Sceptre may not be the household name that HP, Samsung or other heavy hitters are when it comes to business and gaming monitors. But, with the Sceptre E248W-FPT monitor, we’re certain that they’re worthy of being included in short list of anyone searching for a new productivity monitor. Of course, Sceptre offers some of the best budget gaming monitor around, but its business line of monitors checks all boxes for budget shoppers.
The screen isn’t the best around, with a few drawbacks, which we’ll discuss below, but it offers a fantastic screen and an edgeless design included to sweeten the deal. Not only that but Sceptre has built into the monitor some interesting features that most value hunters will surely find useful.
Design
The Sceptre E248W-FPT’s looks are fairly straightforward. Like most budget monitors, it resembles a flat panel TV. It has thin but visible bezels around the sides and the top of the display, with a round base.
Unlike a TV, the angle of the monitor can be easily adjusted to face up and down, with a 178-degree viewing angle. So, in case you need a small monitor to please an audience of fans, then this display can more than handle the job.
The 24-inch IPS panel has a 1080p (1920 x 1080) resolution, a 320 nits peak brightness and 99% sRGB color gamut as well as wide viewing angles (178 degrees). Most budget monitors use TN panels, that suffer from narrow viewing angles, we’re glad to see premium features at this price point.
Also, on the rear of the cabinet are VGA and two HDMI ports, a headphone jack and an AC power jack. The On-screen menu offers a nice selection of picture settings, although it doesn’t give you advanced six color adjustments that you get in more expensive gaming monitors like the Alienware 25 (AW2518H). For the adjustments, the Standard setting gives the best overall picture, since the rest of the options are either too dark or overly bright.
Performance
The performance of the Sceptre E248W-FPT is pretty solid. The screen is gorgeous, detailed and vibrant, thanks to the 1080p resolution. Videos and games look sharp and detailed, but you don’t expect to run modern games at the highest frames rates. In particular, it is not possible to hit over 100 fps on modern games since the screen maxes at 75Hz If you’re using a gaming rig equipped with the latest graphics card, maybe a GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, you’ll need to get a monitor with 144HZ refresh or above.
As mentioned, it comes with a 75Hz refresh rate, so you’ll probably take advantage of the wide viewing angles and decent refresh rate to play games at medium settings, though. However, for productivity tasks alike office use and watching movies, it makes for an excellent choice. On modern AAA, you’ll experience a little bit of screen tearing, but isn’t badly off considering that you’re buying a budget monitor.
Bottom Line
Sceptre’s emphasis on a sleek, edgeless design might be one of our favorite aspects on the Sceptre E248W-FPT, and it does its job really well. In fact, our only real issue with the monitor is its lack of a USB port and audio. There’s the minor annoyance of having the turned around the back, and that’s more of an issue if you use headphones. More important are the speakers they decided to include. They’re very thin sounding and will only be useful when you have no other means of getting sound.
The differences between budget monitors are not going to be as noticeable as comparing a Chromebook and a gaming laptop, but there are notable differences. Not only does the Sceptre E248W-FPT monitor offer up a gorgeous and versatile display. It does so with a sleek, clean design with a bright display allowing you to go from a productivity screen to an enthusiast gaming panel without spending too much.
Sceptre IPS 24-Inch Business Computer Monitor (E248W-FPT)
2 used from $172.12
