The pixels, not the diagonal, set the bargain
A bigger monitor should make a cramped home-office desk feel roomier. The cheapest 27-inch screen can also make the text you read all day look rougher than the 24-inch one it replaced.
The reason is pixel density. A 23.8-inch 1080p monitor has about 92.6 pixels per inch (PPI). Stretch the same 1080p resolution across 27 inches and it drops to about 81.6 PPI, so text edges look coarser at a normal desk distance. The image gets bigger, not sharper. Some buyers say they ended up lowering web-page zoom on a 27-inch 1080p screen to make text look denser again.
A 27-inch QHD (2560 × 1440) panel fixes that. Density rises to about 108.8 PPI, and you get roughly 77% more pixels than 1080p, which means real room for spreadsheets, documents, and side-by-side windows.
That makes 27-inch 1080p the option I'd skip for text-heavy work. It costs you the sharpness of a 24-inch screen and gives you none of the extra workspace of QHD.
A 24-inch 1080p screen keeps things compact and cheap
If you mostly work in one document, browser, or email window at a time, 24-inch 1080p is enough. It is sharper than 27-inch 1080p and costs less.
Look at the stand before the spec sheet. Many cheaper models tilt and nothing else, which rarely puts the screen at a comfortable height. OSHA says the top of the screen should sit at or slightly below eye level, directly in front of you. A riser or a VESA-compatible mount fixes that, but add its cost to the budget.
Before buying 27-inch QHD, measure your desk and check your laptop's USB-C
The extra workspace only pays off if you can sit far enough back. OSHA recommends a viewing distance of about 20 to 40 inches, with the screen centered in front of you. On a shallow desk where the monitor ends up close to 20 inches, a 27-inch panel can feel too big, so measure your desk depth first.
Laptop owners should also look past the words "USB-C" on the box. For video, the port needs DisplayPort Alt Mode. For charging, compare the monitor's Power Delivery wattage with the wattage of the charger that came with your laptop, and match it.