racing sim folks like us. For our list, the minimum refresh rate we shot for was 120Hz. This means the monitor will refresh 120 times each second.
• Curved display - As we’ve mentioned a few times in this article, racing sims are immersive experiences. Naturally, the ultimate experience comes from running a VR rig but that can be astronomically pricey. If you’re also prone to motion sickness it may not be the best option. The next best thing is to have a curved display. These monitors use specialised perspective technology to enable an immersive experience that cannot be achieved with a regular flat panel. The added bonus of a curved monitor of a large size is it eliminates the need to buy more than one, a big relief for your wallet.
• Slim bezels - This factor is like icing on the cake for some but it’s actually essential to enhance the immersion level of a racing sim experience. For monitors that are large where your eyes will usually be forward, the bottom bezel can be a bit chunkier. The main focus is the side and top bezels as your eyes will be darting in those directions.

Let’s face it…a Godzilla-sized, 49 inch monitor is a bloody good way to enjoy all your sim gaming activities

As long as you’re picking a monitor with the aforementioned specifications, you’d be able to create a kick-ass experience. 

49-inch monitors, however, have a few key advantages that just complement a racing sim rig perfectly. For one, you have a lot more screen real estate to go by. As it’s all about that 4K these days, bigger panels will always be better at displaying the finer details of your game. 

More importantly, bigger monitors mean more of the outside world around you gets blocked out. 

It’s not the same as VR but it’s the next best thing in terms of immersion. 

Finally, a 49-inch display eliminates the need for additional monitors because they have a much more encompassing curve.

Now that we’ve covered all the nitty-gritty, let’s have a look at our top 3 picks for the best 49 inch gaming monitors for sim enthusiasts.

ASUS ROG Strix XG49VQ Super Ultra-Wide HDR Gaming Monitor

ASUS has become one of the powerhouses when it comes to monitors in the Republic of Gamers line.