TechRadar Verdict
It’s hard to believe that you can get a 144Hz gaming monitor for less than $200, but that’s where the Viotek Reaper RFI25CBA gaming monitor comes in. With a very affordable price tag and some decent gaming performance, it’s a good monitor to pick up for its quick response time, adjustable display, and overall good color performance.
Pros
- +
Affordable price
- +
Good response time
- +
Discreet cable management
Cons
- -
PiP feature is unnecessary
- -
Lighting can’t be changed
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One-minute review
Gaming monitors are often hard to pick out – the balance between screen size, resolution, and refresh rate are all factors that are crucial to picking out the most responsive panel. The Viotek Reaper RFI25CBA tries to take the guesswork out of that buying decision by offering a competent gaming monitor that seemingly ticks all the right boxes.
Connectivity is aplenty here, with everything from PCs to gaming consoles to mobile phones working flawlessly with this panel. The speedy 144Hz refresh rate is bound to make FPS gamers jump for joy, and pretty much every game that we played had smooth framerates throughout.
This is also the first Viotek monitor we’ve tested that is actually full adjustable, so you’re not longer stuck with the monitor height being at a fixed level. You can also rotate the monitor into portrait mode as well, making it great for streaming software or monitoring a Twitch chat if you’re streaming your gameplay.
There are a few sticking points with this monitor as well, but they’re mostly minor – the fixed LEDs and the squashed Picture in Picture modes are two that come to mind. Overall, the Viotek Reaper RFI25CBA is a great and affordable gaming monitor that will be welcome in any gaming setup.
Price and availability
The Viotek Reaper RFI25CBA is available now, and is priced at $299.99. It’s available directly on Viotek’s website, as well as Amazon, and is often priced much lower – it’s currently on Viotek’s website for a very attractive $199.99.
This positions it firmly as a ‘bang for your buck’ monitor, where you pretty much get what you pay for. There are of course other monitors on the market that may offer even high refresh rates or features, but they’re not going to come at this price.
Design
The Viotek Reaper RFI25CBA looks like most gaming monitors, with an all-black design with a few discreet red accents here and there. The V-shaped stand takes a bit extra space on your desk, but connects to a fully-adjustable monitor stand that lets you position or rotate the display to suit your needs. This is a much-welcome change for Viotek, whose monitors in the past have only had a cheap fixed stand with little room for adjustments.
The monitor features two red LEDs at the front and two LED slits at the back, presumably to really drive home the message that this is a gaming monitor. The lights can’t be changed to any other color unfortunately, you can either turn them off completely or have them flash off and on.
The panel itself has fairly thin bezels, so having two of these monitors side by side for a dual-monitor setup will not be a problem. There’s a small Viotek logo at the bottom bezel, and a faint power LED on the lower right side.
The Reaper’s stand as mentioned before is fully adjustable, but does also hide two extra features. There’s a handy headphone holder that pops out at the top in case you want to hang up your headphones at the back. You can also remove the stand’s back plate to thread through your power and display cables, before snapping the panel back on to hide everything. This makes for a very clean setup, and is a well-appreciated feature to have. You can also detach the stand completely and use the included mounting screws to mount it to a VESA monitor arm.
Another good feature of the Reaper is the OSD control – previously we’ve had to make do with several had to press buttons to cycle through options, but this time around Viotek has gotten rid of everything and just used a small joystick to cycle through and select various options. The joystick is quite easy to press and navigate with, so that’s another welcome change.
Performance
The Viotek Reaper features a host of connectivity options depending on your requirements. There’s a USB-C port that can be connected to a PC or compatible smartphone, or you can opt for the DisplayPort (1.2) for optimal PC connectivity for the best refresh rates. There are two HDMI ports – one with v1 .4 and v2.0, bearing in mind of course that HDMI will only take you as high as 120Hz.
The Reaper’s 25” IPS display supports a maximum 1920x1080 resolution, which is good for most gamers who aren’t interested in 1440p gaming or don’t have PCs that are powerful enough to game at higher resolutions. It’s a good enough size to read in-game text and menus clearly, and matches this price point fairly.
There are a number of display options to adjust brightness, contrast, color, and picture quality. The display is also FreeSync and G-Sync compatible, but this only works over a DisplayPort connection. You can also cycle through on-screen crosshairs to help with aiming, but we found that turning this on had little benefit to our gameplay.
Gaming performance on the Reaper was pretty good across a variety of games – Destiny 2 looked fantastic as we travelled through the snow-capped plains of Europa, while Overwatch was bright and colorful during some frantic quickplay action. Darker areas of certain levels of Tomb Raider didn’t appear washed out, and we had very good color reproduction and clarity throughout our hours of gaming.
Watching Netflix and YouTube was similarly pleasing, with bright and clear colors across a variety of shows, from cooking programs to nature documentaries. Viewing angles on the Reaper are quite good – you’ll have the best experience when sitting right in front of it, but even at a slight angle colors were still vivid and not washed out. Console gaming is similarly quite good, and for anyone who wants to use this monitor for next-gen gaming on a budget, you’ll be pleased with its performance.
The Reaper also features a Picture in Picture mode as well as Picture by Picture if you want to see two connections simultaneously. For PiP, it’s useful when you want to keep tabs on a download on another PC or console update, and you can adjust the size of the second display as well. The Picture by Picture mode is something we wouldn’t find any use for. For larger displays, this would make sense, but on this 25” model it’s a waste of time – the screen gets split into a very cramped resolution, which makes it barely useable.
Should I buy the Viotek Reaper RFI25CBA?
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