KTC 27M1 review: Not your typical budget gaming monitor

Buying a budget gaming monitor (or any budget monitor!) isn’t easy, as you face literally hundreds of displays with nearly identical specifications. The KTC 27M1 manages to stand out from this crowd with several unusual features. It’s not perfect, but it’s a good choice if you want an inexpensive do-it-all monitor.

Read on to learn more, then see our roundup of the best gaming monitors for comparison.

The KTC 27M1 is a 27-inch gaming monitor with a 2560×1440 resolution. It also supports a refresh rate up to 210Hz alongside Adaptive Sync, FreeSync, and G-Sync. In short, the display specifications cover everything I’d expect from a budget gaming display, and then some.

However, the KTC 27M1 expands its appeal with several added features. It has a headphone hanger and a display hood (though the hood isn’t perfect, as I’ll discuss in a moment). The ergonomic stand also provides more adjustment than most available at this price.

Speaking of price, the KTC 27M1 retails at $229.99 on Amazon, which is competitive. Less expensive monitors are available but typically stick to 1080p resolution and/or a lower refresh rate. Most 1440p monitors with a 180Hz to 240Hz refresh rate retail for $180 to $250.

The KTC 27M1’s design seems typical at first glance. It’s primarily made from matte-black plastic and includes a few subtle design flourishes, including a silver strip on the rear with “Key to Combat” engraved on the right side. It’s all rather normal for an inexpensive gaming monitor.

However, a few oddities stand out. The stand is slightly slanted away from the user. That’s a bit odd, but it actually has an advantage. This design places the monitor slightly further away from the user, which is handy if your desk is narrow. The stand also has a clicky swivel operation with a wide range of operation (60 degrees in either direction) and a carrying handle.

The monitor has a hood, too—kinda. A display hood is a shield that attaches to the top or sides of a display. It’s normally meant to reduce ambient light on a display so that the image looks brighter and more accurate. And that’s kind of true here, too, except that the hood is missing the top. It still does reduce ambient light a bit, but I’m a bit puzzled why the top of the hood is absent.

Getting back to the stand, it’s great. The base is small and flat, yet the stand offers a wider range of ergonomic adjustment than most monitors. In addition to up to 120 degrees of swivel it also offers 40 degrees of tilt and150mm of height adjustment. It can pivot 90 degrees into portrait orientation, too. Most competitive monitors also offer ergonomic adjustment, but the 27M1 moves more than most. A 100x100mm VESA mount is also available for use with third-party monitor stands and arms.

Oh, and the rear of the monitor includes a headphone hook. It feels flimsy but it does the job.

KTC’s unusual yet arguably advantageous choices continue with the monitor’s connectivity. It has two HDMI 2.0 ports and two DisplayPort 1.4 ports for a total of four video inputs. Most budget monitors only have two or three video inputs.

It’s not all good news, though. The HDMI 2.0 ports only support a refresh rate up to 144Hz at 2560×1440. To be fair, it’s likely those ports will be used with game consoles, which don’t exceed 144Hz anyway.

The monitor also has a 3.5mm headphone jack. There are no USB ports, though, which is a minor disappointment. A USB 2.0 port is included but only used for firmware upgrades.

Like most monitors, the KTC 27M1 has a joystick tucked around the right flank for navigating the on-screen menus. It’s responsive and easy to reach, though the same is true with other monitors. The menus are well-labeled and have a bold, high-contrast font that I found easy to read.

The menu system provides an acceptable range of image quality options. These include four precise gamma presets, though the color temperature presets only target vague labels such as “Warm” and “Cool.” The monitor also has six-axis color saturation calibration. The monitor has an sRGB color gamut preset, but doesn’t offer a preset for AdobeRGB, DCI-P3, Rec.709, or other common color gamuts.

There’s also a typical range of gaming features such as an on-screen crosshair, timer, and FPS counter. A 4:3 aspect ratio mode is available, too.

While the on-screen menu system is good, the KTC doesn’t have a Windows or MacOS app that can be used to control the monitor’s features. That’s a feature that better-known brands, such as Alienware and Asus, can offer.

The KTC 27M1 has a pair of 2-watt speakers but, as is usually true for a monitor (at any price), they’re not great. They aren’t loud even at maximum volume and have a thin, tinny sound. The speakers are fine for listening to a podcast, perhaps, but not a good fit for gaming.

The KTC 27M1 has a 27-inch IPS-LCD display with a resolution of 2560×1440…and those specifications actually don’t say much about the monitor’s image quality. IPS-LCD displays can vary a lot in brightness, color, and contrast. So, how does the KTC 27M1 perform?

KTC comes out guns blazing with a maximum SDR brightness of 535 nits. That’s a huge level of brightness and, frankly, way too bright for most situations. However, if you need a monitor to use in a very bright room, the KTC 27M1 could do the trick. The monitor also has an anti-glare finish to reduce glare.

Unfortunately, the brightness is also a downside. Why? Because the monitor’s minimum brightness dips no lower than 85 nits. That might be too bright if you use the monitor in a very dark room.

I measured a maximum contrast ratio of 1520:1 at 50 percent of maximum brightness, and that contrast ratio was consistent at different brightness settings.

A contrast ratio of 1520:1 is good for a budget IPS-LCD display. The monitor’s black levels are noticeably elevated, though, so the display suffers the “IPS glow” problem which causes dark scenes to look hazy and gray.

However, as the graph shows, the same is true for other IPS monitors in this price bracket.

The Lenovo Legion R27fc-30 deserves special mention due to its much higher contrast ratio. That’s thanks to the monitor’s Vertical Alignment (VA) panel, a type of panel that has better contrast and is the second most popular option, after IPS, for a budget monitor’s display panel. However, as the other graphs show, the Legion falls short in some other areas—so there’s a bit of a give and take.

The KTC 27M1 offers a healthy color gamut that comes in at 100 percent of sRGB, 94 percent of DCI-P3, and 89 percent of AdobeRGB.

While this isn’t top-tier performance in 2025 (many monitors can hit 95 to 98 percent of DCI-P3 and 90 to 95 percent of AdobeRGB), this is a good level of performance for a budget monitor. It’s also enough to make games look vivid and saturated.

Color accuracy brings more good news, as the KTC 27M1 delivered a frankly shocking level of color accuracy. While color accuracy is generally great even among inexpensive IPS-LCD displays, the KTC 27M1 stands out with top-tier color accuracy performance.

That’s not to say the image quality is perfect. I measured a default gamma of 2.3, which is off the target of 2.2 (and this was in the monitor’s gamma 2.2 mode). Color temperature was also way too high at 7700K, off the target of 6500K. Using the Warm color temperature mode only lowered the result to 7100K. So, if you prefer a warm image, you’re likely going to need to do some additional software calibration.

Sharpness is fine but not exceptional. The monitor’s 2560×1440 resolution works out to about 110 pixels per inch. Obviously, that’s not as pixel-dense as a 4K monitor, which provides about 163 pixels per inch. At this price, though, 1440p is a fine resolution. It’s also a good fit for gaming, in particular, because 4K resolution is much more demanding on GPU hardware than 1440p.

While it has oddities, such as the unusually high minimum brightness and rather cool color temperature, the KTC 27M1 offers good SDR image quality overall. It is strongest in color performance and accuracy but also provides exceptional brightness. I was rather pleased with the image quality in most situations, as it struck me as vivid and alluring.

The KTC 27M1 can display an HDR signal, but HDR is not promoted in the monitor’s marketing, and the monitor lacks VESA DisplayHDR certification. It’s no surprise, then, that the monitor’s HDR leaves a lot to be desired. HDR scenes look a bit brighter than in SDR, but the monitor lacks both the brightness and contrast to provide the extra detail HDR is supposed to offer in bright portions of a scene. The color gamut also isn’t wide enough to handle HDR content correctly.

However, the same is true of all budget monitors. You’ll need to spend more on an OLED or Mini-LED monitor, such as the Acer Predator X34 X0, if you want good HDR performance.

The KTC 27M1 can reach a refresh rate of 210Hz with overclock, or 200Hz without. That’s an unusual number, but I didn’t notice anything unusual about the monitor’s motion clarity. The 210Hz refresh rate can provide excellent fluidity in fast-paced games and leads to a responsive, immediate feel.

Keep in mind, however, that the maximum refresh rate is only available over DisplayPort. HDMI is limited to 144Hz.

The monitor also supports Adaptive Sync, AMD FreeSync, and Nvidia G-Sync for smooth frame pacing. It worked as expected in my testing with an AMD Radeon 7800 XT. This is table stakes for a gaming monitor, though.

KTC provides an enhanced pixel response time mode, which boosts clarity but can also cause distracting artifacts and an over-sharpened look. It also has an MPRT mode that inserts black frames between regular frames to reduce motion blur. One downside of MPRT is that it reduces perceived brightness by roughly half, but the KTC’s extreme brightness means that isn’t really an issue. With that said, MPRT is something of an acquired taste, as it can create a “double image” effect.

While the KTC 27M1’s overall motion performance won’t win awards, it’s solid for a budget gaming monitor. Fast-paced games look reasonably crisp and details are usually legible, though fast text or tiny interface elements (like HP bars) can be a bit hard to discern. It’s a big leap from any 60Hz display and competitive in the budget gaming monitor arena.

While it’s not the best pick for every game, the KTC 27M1 has good image quality and unique features that help it stand out.

Like most IPS-LCD monitors, the KTC 27M1 has a modest contrast ratio and has trouble handling dark scenes. The 27M1 also lacks USB connectivity and doesn’t have a software utility for controlling monitor options.

Yet the KTC 27M1 strikes back with an excellent stand that has a wide range of ergonomic adjustment, a total of four video inputs, and strong color performance. It has a display hood, though it only covers two sides of the monitor.

I think the KTC 27M1 is a particularly good choice if you want a do-it-all budget monitor for gaming and work. It offers the ergonomic adjustment and color accuracy shoppers might look for in a budget content creation monitor alongside enhanced motion clarity and fluidity.