I just replaced my work monitor with this Alienware 25-inch 320Hz screen — and I’m never going back

As someone who sits in front of a laptop for up to eight hours, five days a week, having one of the best monitors is a necessity for me. While many of the finest screens don’t come cheap, you don’t need to break the bank to get a great viewing experience — just look at the Alienware AW2525HM 320Hz LED. I’ve been using this monitor for gaming and work and it has blown me away.

Boasting a 320Hz refresh rate and a 0.5ms response time, the AW2525HM is a solid monitor for RPGs, FPS, and any other genre of gaming you can think of. Its color accuracy and rendition are something to behold, as is its SDR brightness. Considering that this monitor costs less than $250, it really doesn’t give you a lot to complain about.

For the complete breakdown, read my full Alienware AW2525HM 320Hz LED review.

Alienware AW2525HM 320Hz LED review: Cheat sheet

• What is it? A 25-inch 1080p monitor featuring a 320Hz refresh rate and 0.5ms response time
• Who is it for? For gamers who also need a reliable monitor for work
• How much does it cost? The Alienware AW2525HM 320Hz LED is available for $249 / £209
• What do we like? The 320Hz refresh rate, great color accuracy, minimalist design, and overall fantastic value
• What don’t we like? There are no built-in speakers and HDR is weak

Alienware AW2525HM 320Hz LED review: Specs

Alienware AW2525HM 320Hz LED review: The ups

From its minimalist design to its superb color accuracy and reproduction, the Alienware AW2525HM 320Hz LED is an excellent monitor for both gaming and work.

Minimalist design

If you want a monitor that’s primarily designed for gaming but fits right into an office space and doesn’t draw unnecessary attention, then the Alienware AW2525HM is the one for you. The AW2525HM features an all-black design with minimal branding. There’s no flashy RGB on display either. There’s an Alienware logo around the back of the monitor, and it functions as a holographic sticker that reflects light and appears rainbow-like. I love it.

Given the AW2525HM’s 25-inch screen, you don’t need to worry about fitting it on your desk, even if you’re short on space. The monitor measures 21.87 x 19.71 x 2.71 inches with the stand, so it’s slightly smaller than 27-inch screens like the Lenovo L27i-4B ($109) — my second screen at work. The AW2525HM weighs 13.38lbs with the stand, so while it’s heavy enough to stay in place, it’s still easily liftable and movable.

Adding to the AW2525HM’s minimalism and ease of use is its straightforward menu system, which can be controlled via the clickable joystick located under the Alienware logo on the front. In my testing, I found the menu system highly responsive with zero input lag, and the joystick felt nice to use, too. It was super easy and quick to adjust brightness and contrast, swap between different presets (sRGB, FPS, RPG, etc.) and other settings.

Overall, the AW2525HM is nondescript, looks great on my desk, and is intuitive to use.

Great for gaming

The Alienware AW2525HM is marketed as a gaming monitor, and that’s not surprising given its 320Hz refresh rate and 0.5ms response time. It excels at delivering a smooth, lag-free gaming experience. There are plenty of picture modes to choose from so that you get a tailored experience, and this includes, but is not limited to, FPS, MOBA, RPG, and Sports.

The AW2525HM features an LED panel with a resolution of 1920x1080 FHD, so there’s no 4K at play. But even without it, visuals look nothing short of stunning, especially for a monitor that doesn’t charge a premium. To test the monitor, I played a few games on a Windows 11 laptop, and regardless of the genre and title, I was mesmerized.

I kicked things off with Cyberpunk 2077, an FPS/RPG with bright neon lights and quick movements that can cause motion blur. The neon colors appeared detailed, bright and vivid on screen, and I appreciated that they didn’t appear oversaturated to the point that they felt fake.

You can see plenty of details even in dark environments, so I was able to make my way through dark areas with confidence in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. It’s like I was able to see in the dark, which felt fantastic. And while a lot of the graphics performance is down to the graphics card in the laptop, I felt fully immersed in the life-like cinematic cutscenes during the game, given how detailed all the characters and surroundings appeared.

The whopping 320Hz refresh rate proved its worth in both games, as I didn’t experience any choppiness while sprinting or during fast-paced combat in Cyberpunk 2077. The AW2525HM has a 0.5ms response time, which means its pixels can change colors within 0.5ms, so I didn’t experience any ghosting during gaming either. Of course, if you want even better response times, you’ll need to spend way more on the likes of the MSI MPG 272URX QD-OLED ($1,099) or the Lenovo Legion Pro 34WD-10 OLED ($1,199).

Lab testing analysis: Color

So, the colors look great on screen, but what about actual lab testing? As part of our standardized lab testing, I measured the Alienware AW2525HM 320Hz LED’s color coverage as well as accuracy — and I was left impressed, in practice and on paper. You can see the results below, compared to other similarly priced monitors.

The AW2525HM covers 148.5% of the sRGB color gamut, which means it covers the entire color spectrum and more, which helps it deliver bright, vivid colors, shades and hues. This is aligned with the bold colors I saw when using the monitor for gaming and work, so I’m very pleased. The color coverage is also better than both the Dell 24 S2421HGF ($250) and Gigabyte G27FC ($229), which are in the AW2525HM’s price bracket.

DCI-P3 is another common color space with a wider overall gamut than sRGB, meaning it delivers a more accurate rendition of lifelike color. The AW2525HM has this space more than covered, with my testing showing 105.2% coverage (meaning it can render more shades than the actual DCI-P3 gamut) — again, better than both the Dell and the Gigabyte.

The last number I tested was Delta-E, which tells us how accurate or close the color on screen is to the color output from the source, such as your computer or laptop. The closer the Delta-E score to 0, the better, and the more color-accurate the images. As you can see above, the AW2525HM blows all other rivals out of the water with a score of 0.6. Even the pricier Alienware AW2725D ($529) is less accurate.

Good for work too

Given the Alienware AW2525HM’s nondescript design, high refresh rate and response time, it’s a fantastic monitor for office work. Its incredible color accuracy and rendition make it a good monitor for editing photos and videos I’ve taken on the best cameras and the best drones.

The 10-bit color depth means that the AW2525HM is capable of showing 1.07 billion individual hues. This enabled me to see the different shades of red and orange in photos of robins I’d taken, as well as the various hues in photos of autumnal leaves and trees. There are a few work-related picture modes, and you can adjust the monitor’s gain, offset, hue and saturation to achieve the ideal settings for photo editing and other work.

This is a very bright monitor too, which is exactly what I needed to watch videos I’d taken of nightscapes on the DJI Mavic 4 Pro and the DJI Mini 5 Pro. My lab testing showed that the monitor’s brightness in SDR peaks at 365 — my coworker, Erin, asked me if my retinas were burning when I had the monitor turned up to 100% brightness!

The table above shows the AW2525HM’s brightness in comparison to other monitors, and as you can see, it’s much brighter than the rest. The AW2525HM feels like an absolute steal, and this brings me to my next point.

Excellent value for money

Given that you get a 320Hz refresh rate, 0.5ms response time, and fantastic color accuracy, you’d think the Alienware AW2525HM costs a lot of money — and you’d be wrong. It’s one of the cheapest monitors on the market, retailing for just $249 / £209, making it the ideal screen for casual gamers who also want to use the same screen for work.

Alienware’s monitor is priced similarly to the Gigabyte G27FC ($229), the Dell 24 S2421HGF ($250), the Lenovo Legion R27fc-30 27-inch 280Hz ($239) and the ViewSonic XG2536 25-inch 280Hz ($299), but Alienware’s device is better than all of them as it offers a faster refresh rate. And while it’s pricier than the Lenovo L27i-4B, it’s well worth the extra spend if you want great color accuracy as well as more hertz.

Alienware AW2525HM 320Hz LED review: The downs

There isn’t a lot wrong with the Alienware AW2525HM, but it’s worth noting that it doesn’t have the strongest HDR or built-in speakers.

Weak HDR

Strangely, the AW2525HM’s product page doesn’t mention anything about HDR. The only way I found out that it supported HDR was via system settings on my laptop. But I’m not surprised that Alienware doesn’t emphasize this information, considering that the monitor doesn’t have the best HDR.

I tested the HDR at three levels as part of our standardized testing, and the results weren’t great. The AW2525HM peaked at 200 nits on 10% of the screen, 210 nits on 40% and just 198 nits on 100%. While not the brightest, it is worth noting that some of its competitors, like the Dell 24 S2421HGF and the Gigabyte G27FC, don’t support HDR at all — something is better than nothing, I suppose?

No speakers

Annoyingly, the Alienware AW2525HM 320Hz LED doesn’t feature built-in speakers, so you can’t hear any audio. This is a pretty minor issue if you have external speakers that you can plug into your gaming PC or laptop, or you’re using one of the best wireless headsets. But still, it would have been nice to have some speakers built into the display as a fallback.

Alienware AW2525HM 320Hz LED review: Verdict

The Alienware AW2525HM 320Hz LED is a fantastic monitor, and I don’t know how I’ve gone so long without it. Its LED panel is bright and detailed, and its color accuracy and rendition blew me away in both subjective and objective testing. I love its 320Hz refresh rate and 0.5ms response time too, both of which contribute towards a lag- and blur-free gaming experience.

The AW2525HM doesn’t have built-in speakers or the brightest HDR, but these are small drawbacks considering the monitor’s budget price tag. If you need a monitor for gaming and work, I can’t recommend the AW2525HM enough. It’s fast, it’s bright, and it’s unbeatable value for money.