In the market for a new gaming monitor? You first need to get your priorities straight. Do you value visual fidelity and high resolutions, or do you want to strike more of a balance between performance and resolution? Or perhaps you just want your new monitor to reach the highest frame rates possible. That's where the $829 Alienware 500Hz Gaming Monitor (AW2524H) comes in. It cuts resolution down to just full HD (1,920 by 1,080 pixels), but offers an astounding 500Hz refresh rate, allowing for super-high frame rates that can make or break competitive matches in games like Valorant and Rainbow Six: Siege.

On the surface, it’s a delight for pro gamers. With a compact build, a headset hanger, and support for Nvidia Reflex Latency Analyzer in addition to its headlining refresh rate, the Alienware seems like it can do no wrong. Dig deeper, though, and you'll find it has few major marks against it, namely high input lag and an even higher price. Plus, the difference in performance between 500Hz and the 360Hz monitors widely available are minor, and might not matter to most outside the hardest-core of hard-core gamers.

Sorry, How High Is That Refresh Rate Again?

The AW2524H sticks to the same slick futuristic design as other Alienware monitors like the Alienware 34 Curved QD-OLED—a black finish somewhere between glossy and matte wraps the monitor body and stand, while the thin black bezel frames the tight 24.5-inch screen. To the south side of the display, you’ll find a headphone jack, an OSD dongle, and two USB-A ports—probably the most important two ports on the monitor. One includes charging capability for your mobile devices and peripherals, while the other is required to tap into one of the monitor’s biggest features, the Nvidia Reflex Latency Analyzer.

(Credit: Molly Flores)

End-to-end system latency (commonly known as input lag) determines how long it takes for the click of your mouse to become an action on the screen. The Reflex Latency Analyzer is exactly what it sounds like: It allows you to analyze your latency data on the fly, without the use of a high-speed camera or other expensive tools. In fact, Nvidia claims that the instant analysis is as accurate as a 10,000fps camera. The downside? Users who want to make use of this handy analysis must have a gaming mouse that is Nvidia Reflex-compatible. Otherwise, you won’t be able to access the tool at all.

(Credit: Molly Flores)

But there’s plenty to admire even if you don’t have the proper gear to access Nvidia Reflex. Turning the monitor around will showcase the Alienware logo, along with large numerals that read 25 emblazoned against the right-hand side (in case you ever forget the monitor’s size). AlienFX lighting is included, but speakers are not. Taking a look at the port hub, you’ll find two HDMI 2.1 ports, a DisplayPort, and three additional USB ports (two USB-A and one USB-B), as well as a security lock slot based on the Kensington standard.

(Credit: Molly Flores)

Slight flourishes have been added to the stand and base of the monitor to appeal to the more esports-focused among us. The smaller size allows for more desk space, while the hexagonal shape of the base allows for ease of use depending on your preferred playing style. For example, a 60% keyboard would fit perfectly along one of the hexagon sides. The stand features height adjustment markers, and there’s a tiny hanger that retracts into the side of the monitor. The use? You guessed it, to hang your favorite gaming headset once you've wrapped up your winning (or losing) streak.

(Credit: Molly Flores)

The monitor measures in at 12.9 by 21.6 by 3.3 inches (HWD), a much smaller footprint than other 25-inch screens like the MSI Oculux NXG253R. Weight-wise, it’s slightly hefty at 21.7 pounds, especially considering that 25-inch inch monitors that are around 10 pounds exist, like the BenQ Mobiuz EX2510S.

Turning back to the screen for a moment, the 500Hz full HD monitor employs Fast IPS, which allows for low response times and higher color gamuts than normal IPS monitors. The monitor also has a VESA DisplayHDR 400 certification and Nvidia G-Sync to eliminate screen tearing. But does all this lead to an improved picture and performance? We quantify these points and more in the next section.

Testing the Alienware 500Hz: A Refreshing Sacrifice?

Sizing up the performance of a 1080p gaming monitor can be deceptively nuanced, as they’re often more willing to sacrifice resolution (and sometimes color accuracy) for faster refresh rates. If that's the case for the 500Hz Alienware, does it make the right cuts? To answer that, we benchmarked the monitor against a few of its contemporaries of similar build with the Datacolor SpyderX Elite, the HDFury's 4K Diva HDMI input lag tester, and some actual real-world gaming.

For our first test, we used the SpyderX Elite to measure brightness, contrast ratio, and color gamut coverage on the default picture mode with an SDR signal. Here, the AW2524H reached a peak brightness of 381 nits. It registered a black level of 0.45, and a contrast ratio of 840:1, slightly below the promised 1,000:1 contrast ratio of most IPS monitors.

HDR testing pulled higher results, registering a brightness of 425 nits, well within the promised HDR400 rating.

Taking a look at the color gamut, the AW2524H reached 100% of sRGB coverage, 81% of Adobe RGB, and 85% of DCI-P3. The gamut coverage results are roughly the same as another Dell 1080p monitor we recently tested, the 27-inch G2723H. It's a strong showing, especially with factory settings.

(Credit: Datacolor)

Finally, we examined color accuracy. The AW2524H registered a Delta E of 1.5, exactly as its spec sheet says. The higher the Delta E number, the further a common color strays from its purest form. A result of 2 and under is ideal, though it's common for gaming monitors to hover between 1 and 2. If you’re dealing with color-sensitive applications, you’re better off using a content creation or photo editing monitor.

(Credit: Datacolor)

Game Performance

While color accuracy and contrast ratio are important to get right, this monitor's calling card is its 500Hz refresh rate. Why does that matter? In short, the higher the refresh rate, the higher the frame rate ceiling, and more frames equal a smoother picture displayed on your screen. The difference is palpable, especially with fast-paced shooters where speed and accuracy are most important. In theory, the higher the refresh rate, the better, so 500Hz guarantees the fastest picture possible, eliminating ghosting and other distracting elements that may hinder your performance.

You'll need the right input to reach those blazing-high refresh rates, of course, so you'll want to consult your GPU, CPU, and RAM specs to see if your PC might be due for an upgrade. For our real-world game testing, we ran Valorant, Rainbow Six: Siege, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive on an Origin Millennium 5000D desktop PC, which was stacked with an Intel Core i9-13900KS, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090, and 32GB of RAM.

For each game, we were easily able to send high-enough frame rates to max out the Alienware's 500Hz ceiling. Valorant managed about 1,000fps, Counter-Strike hovered over 500fps, and Rainbow Six: Siege averaged about 600fps. Gameplay went off without any major screen tearing and was noticeably smooth, though there was some intense wavering noticed in a screen tearing test.

Overall, we found that gaming on the Alienware results in nearly non-existent ghosting and just generally gives confidence that your reflexes are your limit rather than your equipment. Still, we found the same confidence from 360Hz screens like the Asus ROG Swift 360Hz PG259QN when they first hit the market a few years ago, and many of them now cost far less than the Alienware. When playing a game like Valorant, you'll feel the benefit from a higher refresh rate, but it's not so much of a leap from what you experience at 360Hz. It's subjective and everyone will certainly have their preferences, but once you start dealing with the upper echelon of refresh rates, the differences can really only be appreciated in side-by-side comparisons.

While competitive gamers will appreciate the speed and clarity of the higher refresh rate, the fact remains that jumping from 360Hz to 500Hz offers diminishing returns compared with jumping from 60Hz to the 120Hz and above that typically marks the entry point of the high-refresh-rate monitor market. And sure, casual gamers can finally level the playing field with their more competitive brethren while using Nvidia Reflex if they've got the supporting hardware, but based on our gameplay time, the extra frags aren't worth the extra dollars spent.

(Credit: Molly Flores)

Another thing to note regarding the Alienware's high refresh rate: It’s actually only 480Hz natively. To reach a full 500Hz, you have to overclock the monitor, which is fairly simple to do. The process, enabled in either the Nvidia or AMD control panel, essentially creates a custom resolution that the monitor will run at, allowing you to squeeze an additional 20Hz from it.

Refresh rates aside, the metric most important for fast-twitch esports aficionados is the monitor’s input lag. Using the HDFury 4K Diva HDMI matrix, we recorded 7.7 milliseconds (ms) of input lag for the AW2524H at default settings. That's perfectly playable, but surprisingly high given the monitor’s performance-at-all-costs approach. Now, this is without Nvidia Reflex employed. With it, Dell claims that you can see a drop in input latency of up to 80%. Note that Nvidia Reflex has no impact on the refresh rate.

Verdict: For Try-Hard Gamers Only

The Alienware 500Hz Gaming Monitor is an impressive beast, but it can’t be truly appreciated without the proper PC and peripherals, which means using a Nvidia Reflex-supported mouse and a battle station with more than a few cutting-edge components. Now, if you have all that and you still have cash to spend on the absolute fastest performance a monitor can offer, the AW2524H might be right for you. Ultimately, this is a monitor for the hardest of the hard-core, which is already a niche among competitive players. For most people, we still recommend the older MSI Oculux NXG253R, the ViewSonic Elite XG270, or even the Gigabyte M27Q X if you’re looking for high refresh rates without sacrificing picture quality.