Not a big budget in mind, this is what I am looking at.
Acer Nitro KG272 S3 27" FHD VA 180Hz
The price in AUD, which is $127 USD before tax.
I am currently using a 3050 laptop / 5600H connected to my 1080p/60hz Acer from 2014. What I like about this monitor is it looks exactly the same and is the same size, it will be swapped with the existing VESA mount.
I cannot find any official documentation, some websites don’t list it as HDR10 at all, I also find that regional variants can be very different. Some information shows this to be IPS, but I also can’t find that out for sure, I also don’t understand if that would be better/worse for high refresh rate. I am also on the assumption that 180Hz is really 165Hz with a possible OC I won’t be using.
I will be playing at 1080p and can handle my games at 120+, the HDR10 will be a boost. I had thought that HDR400 was the dodgy spec, but now I am reading negative remarks about anything below HDR600, I thought HDR10 was genuine 10bit.
This is the best price in my regional stores and can be picked up locally.
In the listing, it specifies 250 cd/m² which I assume is important.
Nothing that lacks local dimming can do true HDR. VA and IPS are mutually exclusive, so find out which one it is. VA can have more smearing, but deeper blacks. It can also be tuned to be faster, but then it loses the contrast benefits
Anyway, ignore any HDR listing at this price. If you want any noticable HDR, save up for an OLED or QD-OLED monitor, they cost about $1000 these days
The OC is usually worth it if you use the overdrive mode that doesn’t cause ghosting. You need to find a review that shows how much overshoot it has at each overdrive mode, it’s often best to only have a slight overdrive instead of maxing it.
You can test how overdrive looks like in https://testufo.com