I have had a chance to play around with the HP 25x 24.5" monitor for a week now, and I have enjoyed what I have seen. I paired the monitor with a HP Pavilion Gaming Desktop (Model 690-0024), also from Best Buy. The Pavilion Gaming Desktop comes with an AMD RX580 graphics card, so I was able to take advantage of the monitors Freesync settings. That doesn’t mean NVidia owners can’t still benefit from using this monitor with adaptive sync, just not to the level of Freesync/G-sync. Build Quality/Design Construction and build quality are excellent. The stand the monitor comes with is pretty nice, albeit minimalistic. It is very stable, even with a small footprint. It is height adjustable (max height is ~7.75” from table to the screen image) and can be used to position the monitor in either landscape or portrait. While the stand is pretty understated, the monitor itself has a gamer look. The monitor frame has green ambient lighting along the bottom of the frame (the center 5.5” are illuminated). The image online appears to show the ambient lighting extending all the way across the bottom, but the left and right sides are just translucent green plastic inserts with no lighting. This ambient lighting can be turned off (or dimmed), and in doing so the monitor takes on a more sleek, professional look. I personally like the light, so I have kept it on. Overall the monitor has a clean design and feels very well put together. The brushed plastic in the front looks nice, and the lightly textured plastic for the body doesn’t have a cheap feel. This monitor is definitely at home in a gaming setup but would go just as well in an office/professional setup. The 'frameless' design also helps set it apart – a key feature for me. The bezel edge sits right at 2.5mm thick (checked with caliper), which is pretty slim. There is still a black border around the image on the screen (just under 5mm, so >7mm from bezel edge to the image). This is right on par with my other monitors that are frameless (my other monitors have 1.5mm bezels, but still the same >7mm to the image). This black border is a standard feature/limitation with frameless monitors – its due to the construction of the displays used for monitors. Most gaming monitors carry a large bezel (9-12mm), which isn't so great if you are planning a multi-monitor setup. I only use slim bezel monitors for this very reason (I am now up to 4 monitors for that whole wrap around feeling). Screen Quality The panel itself provides a great picture. At 24.5", 1080p is still a more than adequate resolution to game at. Anything larger, and I would jump to 1440p or 4K. Most graphics cards struggle with 4K 60 @high settings, let alone ultra - so for now 1080 is still very worth it. I had plenty of time to play around with the various settings for the picture quality. I settled with the Gaming Freesync setting, and adjusted the sharpness and brightness to my liking. This panel is actually pretty bright – 400 nits, so using it in a well-lit room should be no problem. The anti-glare matte finish also helps here. I don’t have any glare from the lights at might back or coming through my window. The monitor also has blue light reduction feature. This is something that has been implemented in Windows 10, but its still nice to see it incorporated in the monitor for those that want to isolate the light control to a single panel. In games, with Freesync enabled, the image quality was excellent. I had no frame tearing, or framerate issues. Games I tested were Far Cry 5, Dirt Rally, and Shadow of War. I also played Fortnite, but that only has adaptive sync support. The 1ms (gray to gray) response time is fantastic. Colors look to be fairly accurate, and only required some mild adjustment out of the box. The viewing angle on the monitor is pretty standard for TN (170° horz, 160° vert), and you can't really get much more than that unless you jump to VA or IPS. The screen itself had zero stuck or dead pixels upon startup. I don’t experience any backlight bleed or hot spots. The Jump to 144Hz Before this monitor I only had 75Hz panels. I never really thought there would be a huge difference between 75hz and 144Hz. I was wrong. The amount of microstuttering and blur at 60 or 75hz that I have become numb to is pretty incredible. I guess I was so used to console gaming that jumping up to 75hz on a PC was a big performance jump. The leap from 75hz to 144 though is just as noticeable. The first thing I noticed was how smooth the mouse cursor tracks on the screen compared to my 75’s. Jumping into a game, I didn’t notice a huge bump in perceived performance right away though. In FC5 I was playing the campaign and doing a lot of wandering around. It wasn’t until I got into a firefight that the higher frequency came into play. I was more accurate with my shots and the gameplay looked sharp even with a lot of motion in the scene. With Dirt Rally the scenery whipping by just looked smoother, and created a more immersive experience. If I had 2 more of these monitors I would put them into an Eyefinity setup, and be in heaven. When I went to hook this monitor up, I was concerned that HDMI might not carry Freesync at 144hz, so I hooked it up with a Displayport cable I already had. Apparently, that is no longer the case and HDMI can carry the signal at 144Hz (used to be limited to 120, but times change). For both Displayport and HDMI the Freesync range is 48-144Hz. I did have to manually adjust the monitor frequency to 144Hz in Windows display settings, and in order to enable Freesync I started with the Gaming-Freesync viewing mode. The little things There are a couple of little things about this monitor that I liked that I wanted to point out. First, you can adjust the ambient lighting (off, low, med, high, and breathing). Second, you can turn off the power button LED for nighttime gaming. So if you want, this monitor can be lit up, or blacked out. Nice. The stand can also be removed, and you can mount the monitor via the 100x100mm VESA bolt pattern. Conclusion For those wanting to get into the high frequency panel world, the 25x is a solid option. It has a modest 1080p resolution, which is perfectly fine for me, and most gamers. 1080p keeps the price point low enough to make 144Hz affordable. It will still cost you about the same as a 1440p monitor with a 60-75Hz refresh, but quite a bit cheaper than a 1440p 144Hz panel. The 1080p resolution also allows a low to mid tier GPU to keep up (like my RX580 4GB in my Pavilion desktop), keeping your overall gaming PC budget down. In short, this is a very good entry level gaming monitor. It really shines with its fast refresh time, low GTG time, Freesync support, and quality construction. It also looks pretty cool, which is just icing on the cake. I would recommend this monitor for sure.