CES 2026 in Las Vegas made one thing painfully clear: the humble PC monitor is no longer humble. From 51.5‑inch ultrawides to 1,000 Hz esports panels and a “portable data center” with a flip‑out 4K screen, display makers are pushing hard at every edge.
Here’s a tour of the most fascinating monitors and monitor‑adjacent gadgets from the show.
Dell’s 51.5‑inch UltraSharp: spreadsheets on steroids
Dell’s UltraSharp line is already a go‑to for people who want a clean, reliable USB‑C monitor that just works with everything, including Macs. At CES 2026, Dell basically yelled: bigger.
- Model: UltraSharp U5226KW
- Size: 51.5 inches (Dell’s biggest UltraSharp yet)
- Resolution: 6144×2560 (about 129 PPI)
- Panel: IPS Black
- Ports: Thunderbolt 4 hub with up to 140 W power delivery
- Extras: Pop‑out box with 27 W USB‑C and 10 W USB‑A ports, integrated KVM for up to four PCs
- Price: $2,900 with stand, $2,800 without
- Availability: Launched during CES week
There’s nothing radically new here beyond the sheer size and port buffet, but that’s kind of the point. Dell is going after professionals who currently juggle dual‑ or triple‑monitor setups and would rather live inside one huge, dense canvas where four apps across still look sharp.
If your day is 20% code, 30% spreadsheets, 40% Slack, and 10% pretending you don’t see yet another meeting invite, this thing is built for you.
Lenovo’s tall ThinkCentre X AIO Aura: the anti‑iMac
All‑in‑ones rarely get attention anymore, but Lenovo showed up with something genuinely different: an AIO with a tall, almost‑square display.
- Product: Lenovo ThinkCentre X AIO Aura Edition
- Aspect ratio: 16:18 — not a perfect square, but much taller than a standard 16:9
- Screen: 27.6‑inch IPS, 2560×2880
- CPU (max): Up to Intel Core Ultra X7 Series 3
- Memory: Up to 64 GB LPDDR5x
- Storage: Two M.2 SSD slots
Lenovo says it’s targeting “creators, programmers, and data professionals who benefit from seeing two A4 pages or full data sets in an easy‑to‑view portrait display.” That 16:18 aspect ratio makes that pitch believable: think full‑height code plus logs, or two pages of a document at actual size.
On the software side, Lenovo is leaning hard into business workflows:
- Lenovo DeskView can “digitize documents placed in front of the screen for instant sharing.”
- Lenovo Share Zone lets the panel act as a display for the AIO and a second, connected system at the same time.
There’s also a more conventional Yoga AIO I Aura Edition with a 32‑inch 4K screen and a base that lights up in different colors based on the on‑screen content. Lenovo is aiming that at consumers; it’s expected in Q2 for $2,400.
No price or release date yet for the tall ThinkCentre X AIO, but the direction is clear: as more laptops ship with taller screens, desktops are catching up.
RGB‑stripe OLED monitors: fixing the text problem
OLED monitors have been a dream for gamers and a headache for anyone who has to read a lot of text. The issue isn’t just sub‑4K resolutions; it’s the subpixel layouts.
Most current OLED monitors use:
- LG Display’s WOLED panels with RWBG or newer RGWB subpixel layouts, or
- Samsung Display’s QD‑OLED panels with a triangular RGB layout.
Windows’ ClearType text rendering is tuned for classic LCDs with a straight RGB‑stripe layout. Mix that with WOLED or QD‑OLED, and you often get colored “fringing” around text—especially at lower resolutions, and especially on QD‑OLED.
That’s why LG Display’s move matters. In December, the company said it’s shipping OLED panels with a true RGB‑stripe subpixel structure:
“The RGB stripe structure arranges the three primary color subpixels—red, green, and blue—in a straight line, significantly reducing visual distortions such as color bleeding and fringing, even at close viewing distances.”
Earlier RGB‑stripe OLED monitors topped out at around 60 Hz, making them a non‑starter for gaming. LG Display says it boosted “the proportion of the pixel area that emits light” to get both RGB stripe and high refresh rates into mass‑market panels.
Samsung Display is taking a slightly different path. At CES it announced new QD‑OLED panels with a vertical RGB subpixel structure it calls “V‑stripe.” Asus and MSI are both planning monitors based on these panels this year.
Samsung Display notes the difficulty of pulling this off at gaming‑class speeds:
“The biggest technical challenges in mass-producing high refresh rate panels with a new pixel structure include reduced organic material lifespan, heat generation, and brightness degradation.”
The company says it leaned on QD‑OLED’s top‑emission structure plus more efficient materials and design tweaks to make those panels practical.
Early hands‑on reports from the show floor suggest that text on these new RGB‑stripe OLEDs looks noticeably cleaner than on existing OLED monitors. LG and Gigabyte have already confirmed plans to ship RGB‑stripe OLED models in 2026.
If you’ve been avoiding OLED for work because of fuzzy fonts, this may be the year that changes.
Samsung’s 6K Odyssey 3D: glasses‑free, GPU‑hungry
Samsung isn’t giving up on glasses‑free 3D. After launching its first Odyssey 3D monitor last year, it’s back with a bigger, sharper model.
- Size: 32 inches
- Resolution: 6K (6144×3456) at 165 Hz
- High‑FPS mode: 3K (3072×1728) at 330 Hz
Like its 27‑inch, 4K, 165 Hz predecessor, the new Odyssey 3D uses an app called Odyssey 3D Hub to launch stereoscopic content. When the first model landed, that hub supported 14 games. At the time of writing, it’s up to 29 titles in the Microsoft Store—better, but still niche for a monitor that’s likely to cost over $2,000, based on the previous generation’s pricing.
The panel can also apply a 3D effect to ordinary 2D videos. In testing of the 27‑inch version, that worked reasonably well on YouTube content, with a bit of a cardboard‑cutout vibe.
Between the 6K resolution, 330 Hz 3K mode, and real‑time 3D processing, you’re going to need serious GPU horsepower. This is a showpiece product for early adopters and 3D diehards, not a mainstream 6K monitor.
Still, for anyone who’s been waiting roughly 15 years for glasses‑free 3D to become usable instead of gimmicky, Samsung’s persistence—and the slow growth in game support—are encouraging.
Nvidia G‑Sync Pulsar: motion clarity gets serious
Esports players have been watching G‑Sync Pulsar since Nvidia first teased it at CES 2024. In 2026, the tech is finally shipping in real monitors.
Pulsar is a new take on backlight strobing:
- On a Pulsar display, the backlight pulses for about one‑fourth of a frame, right before pixels are overwritten.
- That timing means you mostly see pixels when they’ve already reached the correct color, instead of watching them transition from one shade to another.
- The result is lower perceived blur on fast‑moving objects.
Most LCDs just leave the backlight on constantly. Pulsar’s approach is closer to how plasma TVs used to work, lighting pixels in very quick bursts.
Crucially, Pulsar also works with variable refresh rates, which sets it apart from older strobing tech like Nvidia’s own Ultra Low Motion Blur.
As of now, three Pulsar monitors are actually on sale:
- Acer Predator XB273U F5
- Asus ROG Strix Pulsar XG27AQNGV
- MSI MPG 272QRF X36
If you chase every last millisecond in competitive shooters, Pulsar displays just jumped to the top of the test‑bench list for 2026.
Odinn’s Omnia X: a “portable data center” with a 4K screen
Most monitors at CES were either thin, huge, or fast. Odinn’s Omnia X was none of those. It was just… outrageous.
The two‑year‑old California startup calls Omnia X a “portable data center.” That’s marketing stretch, but the specs are wild for something that’s roughly the size of carry‑on luggage:
- Up to two AMD EPYC 9965 CPUs
- Up to four Nvidia H200 NVL GPUs
- Up to 6 TB of DDR5 memory
- Weight: around 77 pounds
- Display (optional): integrated 23.8‑inch 4K panel that flips out from the side
- Design: flip‑down keyboard, dual handles
Odinn says Omnia X uses a redundant PSU with a high Platinum efficiency rating—critical for reducing heat and wasted power in such a dense system. Interesting Engineering reports that the machine relies on a proprietary closed‑loop cooling system to keep everything in check.
On its website, Odinn pitches Omnia X at heavy‑duty, sensitive workloads: “military AI missions,” “enterprise-grade simulations,” and running large models “without ever connecting to the cloud.” The company talks about mission‑critical inference at the edge, from battlefield computer vision to real‑time navigation, plus on‑site work for cinematographers, VFX artists, and investigators handling massive, air‑gapped data sets.
CEO Carl Liebel told the Las Vegas Sun that Omnia X will start at $550,000. For that, you get arguably the most extreme “monitor with a PC attached” ever shown at CES.
1,000 Hz gaming monitors: because 500 Hz wasn’t enough
Every year, someone brings “the fastest gaming monitor ever made” to CES. In 2026, we hit 1,000 Hz.
Multiple brands are chasing that number. Philips and AOC have already talked about monitors that can run 720p at 1,000 Hz. But the most concrete hardware on the show floor came from Acer.
- Acer Predator XB273U F6
- Size: 27 inches
- Refresh: up to 1,000 Hz (demoed at CES)
- Resolution mode: 2560×1440 at 500 Hz
Acer actually put this thing on display and, crucially, attached a date: it’s targeting Q2 2026 for launch.
Samsung, meanwhile, announced a 1,040 Hz Odyssey G6 G60H, but didn’t offer much detail on how it hits that number, and there were few demos at the show. At this point, the extra 40 Hz feels more like a headline than a practical difference.
Does anyone “need” a 1,000 Hz monitor? For the vast majority of people, no. But ultrahigh refresh rates can make fast motion look cleaner and sharper, and they expose input differences that matter at the very top levels of competitive play.
If nothing else, CES 2026 proved that display engineers have no intention of lifting their feet off the gas.
