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If you haven’t been paying attention to the news, heads up—prices for tech gear are shooting up. Tariffs are now in effect for goods imported from China, and they’ve doubled since their original announcement. The U.S. government is now imposing an additional 20 percent tax, instead of 10 percent. Name any kind of tech device, and it’s affected: laptops, desktop computers, PC components, monitors, smartphones, e-readers, and much more. An overwhelming majority of electronics are produced in China. Big retailers have already warned about imminent price hikes, with the CEOs of both Best Buy and Target commenting on the breadth and immediacy of the tariff effects. Here at PCWorld, I’ve been wondering specifically about the impact on computers (surprise!)—laptops and desktop PCs are both major interests of our readers. To answer my own questions—as well as those of readers, friends, and family—I reached out to industry contacts to better understand what these tariffs mean for the cost of PCs…and what to expect in the coming days. Those who responded manufacture laptops, prebuilt desktop machines, and PC components. Much of this information is generally applicable to electronics overall. The short answer: Expect pain at the cash register. Businesses won’t be able to shield customers from these increases. As Falcon Northwest CEO Kelt Reeves said to me, “[The] PC industry is infamously low margin, so no one can afford to ‘cushion’ 20 percent. Prices already went up incredibly fast on almost every component we buy to build a PC. Stock that was already here vanished, as anything new will be minimum 20% more.” Ouch. For a fuller grasp of the situation, read on. I’ve broken things down into a series of questions and answers, so you can more quickly find the info you most want to know. Also, if you’re Canadian, I’m sorry to inform you—this affects you too. What is a tariff? First, a quick recap so we’re all on the same page. A tariff is a type of tax that governments impose on goods either entering (import) or leaving (export) the country. They can be fixed or variable, and they apply when goods enter the U.S. Essentially, the tariff must be paid in order for the shipment to be released by customs to the business. On their face, import tariffs are meant to help protect a country’s domestic industries. Let’s say a country wants to nurture its almond production. It could impose a tariff on imports of almonds from other countries, so that they become more expensive to buy—thus encouraging the purchase of domestically grown almonds instead. In practice, tariffs can become complicated. Other countries can respond with their own tariffs, kicking off what’s known as a trade war. Economists widely view tariffs as problematic, as they can cause slowed economic growth, damage to domestic industries, and rising costs for consumers without much return benefit. What are these tariffs? On February 1, 2025, the executive branch of the United States government announced tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico, and China, to take effect on February 4. The tax was set at 25 percent for Canada and Mexico, with a lower 10 percent levy on Canadian energy resources (e.g., gas). For China, the rate was set at 10 percent. On February 4, the import tariff for China began. Those for Canada and Mexico were delayed to March 4. On February 27, the U.S. government announced an intention to raise the tariffs on Chinese imports to 20 percent. On March 4, the higher tariffs for Chinese imports kicked in, as did the original tariffs for Canada and Mexico. However, the levies on Canadian and Mexican goods were later delayed again (and remain so at this article’s publishing). You can read this ABC News overview to see the full timeline for these tariffs, but the basic takeaway here is that tariffs started affecting Chinese products on schedule. Accordingly, prices already began rising on tech gear a month ago, but will jump even higher now. Which tech devices are affected by these tariffs? These tariffs are particularly unusual in that they broadly apply to all imports from the named countries. Previous tariffs during the last Trump administration hit more selectively. When I spoke with SilverStone, a Taiwanese vendor that manufactures an array of hardware for PC building, a representative from their U.S. office emphasized this point, saying, “Almost everything we sell are affected: cases, power supplies, coolers, fans, cables, expansion cards, adapters, etc.” Last time, the impact fell primarily on power supplies. So a overwhelming majority of electronics are affected—most companies have their devices and/or hardware produced in China. Those imports are all subject to the additional 20 percent tariff. Additionally, products made in the United States could be affected as well. If a domestic company can’t find an alternative source for materials or components made in China, the cost of those items will rise now, too. These days, most things we buy are global products—far fewer are made top to bottom within a single country. That’s especially so for anything related to tech. Are only U.S. residents affected by these tariffs? Nope. If you live in another country, but are purchasing through U.S., the cost increases will spread to you, too. For example—SilverStone’s U.S. office said to me that because Canadian customers buy through its U.S. office, they have to pay the higher price as well. (Sorry, Canada.) However, some companies may be able to still keep costs down for other international customers, so long as they can export directly to their other offices across the globe. If you live outside of the U.S. and know (or suspect) what you’re purchasing could route through the U.S., you may want to look at alternative territories you could buy from. Are the price hikes equal to the size of the tariffs? Not necessarily.  When the tariffs first were announced, Acer’s CEO described their effect as “straightforward” on the retail price of laptops—a direct 10 percent jump.  In contrast, just a month later, I couldn’t get a precise percentage from most people I spoke with. Many avoided naming any figure. For example, a source who asked to remain anonymous said only, “Price changes will vary based on components and market demand, but we’re doing our best to minimize the impact and are exploring strategies to mitigate these effects.” The ones who did give numbers generally used a range, because the calculus is so variable. The spokesperson from SilverStone’s U.S. office told me Chinese-made products will “increase on average of 12 to 18 percent” from their current selling prices. (The company plans to raise prices starting next Monday, March 10.) Meanwhile, as I noted at the start of this article, U.S.-based Falcon Northwest believes that the hardware it buys for its custom PCs will start at a minimum of 20 percent more. Why the differences in response? SilverStone sells its computer components primarily to partners, like retailers. Falcon Northwest sells fully built PCs (both laptops and desktops) to consumers. Basically, the ultimate price effects we’ll see as consumers is a mix of: How much of the product is made in China The relationships the vendors have with their partners The retailer’s ability to absorb part of the tariffs Why can’t the companies absorb these costs? As mentioned above, the PC industry is considered “low margin.” For consumer gear, profit made on components can be as low as single-digit percentages, and often don’t extend above 20 percent.  Think under 10 percent for motherboards, and 10 to 15 percent for power supplies. These numbers climb a bit for premium hardware, but not enough to ever rival the margins seen in, say, software. There, you can see as much as 70 to 80 percent. Without a big cushion, companies can’t cut deeply into their profits to shield customers (be they consumers or fellow businesses) from the tariff hikes. The higher costs get passed on more directly. That said, multiple industry contacts said they’re working to spread the hit and lighten the load on consumers. Tech vendors know that increased prices mean fewer sales. My anonymous source told me they’ve already seeing sales slow and are trying not to pass on more any costs than necessary, saying, “We only raised prices to cover the tariffs we’ve paid.” That’s another important detail—these companies must pay these tariffs to get their products onto U.S. shores. They can’t sell anything otherwise. The same anonymous contact said to me, “As importers ourselves, we have to pay the tariffs upfront.” They can’t float the cost until sales happen. As for the retailers we buy from, you may see some variation in price due to their operating costs and margins. But it doesn’t sound like consumers can expect much help on that front, given those stark warnings made by Best Buy and Target’s CEOs about price increases. When do prices increase? Will it happen all at once? The first round of tariffs on Chinese goods went into effect on February 4, at 10 percent. The leap to 20 percent began this past Tuesday, on March 4. How fast that’ll be felt depends on the product. If a retailer has a decent amount of stock brought to the U.S. before the tariffs started, then their prices may not rise just yet. Most industry contacts I spoke with avoided naming an exact timeline, but SilverStone’s U.S. office estimated the ramp-up period could extend until April. However if there’s little stock left in the channel, then the price jump may be immediate. Are there any other price increases coming? Potentially. In mid-February, President Trump announced an intention to impose a 25 percent tariff on semiconductors as soon as April 2, with the intent to continue to raise the rate “substantially higher over a course of a year.” Such a move would impact PC CPUs and GPUs. Specific countries subject to this import fee have not yet been revealed. But if the tariff becomes applied broadly, chips shipped from fabrication plants in Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and other locations will be subject to that hefty new tax—not just those from China. Will prices come down if the tariffs are dropped? Costs often stay higher once tariffs are enacted. My SilverStone contact confirmed this when asked about any price reversals should tariffs end, saying, “As to your question on reversing prices, that’ll happen more slowly than it is to raise prices. As a business, we have to be careful with reducing prices across our product line.” Remember, even after a tariff lifts, any stock that arrived in the U.S. during the tariff still carries a higher cost to a manufacturer or vendor. And due to the lower margins of PC hardware, they are still limited in how much of said cost they can absorb on behalf of the consumer.Basically, costs can come down, but don’t expect to see any shift until the channels clear of previous stock. Even then, if the chance of future tariffs looms, companies will have less logistical and financial incentive to cut prices. How big is the impact on laptops and desktop PCs? Between the comments made by the CEOs of Acer and Falcon Northwest, you could assume a 20 percent increase at minimum.  Such an even application would put a serious dent in consumer buying power. If you apply that 20 percent as a straight increase, here’s what the prices would look like for laptops that PCWorld has reviewed just before the tariffs: Original MSRP10% tariff increase20% tariff increaseLenovo Legion 5i$1,399$1,539$1,779Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition$2,519$2,771$3,023Lenovo LOQ 15$799$879$959Asus Vivobook S 14$1,199$1,319$1,439Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360$1,699$1,869$2,039Lenovo Chromebook Duet$399$439$479 You’ll pay $100 more now for a previously $500 laptop after this new tariff. In that price range, that’s a sizable increase and can push a machine out of someone’s budget. On the flip side, other sources declined to state a figure, and I’ve yet to receive comment from large corporations like Dell. We likely have to wait for time to tell—much is up in the air, as I was repeatedly told. How big is the impact on PC components? The answer to this question is more complicated than for laptops and prebuilt desktop PCs. Component vendors sit more in the middle of the chain that leads to a computer you can sit down and use. As I covered above when discussing price, the specific impact will vary. Besides cost, consumers should also be prepared for less availability of parts. One contact told me that a “pressing concern is that several major AIB partners are reducing shipments to prevent costly overstock.” Basically, higher prices on hardware often means less interest, and no one wants to be left with excess stock they can’t sell. What hidden effects will the tariffs have? Besides ongoing price chaos, DIY builders should prepare for possible longer wait times to acquire parts. Likewise, those buying a prebuilt desktop PC made from off-the-shelf components may need more patience as well. Also, as Falcon Northwest said to me, list prices (MSRP) for components will likely become even more aspirational. Street prices will fluctuate as businesses continue to respond to unpredictable changes to U.S. economic policy—and if availability reduces, demand could cause even higher leaps in cost. Why can’t companies give more concrete answers? More than one person I spoke with referenced the tariff situation using words like “uncertainty,” and “unpredictability.” The short of it is, businesses are scrambling to react to these policy changes. Remember, the 20 percent tariff on Chinese-made goods was only announced on February 27th, just three days before it took effect. The tax’s size and its abruptness caused a lot of disruption. So right now, companies are still working out their responses to the tariffs. Discussions with partners and reassessing both financial and logistical impact takes time. An additional wrinkle is that vendors don’t know what to expect in the future, which complicates planning. Kelt Reeves, the Falcon Northwest CEO, says, “This is just a chaotic climate to try and run a business in.” Will vendors stop producing goods in China? Some companies intend to shift production across borders. AsRock, which produces PC components like motherboards and graphics cards, has gone on record with its intention to move manufacturing to other countries.  But that production may not go very far. My contact at SilverStone’s U.S. office said that a couple of its power supplies are made in Vietnam, and the company “will continue to transition more in the future.” However, the extent of the transfer won’t become apparent for a while—with the sheer amount of manufacturing China does, ramping up in alternative nations can’t happen overnight. For example, 90 percent of SilverStone’s products are made in China. Facilities that can handle the capacity for a wide-scale switch will take time. Can’t the U.S. just produce electronics on domestic soil? In a word, no. The infrastructure doesn’t exist—for now. The Biden administration did begin the U.S.’s attempt to reduce its dependence on China for production of key electronics, namely processors. The CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 set aside $280 billion to facilitate the building of new chip foundries on U.S. soil.  However, building such facilities takes time, and their ability to ramp up output also can’t happen immediately. TSMC’s new Arizona fabrication plant is already booked out until 2027. And more importantly, domestic production may never get a chance to take off—President Trump just proposed killing the CHIPS act, which would gut its funding. That could delay or even suspend the overall effort to ramp up the US’s self-sufficiency. Editor’s note: This article originally published on March 7, but was updated with additional info and clarifications. Read...

It is a wet start to the day for most of the country as MetService issues a severe thunderstorm watch for parts of the lower South Island. Read...

Tackling climate change is a team sport, and we all have to be in it together if we want to win. So, not only should we hold companies to high standards as far as mitigating their environmental impact, we should also laud them when they make positive steps in the right direction. With almost 190 million laptops expected to ship throughout 2024, laptop manufacturers are some of the companies we should be forcing to do better — and fortunately, many of them already are. From using recycled cardboard for packaging and ocean-bound plastic in laptops themselves, to relying on renewable energy on company property and closed-loop industrial practices. Here’s what the top laptop manufacturers are doing to go green and help save the world. Dell Dell has been a household name in laptops for decades, having become one of the top five manufacturers by market share since the late 90s. The company expanded over time and acquired brands (like the gaming-focused Alienware), while also supplying some of the most iconic product lines in the industry (like its XPS line of premium laptops). As with many modernizing brands, Dell has taken on several eco-driven initiatives that help reduce its carbon footprint: the reduction of non-recycled and non-recyclable materials in laptop construction; improving the repairability of its devices; and making it easier to recycle its products once they’ve reached the ends of their lives. Dell continues to drive up the repairability of its devices, in an effort to extend their lifespans and reduce transport and manufacturing costs for new devices.Dell Dell incorporates several different sources for its recycled materials, too. Some of its laptops use plastics recycled from post-consumer devices, while others utilize recycled ocean-bound plastic, while still others use recycled steel, magnesium, and cobalt. Recycled materials don’t just reduce their impact on landfills and ocean-dumping, but cut down on the carbon output that goes into producing those materials (since metals and plastics don’t need to be harvested and refined to the same extent). Dell makes it easy to recycle your laptop as an individual and for businesses to do the same. It’s an incentivized scheme, too, which ensures destruction of sensitive company data and leads to money back on future purchases. Overall, it helps cut down on laptop e-waste. In the company’s sustainability brochure (PDF), Dell promises that “100 percent of [their] packaging and more than 50 percent of [their] product content will be made from recycled or renewable materials” by 2030. Lenovo By sheer volume of PCs and laptops sold, Lenovo has been the biggest computer manufacturer in the world for over a decade — so any eco-friendly initiatives by this company will not only have a huge impact, but could also encourage its competition to do the same. Like its contemporaries, Lenovo is utilizing more and more recycled materials in its laptop designs, including ocean-bound plastic, closed-loop post-consumer plastics, and recycled metals. Its goals aren’t quite as ambitious as Dell’s, but in Lenovo’s 2024 Sustainability Report (PDF), it has pledged to have 100% of its products contain some post-consumer recycled materials by 2025. It claims around 14.6 million net pounds of plastics containing recycled content were used in 2023. Lenovo continues to expand its renewable energy initiatives at its facilities to reduce its energy-based carbon footprint.Lenovo Lenovo also offers a “reduced carbon transport” service to business customers. They can also pay for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) credits, which helps offset the CO2 output by transporting the laptops and other devices to the customer. While that does rely on customers paying for the reduced carbon transport option, Lenovo is investing in that itself, too. As part of its net-zero-by-2050 commitment, Lenovo is utilizing more rail and sea freight as lower-carbon shipping options, as well as pushing for the use of SAF in Europe and South America. It also has targets to reduce transport costs in its repairs, with a pledge that by 2026 over 84 percent of all repairs of Lenovo products will take place at a repair shop, without the need to ship it to a service center. HP HP has one of the most ambitious green goals for its business, aiming to achieve net-zero emissions throughout its entire value chain by 2040 — that’s a good 10 years ahead of most of its competitors. In its 2023 sustainability report (PDF), HP claimed to have already reached a 27 percent reduction since 2019, with over 184,000 tons of CO2-equivalent emissions avoided in 2023 alone through its partnerships and energy efficiency programs. HP’s upper-tier laptops still feel luxuriously premium even as they rely on increasingly more recycled materials, proving that greener production can still be great.tech kiga / Unsplash The company is also innovating on its products, making them smaller and leaner with less wasted materials, all while using more and more recycled materials in their construction. Its newest print cartridges are 30 percent smaller while also using 35 percent recycled content. Some of its laptops, like the EliteBook 1040, are made from over 90 percent recycled magnesium and have 50 percent recycled plastics in its keycaps. Since 2019, HP claims to have used over a billion pounds of recycled plastics in its devices. Pretty impressive, if you ask me. HP’s certified refurbished systems provide cheaper and more environmentally friendly pathways for companies looking to upgrade their computer systems, too. The HP Device Life Extension program (PDF) offers corporations the option to have their devices cleaned and updated with newer and faster components, extending the life of existing hardware and reducing the need to buy entirely new systems. HP is also working to eliminate single-use plastics in its packaging, having reached a 62 percent reduction between 2018 and 2023, on track to reach 75 percent by 2025. That should coincide with a complete removal of all landfill waste solutions for HP operations that same year. Asus Asus offers tons of in-depth data on its carbon footprint reduction initiatives, so if you want to really dig into the numbers on what it’s done and what it’s doing, there’s loads to chew on. Want to see an exact breakdown of its CO2 emissions? It’s here. A breakdown of how it audits the recycling companies it uses for end-of-life devices? That’s here. As for its more digestible data points, Asus claims that over 11,600 tons of CO2 have been reduced by its use of recycled materials in its products since 2017. This includes ocean-bound plastics, post-consumer plastics, and post-industrial recycled magnesium and aluminum. Asus is pushing for more recyclable materials in its packaging and a greater recycling rate for all of its products, plus more responsibly sourced materials in general.Joachim Pressl / Unsplash The company has also managed to use 90 percent recyclable materials in its laptop packaging, while also prioritizing lighter packaging to help cut back on transport costs and fuel usage. Some of Asus’ goals for 2025 include: reaching 100 percent recyclable materials in its laptop packaging; reaching a 20 percent recycling rate for all Asus products; and expanding its use of responsibly sourced materials like cobalt to 100 percent. By 2030, Asus also plans to reduce company-wide global carbon emissions by 50 percent and reach 100 percent renewable energy usage in all Taiwan-based operations. Apple Apple stands among these companies taking aggressive action to reduce their carbon footprints. In its 2024 sustainability report (PDF), Apple claims a 55 percent reduction in overall emissions since 2015, and that doesn’t include carbon credits either. It’s all part of Apple’s ongoing drive to reduce the company’s global emissions to carbon neutrality by 2030 — by far the most ambitious of all emissions goals on this list. On the road to that lofty goal, Apple has: reduced emissions from transporting its products by 20 percent since 2022; cut back the energy use of its product ranges by as much as 70 percent since 2008; and increased its stock of refurbished devices to nearly 13 million globally. In 2023, Apple increased the quantity of recycled materials in its products, now using 100 percent recycled cobalt in the Apple Watch and iPhone batteries, as well as 25 percent recycled gold across all product lines. It also now uses 100 percent recycled aluminum in the chassis of its Mac, MacBook, and iPad lines. Apple helped pioneer the elaborate unboxing experience, and now it’s helping to drive out plastic with a 100 percent fiber-based Apple Watch packaging design.Apple By 2025, Apple will have 100 percent fiber-based packaging for all of its products, and the company will continue increasing the quantities of recycled metals and minerals in its various lines. Apple is also driving environmental changes up the chain, too. For example, Apple has secured over 320 suppliers who have committed to sourcing their electricity from renewable sources. Although Apple doesn’t expect to eliminate emissions entirely from its production and transportation lines, it will use carbon offsets to get the last leg of the way towards making Apple a carbon-neutral company by the end of the decade. Acer Acer has set its sights on 2050 to make its entire business carbon-neutral, innovating within and encouraging suppliers to join in on its ambitious climate goals. In Acer’s 2023 sustainability report (PDF), the company highlights several key achievements along this road so far, with plans to expand its initiatives as we head into 2025. So far, Acer has managed to reach a 48 percent usage of renewable electricity throughout its business, with a goal to reach 60 percent in 2025 and 100 percent by 2035. It has also managed to get 76 percent of its suppliers to agree to a similar goal, with ongoing efforts to get that number up to 80 percent of critical supplies in 2025. Acer is still playing catch-up to the other major laptop manufacturers when it comes to carbon neutrality, but it’s making steady progress.Raphael Brasileiro / Unsplash Acer is slowly introducing more and more recycled materials into its products, too. Its 2024 Aspire Vero 16 used 60 percent recycled plastics, representing a doubling since the 2021 model. The kinds of innovations that make this possible are set to be introduced in other Acer product lines going forward as well, with a goal to reach 30 percent post-consumer recycled plastics in all Acer products by 2025. As much as 90 percent of Acer’s packaging is now made from recycled pulp, which is itself entirely recyclable, but the company hasn’t quite eliminated the use of plastic in all packaging yet. Acer also continues to expand its device recycling operations, with over 61,000 tons of e-waste recycled between 2018 and 2022. A greener future for laptops Some companies are certainly working harder than others in their efforts to reduce their impact on the global environment, with Apple and HP apparently the most aggressive in their goals so far. There’s plenty of room for those other companies to catch up, though. Ultimately, fighting climate change is a goal that the entire world needs to work towards together. To that end, it’s always nice to see giant megacorporations doing something even if they could be doing more. Read...

I’ve been reviewing monitors for almost 20 years, so believe me when I say this: 2025 will be the best year to buy a new monitor, ever. Today’s most attractive and feature-rich monitors command high prices compared to what was typical a decade ago, which has moved some monitor shoppers up-market. In turn, this has given monitor makers an incentive to pursue new trends in panel technology, video inputs, and image processing, among other features. Also, the growing proliferation of OLED is a huge boon for monitors, and not just because OLED looks great and delivers smooth motion. While pricing on high-end, cutting-edge monitors is still up, pricing on monitors with OLED panels is edging towards a freefall. Here are the key trends you should be aware of as far as monitor tech is concerned as we head into 2025 and beyond. Expect to see a lot of displays packing these latest, greatest advancements in the spotlight at CES 2025 next week! Related: The best monitors worth getting right now OLED monitors dip below $500 In the run up to the Black Friday sales period, we saw several 27-inch 1440p OLED monitors — like the MSI MAG 271QPX — dip a cent below $500. Innocn, a budget brand, had an even more outrageous deal: a 27-inch 1440p 240Hz OLED monitor for $429.99. These deals have expired by now, but they’re a strong signal of where OLED pricing is headed. Deep Black Friday discounts in 2024 prove that OLED monitors are now being produced in high enough volumes that monitor makers have excess stock to clear out, even if that means dropping prices to hundreds below MSRP. The Gigabyte MO34WQC (Amazon)Matthew Smith / Foundry For now, those prices are still sale prices. But unless we experience some kind of global supply shock (which, unfortunately, can happen), the volume of OLED panels is only going to increase from here — and higher volume means more supply and lower prices. This trend goes far beyond the computer monitor market. Display market analysts predict that we’re only at the start of OLED’s rise to mainstream dominance. OLED is already popular in premium consumer electronics but, if current trends continue, we’ll see it replace LCD in all but the least expensive budget displays. That’s not to say all OLED monitors will be cheap. On the contrary, I expect high-end pricing to surge just as “entry-level” OLEDs drop. While 27-inch 1440p and 32-inch 4K OLED monitors are common, many other display sizes, resolutions, and aspect ratios remain untapped. In 2025, expect monitor makers to cater to big spenders with new OLED options that push boundaries on resolution, sizing, and features. IPS Black goes mainstream LG introduced a new In-Plane Switching (IPS) panel technology called IPS Black in late 2021, then shipped the new tech in monitors starting in 2022. While it didn’t receive much public attention, it’s a big deal. IPS Black roughly doubles the contrast ratio of a typical IPS panel, from 1000:1 to 2000:1. Though that’s still way short of OLED, it’s a significant upgrade that helps IPS panels deliver deeper, more immersive images. It’s especially ideal for office and productivity monitors, which are a huge chunk of the monitor market (even if less glamorous). The Dell UltraSharp U3223QE (Amazon)Matt Smith / Foundry Despite that, IPS Black monitors have been hard to come by since LG was the only company producing this type of panel. But that’s changed now. BenQ’s RD320U, a truly excellent monitor for productivity and programming, has a 32-inch 4K IPS panel with a contrast ratio tested at nearly 1910:1 — but that one isn’t an LG IPS Black panel. It’s actually produced by another manufacturer. (BenQ wouldn’t say who.) That’s a positive signal for the future of IPS and I’ll be keeping an eye out for improved panels at CES 2025. I expect we’ll see more announced. Odd display sizes proliferate Back in 2022, LG made a weird monitor announcement at CES: the LG DualUp, a 28-inch monitor with a 16:18 aspect ratio. I worried it would be a gimmick, but my opinion changed when I reviewed it. As it turns out, the unique aspect ratio proved useful for many different needs. The same LG DualUp is still on the market today and its pricing has remained stable at its typical MSRP of $699.99 and sale price just south of $600. That’s a hint that this monitor is seeing good demand. The BenQ RD280U (Amazon)Matthew Smith / Foundry Other monitor makers seem to have noticed. In 2024, BenQ moved in with the SW242Q (an entry-level photography monitor with a 16:10 aspect ratio) and the RD280U (a programming monitor with a 3:2 aspect ratio). Dell and Asus also debuted 24-inchers with 16:10 aspect ratios. In part, panels with unusual aspect ratios are examples of display manufacturers “using the whole hog.” Often, display panels are produced in large sheets and then cut down to an appropriate size — so these panels with unusual aspect ratios may actually be byproducts of other, larger panels. It’s an interesting geometric puzzle for display manufacturers. Unusual aspect ratios offer more ways to solve this puzzle. And now that it’s clear people will buy monitors that aren’t 16:9 or ultrawide, I expect more manufacturers will market monitors with odd aspect ratios as productivity and content creation displays. New year, new ports Apple’s release of the new Mac Mini and MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt 5 makes it clear that this new connection standard is about to have its moment in the limelight. While PCs technically got to it first, early adopters have experienced issues. For most people, Apple’s inclusion of Thunderbolt 5 will be the first they’ve ever heard of it. To be sure, Thunderbolt 5 monitors won’t be flooding the market. Thunderbolt is already a niche connection for monitors. Still, Thunderbolt 5’s vastly increased bandwidth opens up options for better monitors with built-in hubs. These monitors will be able to support “daisy chain” connections to high-resolution monitors and/or handle multiple fast external drives. I think the PC market will see Thunderbolt 5 first on a new 5K or 6K display from Dell, LG, or BenQ. The Sony Inzone M10S (Amazon)Matthew Smith / Foundry In addition to Thunderbolt 5’s arrival, you can expect to see some new adoption of DisplayPort 2.1 (which first arrived in 2024’s Sony Inzone M10S. HDMI 2.1, meanwhile, will become more-or-less the default on all but the cheapest monitors. These standards promise better handling of high resolutions and refresh rates. It’s not all good, though. Thunderbolt 5, DisplayPort 2.1, and HDMI 2.1 all have complicated, tiered specifications. Cables that conform to these specifications offer varying data rates and feature support, so monitor shoppers will need to look closely at a monitor’s connection specifications before making a purchase. More AI (but maybe it will be useful?) The first so-called AI features, like Asus ROG AI Assistant and MSI Gaming Intelligence, appeared in 2024… but those features felt half-baked. As we head into 2025, AI will no doubt play a bigger role — and monitor makers will show off AI features that have had enough time in the oven. Skeptical? I don’t blame you. But AI could be useful in monitors. For example, televisions have used machine learning for years to upscale images and smooth out motion. Monitors haven’t offered the same tech for several reasons: the chips that make it possible were costly; the input latency was unacceptable; and the typical use case for a monitor wasn’t a great fit for what machine learning algorithms could accomplish thus far. But the monitor market of 2025 is a lot different than the one from 2015. Modern monitors are more expensive, and that means there’s room to roll out premium features — like AI image processing. The Samsung Odyssey OLED G8 (Amazon)Matthew Smith / Foundry In fact, this already happened in 2024, though in a limited way. The Samsung Odyssey OLED G8 line included an NQ8 AI Gen 3 processor that supports AI image upscaling. However, it only functions when viewing content through Samsung’s TizenOS, like Netflix or cloud gaming services. It doesn’t function with PCs or external consoles. That, I suspect, is going to change. Premium monitors are under a lot of pressure to justify their $1,000+ price tags, and AI image upscaling or motion clarity features seem like obvious selling points to put on a box. I expect this will be dicey territory because concerns like input lag won’t go away, but AI image processing could be a good fit for less input-sensitive games and streaming content. Further reading: The best 4K monitors worth premium price Read...