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The vast majority of our reviews come from verified purchases. Reviews from customers may include My Best Buy members, employees, and Tech Insider Network members (as tagged). Select reviewers may receive discounted products, promotional considerations or entries into drawings for honest, helpful reviews.

• Rated 5 out of 5 stars

  Out of This World (For the Most Part)

  • Tech Insider Network Member

  PROS + wicked fast display, up to 320 Hz + high color accuracy and vibrant display + creative and ergo-friendly stand with lots of adjustment + USB ports along the bottom for easy access + headphone hook is a nice touch CONS - 1080p - IPS panel (not as much 'richness' or contrast as OLED) - no audio jacks NEGOTIABLES > only two downstream USB-A ports. Fine for most, but worth noting 1080p in 2025 is a rough pitch, but Alienware somehow pulled it off! From the start, the packaging is phenomenal. That's usually not a highlight of most products, and it certainly isn't the highlight of the AW2525HM (side note: can we start a standard of more human-friendly names for monitors?), but it is a perk that I feel is worth mentioning after unboxing a fair amount of monitors in my life. The clamshell-style box is a fantastic choice, and I particularly appreciated that all four cables (HDMI, DP, USB, power) were neatly wrapped and included, and that there was almost no waste plastic at all (good job, Dell!); overall, a 10/10 experience when so much tech still comes absolutely drowning in plastic that will never get recycled. I was also thoroughly impressed by the stand. Biggest points: it has height, tilt, and rotation adjustment, and feels quite solid to boot. It's a fun design, too. The "floating" look is a cute touch for the brand, and while I wish the stand went a teensy bit higher and had better cable management, it is a step above many included budget monitor stands. The screen itself is brilliant, especially for a budget gaming IPS monitor. It's bright and smooth and feels buttery smooth. I tend to err on the side of believing firmly that the past 120 Hz you're paying for diminishing returns, but I have to admit the 320 Hz is impressive and noticeably smoother. I found myself actually in awe at times while gaming. There's no real detectable input lag or ghosting that I could detect, which is great for a monitor so heavily geared towards gaming. Color accuracy is surprisingly solid, especially for a gaming monitor. I did find it runs ever so slightly warm out of the box, and the standard preset adds a bit of "flavor blasting" by boosting the colors in a way that can be undesirable for some. Luckily, you can tweak the color settings, and the sRGB preset helps rectify that slightly, though that preset comes at the cost of saturation. Still, with tweaking in the custom preset, it's hard to dislike. I use a BenQ PD2700U for most of my professional work, which costs a good deal more than the Alienware and is obviously more color-accurate, but found myself surprised that looking between the two, the Alienware *still* looked great. It would be more than enough for the vast majority of use cases, including gaming and consuming content, and it would even suit creative work that doesn't rely on precise color accuracy. I found the brightness was impressive as well; if it doesn't hit the advertised 400 nits, I'd be shocked. 75%, the default, is plenty, and 100% is pretty blinding. The only gripe that I have with the monitor is that 1080p is suboptimal for text, specifically, which makes this hard to sell as a vertical side monitor...not an issue as it's a fantastic main one, though! My original intention was to use it for that purpose and replace my current side monitor, but it's harsher to read text on, especially smaller text, than my current one (the BenQ GW2480, which specifically has "eye care tech" that seems to work well for this purpose). Ultimately, however, the Alienware's such a good monitor that I ended up flipping it back to landscape and using it for watching content and playing games instead. Win/win! Additionally, there are appreciated little features in the monitor itself. Those include a number of presets aimed at different use cases (such as sports or MOBA/RTS), customizable shortcut keys to easily access menu items such as brightness and contrast, and even a clever pop-out headphone holder on the top left — despite the ironic lack of a headphone jack, or any audio ports whatsoever. The holographic Alienware logo on the back is another cute touch. I'll admit, I am not a fan of the "nipple" to navigate monitor menus, but with some practice, you do get used to it. I/O is decent but not the best I've ever seen; it's better than nothing, though, and I do appreciate that the two downstream USB-A ports to connect peripherals are placed on the bottom of the monitor for easy access. It's a feature I haven't encountered before and is surprisingly useful. I did test out the Alienvision feature, but have never used these while gaming, and find them a tad gimmicky. You may be happy to know there are three variations of the vision overlay, and you can customize them somewhat if you so desire. The major catches I can think of after using this monitor for a few days are that it is "only" 1080p (although it still feels fantastic to use and watch/play media and games on, thanks to the high refresh rate as well as the incredible color accuracy and brightness) and bizarrely lacks any audio jacks whatsoever. These might be dealbreakers for some, but if you can overlook them, you may just find yourself thoroughly pleased with this monitor. I have heard hype around the Alienware monitors specifically and always wondered why, and they've just made a new convert of me. It's fast, it's well-built, it looks great, and the little touches in the design make me feel that someone somewhere in that product design team, actually cared about what they were doing enough to put those little touches that could easily be missed or omitted entirely for the sake of profit. This could so easily have been just another cheap rectangle on a rectangle stand with no unique points at all, and yet it manages to cram charm points where other monitors fall a bit flat (such as the included stand and headphone holder). Are they *necessary*? Not really, but they are pleasant perks on a monitor that was already excellent. I would happily recommend the AW2525HM to any competitive gamers, gamers in general, casual users, as well as creatives and professionals who don't need perfect color accuracy. It has far exceeded my expectations, from unboxing to use.

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  Posted 3 weeks ago by R Tanaka

• Rated 5 out of 5 stars

  Good space-saving monitor

  • Tech Insider Network Member

  A pretty good monitor. THE GOOD: ~ 320Mhz refresh rate ~ Sleek design ~ Easy set up ~ Nice packaging (neat and easy to locate things) ~ Numerous presets for color ~ Pop-out headphone rest ~ Plenty of inputs (1xDP and 2xHDMI) ~ Charging port (USB-A unfortunately)~ Highly adjustable~ Plug and play THE BAD ~ Power light THE MEH (Could go either way) ~ Power Light ~ Charging port not USB-C ~ Upstream USB port ~ 1080p ~ No HDR OVERALL Everything came neatly packaged and was easy to locate. Setup was a breeze, too. It was a matter of screwing the base onto the stand. No screwdriver is required because the screw has a tab you can simply lift and twist. I hooked up the Display Port and power and was done. I normally run a 2k 27" monitor, but I needed another monitor for a different rig and this is Alienware, so I had to try it out. I have several AW products and love them all. The colors are good on the monitor. To be honest, it depends on what you're looking at and which setting you're using. Some settings are warmer and others are cooler. (Red vs blue tints). There was minimal banding on tests.  Gaming, working, and video watching all look good. Watching hi-res videos of nature (a test I use on all monitors) proves some brilliant and beautiful colors. Game play was very smooth and enjoyable (despite the one hiccup detailed at the end of this). When facing the monitor, there is a button on the upper left edge. If you press it, a bar pops out. This is nice if you use a headset during work or gaming. It is a space saver and allows you to simply hang up your headset when you're done. Very nice touch. Not only can you easily raise and lower the monitor to the appropriate height, but you can adjust the tilt and even rotate it.  There is no on-board sound. To me, that's a good thing. I don't understand why so many companies waste time, effort, and materials (then pass those costs to a consumer) putting in a 2w speaker that is just below tin-can quality. The one thing I do not like is the power button. It is a bright white light.I find it annoying. It wouldn't be so bad if it were blue, but the white is stark against the black frame.  THE BIG QUESTION:Would I recommend this to someone?Yes, but with some caveats. This monitor won't be for every gamer. I think this would be an excellent monitor for the college student who has limited dorm-room space, but wants to be able to work and game.  THE HICCUP: When I first loaded into World of Tanks (game), I hated this monitor. My game was dark and the video was extremely choppy. I hit the joystick button on the monitor and changed the setting to the FPS preset. The color was much better, however, gameplay was still rough. What I like about this monitor is as I was changing the video setting, it told me what my refresh rate was. That was the problem. It was 24Mhz. Windows had defaulted down to 60Mhz. Changing to 320Mhz in Windows didn't fix the game problem. The game had actually dropped it to 24Mhz. Once I changed the in-game setting to 320, it flowed very smoothly. So, if you're using it as a gaming monitor and the video is laggy, check the refresh rate.

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  Posted 2 weeks ago by BamaBubba

• Rated 5 out of 5 stars

  Great for gaming!

  • Incentivized
  • Verified Purchaser
  • Owned for less than 1 week

  Finally getting some good quality frames and refresh rate!

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  Posted 2 days ago by Nicolle