Innocn 32M2V MiniLED Gaming Monitor Review: Outstanding Value and Extreme Brightness

Available in black or silver, the Innocn 32M2V is a 32-inch widescreen 4K MiniLED gaming monitor, capable of HDR1000 and 144Hz. At $800 on Amazon, it offers great value for money and a fantastic set of features.

All about the Innocn 32M2V MiniLED gaming monitor

The Innocn 32M2V offers incredible contrast and black levels thanks to local dimming, while the increased number of LEDs results in higher peak brightness, making this a fantastic for HDR content—both movies and gaming. 

Although some will argue the image quality isn’t as good as OLED—notably, black levels aren’t as true black—the key difference is that MiniLED monitors don’t suffer from burn-in, where part of the image is permanently burnt into the display. For me, that longevity is certainly worth any tradeoff. 

Who is Innocn?

Operating now for around a decade, Innocn started out making generic monitors for other companies to rebrand, but soon realized they could offer better value by marketing directly to consumers. Over the past few years, I’ve had the pleasure of testing their monitors, and I’ve never been disappointed by the quality or value offered. 

I was already using an Innocn monitor prior to this review as my daily driver, happily spending upwards of eight hours a day staring at it. I can’t offer higher praise than that.

First impressions

The design is a bit generic. You get a few degrees of tilt and a few inches of vertical adjustment, but nothing crazy; you can’t spin it around to use it vertically. 

There’s about half an inch of black bezel on the top and sides, and an inch on the bottom, so it’s it’s not an edge-to-edge display. The base is large and sturdy, so there are no issues with stability. 

There are also four LED panels on the back—one in each corner. You can adjust the color, make them flash, or just disable them completely from the Game section on the menu. They don’t reflect on-screen content.

Once you turn the Innocn 32M2V on it’ll blow you away—quite literally in the case of the PS5 peak white HDR adjustment screen. My eyes were not ready for that level of blinding. It’s clear from the offset that sharpness, brightness, and vivid colors are unmatched.  

If I’m honest, I was a little skeptical coming into this review. I didn’t think MiniLED was worth that much of a fuss about. Now I’ll find it hard to go back to a regular LCD.

Content testing and HDR

Most of my testing was done on Windows 10, though I also used it as my Mac desktop for a week. 

I started testing with HDR—both movies and gaming—from within Windows. Anything I threw at it looked stunning, with neon colors that popped and incredible contrast. Of course, that assumes you have the power to run games at 4K HDR and a decent refresh; I don’t, and the stutter was unbearable in Cyberpunk 2077 on my lowly RTX3060. I had to drop it to 1440p just to get a solid 45fps, but it still looked sharp. Your experience may vary.

While I wouldn’t watch a movie sitting at my desktop, if your living situation doesn’t allow room for a big TV or home cinema, then you won’t be disappointed by watching movies on this. 

I tried the same content again with HDR disabled, and frankly, I preferred it. Colors felt more saturated—perhaps oversaturated—but that sutis my preference, and can of course, be adjusted. 

Unlike a lot of monitors which use jargon like HDR 600, without any real certification behind them, the Innocn 32M2V has a VESA-Certified DisplayHDR 1000 rating, which means it’s capable of 1000 nits of peak brightness, and has been tested in a standardised way.

Eizo testing

I ran it through a standard battery of Eizo tests and while most of the tests were as expected, when looking at the 256-level black to white gradient, there were clear inaccuracies or variations in the mid-grey lines.

It wasn’t as smooth a transition, appearing to brighten and darken from one strip to the next. I should note however that this is an artificial test and that in actual daily use, I didn’t notice it.

Connectivity

A stingy number of ports is always frustrating, especially on a monitor that’s so capable, so thankfully you won’t be disappointed on that front. The Innocn 32M2V features USB-C with 90W of power delivery, so a single cable can connect and charge most laptops and portable gaming systems like the SteamDeck.

In addition, you’ll find a single DisplayPort 1.4 for 144Hz full 4K gaming, two full bandwidth HDMI 2.1 ports, and a couple of USB-A ports for accessories (you’ll need to use the USB-B connector port for these to function, they don’t connect to the USB-C device).

In the box you get a generous selection of USB-C to C cable, USB-A to B, DisplayPort, and an HDMI cable. The stand and base are separate, requiring a little assembly, but nothing you couldn’t handle alone. 

Resolution and pixel density 

At 32 inches, the 4K resolution produces a pixel density of 140DPI for incredibly sharp details; you won’t see any pixelation. It’s a Goldilocks size for desktop and gaming use. I’ve had comically bigger screens and ultra-widescreens, and while they have their place, 32 inches means you can have the entire screen within your field of view at all times, no matter how close you want to sit, which is not true with anything bigger or wider. 

The underlying panel here is an AU Optronics IPS, a similar one to the one used in the $3000 ASUS PG32UQX. 

LED, Mini LED, LCD, OLED… what does it all mean? 

LED and LCD aren’t all that different. In fact, it’s more appropriately called LED backlit LCD versus a CCFL cold cathode fluorescent panel backlit LCD. 

LED and LCD monitors use basically the same LCD as the front layer—the bit that makes details—although nowadays it’s called IPS, which is a just type of LCD. The difference between LED and LCD is mostly in the lighting technology. While old-school LCD panels use a fluorescent panel combined with a mask, some LED monitors use a matrix of LEDs to make light. This means they have something called local dimming, so you can separately control the brightness on different parts of the image. 

Mini LED is the evolution of LED backlighting, and as the name suggests, it uses a smaller matrix of LEDs, giving better brightness and finer control of the contrast. Specifically the FALD (full-array local dimming) in the Innocn 32M2V has 1,152 lighting zones. That’s about to about 7,000 pixels per lighting zone 

Local dimming must be enabled before use through the menu system; it’s not on by default. In some scenes, local dimming is known to create a blooming or halo effect, which is more noticeable when looking on from the sides than head-on.

If you have a large zone of bright colors, it looks stunning and really makes them pop out compared to darker areas of the image. But if you have small points of light it can lead to that brightness zone spreading to the surrounding pixels. 

OLED screens don’t suffer from blooming because each pixel provides its own light, without requiring a rear light source. They offer the ultimate in local dimming, and that’s why their black levels are deeper. 

That said, I ran some local dimming stress test videos at night, and for the most part, with a line or single point on the screen, I couldn’t see what the fuss was about. It was only during a cloud of stars—tiny white dots everywhere—that it was painfully obvious, like a murky grey cloud. But outside of this one very specific circumstance, I’m not sure it would be noticeable. 

Colors 

While I don’t have a colorimeter to confirm any accuracy, I can tell you by the data they quote, and with each purchase, Innocn includes their own lab test results. The 32M2V uses an A+ rated IPS panel offering 99% of DCI-P3, 100% sRGB, and 99% of the Adobe RGB color range, with a maximum delta E of 2—though in most results, a lot less (closer to 0 is better; a score of 100 would mean the colors displayed are the complete opposite of what they should be). 

Other gaming features

The 32M2V supports Ultrafast pixel refresh mode, which can result in a little ghosting, especially when combined with Adaptive Sync (NVIDIA GSync and AMD FreeSync). Both must be enabled from the menu before use.

Though I assume Windows will be your primary gaming platform, I also tried with the SteamDeck and can confirm it works seamlessly; the Power Delivery keeps your deck charged, and the video stream switches on instantly. Of course, the resolution is quite blocky because of the SteamDeck processing power, but that’s to be expected. 

I also tried a PlayStation 5 with HDR enabled, and the spell effects in Hogwarts Legacy were as stunning as expected. However, the system is limited to 4KHDR 60Hz, not VRR or 120Hz. That’s not uncommon for PC monitors, and I’ve yet to come across one that did support higher outputs, but worth noting in case you were hoping this would be your primary display for your PlayStation as well. You’ll need to use the DisplayPort and a PC to get the highest quality possible. 

Should you buy the Innocn 32M2V?

At $800 (and frequently discounted), the Innocn 32M2V offers outstanding value for money with features and performance you would need to pay well over $1,000 normally, and often upwards of $2,000. 

At a similar price point, the Samsung Odyssey Neo G7 is a 4K 32-inch display featuring a strongly curved 1000R VA panel at up to 165Hz. But by all accounts the quality is substandard, with bad color reproduction and plenty of user reports of screen problems. Curved displays can be divisive, but if you did want that curve and could up the budget a little, the Dell Alienware AW3223QF retails for around $1,000, offering an OLED screen at up to 240Hz, and very highly rated. 

I do have a few complaints about the Innocn 32M2V. The menu system is annoying to navigate with four physical buttons rather than a joystick, and the auto input switching mode didn’t seem particularly useful to me. I would have expected it to switch whenever an input was activated, but it seemed to only switch if the previous input was turned off. 

As the first MiniLED I’ve tested, I will say that the arguments of why to avoid MiniLED in favor of OLED seem completely overblown, especially when the alternative is the much worse possibility of permanent screen burn-in. In my mind, MiniLED is a fantastic compromise—and the 32M2V is an excellent MiniLED 4K HDR 144Hz option. 

Do you already own an Innocn 32M2V gaming monitor? Tell us about your experience in the comments below.