ASUS Outs ROG Strix XG27WQ: 27-inch 1440p Fast Curved Monitor

[btarunr]

ASUS rolled out the ROG Strix XG27WQ, a 27-inch curved gaming monitor. With a 1500R curvature, this monitor offers WQHD (2560 x 1440 pixels) resolution through a VA panel. Boosting its gaming chops are 165 Hz refresh-rate, 1 ms (GTG) response time, ELMB (ASUS extreme low motion blur), and AMD FreeSync Premium Pro certification. The panel meets DisplayHDR 400 specs and supports HDR-10. Other vital panel specs include 178°/178° viewing angles, 3000:1 contrast ratio, and 125% sRGB / DCI-P3 92% color saturation.

The ROG Strix XG27WQ features ASUS' typical tripod base with an ROG logo projection, with height-, swivel-, and tilt adjustments. Display inputs include a DisplayPort 1.2a and two HDMI 2.0 ports. A 3.5 mm headphones jack puts out digital audio from the graphics card. There's also a 2-port USB 3.0 hub. Among the gamer-specific features are ASUS GamePlus suite, which includes hard crosshairs, timer, FPS counter, and display alignment; ASUS GameVisual, a set of game genre-specific display presets; and low blue-light mode. ASUS didn't reveal pricing.



View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[ZoneDymo]

so its yet another monitor, nothing remarkable, nothing really special....why is it even released?

 

[Vayra86]

so its yet another monitor, nothing remarkable, nothing really special....why is it even released?

Well... nothing really special? The stars seem to align here in terms of specs.

1440p, ELMB (of which just a handful of monitors exist), variable sync, good refresh rate. The only meh is the curve. And probably pricing as it carries a STRIX sticker. But this will get copied, and THOSE copies are gonna be interesting Just a few years back this set of specs was considered state of the art.

 

[Gmr_Chick]

All I can say is 'meh'. And considering how much ASUS loves to jack up the prices on anything Strix or ROG related, I'm guessing already this thing isn't gonna be reasonably priced.

I still don't understand RGB lighting on the BACK of some monitors these days. My Aorus monitor has it, and all I can say is "why?" Other than that, it's a great monitor.

 

[Turmania]

looks nice and same as all their monitors...

 

[DrCR]

Does Asus still have quality control issues for monitors like these, or are they still charging a premium for QC lottery?

 

[DarkHill]

All I can say is 'meh'. And considering how much ASUS loves to jack up the prices on anything Strix or ROG related, I'm guessing already this thing isn't gonna be reasonably priced.

I still don't understand RGB lighting on the BACK of some monitors these days. My Aorus monitor has it, and all I can say is "why?" Other than that, it's a great monitor.

unlike almost all other RGB, the backside of monitors is an excellent idea. It can provide backlight for the "office"(gaming) environment you are in, similar to Philips ambilight. Its actually extremely nice to have and provide a very nice addition.

 

[phanbuey]

Does Asus still have quality control issues for monitors like these, or are they still charging a premium for QC lottery?

I think based on their current IPS panels the QC lottery. Ive never seen so many backlight bleed issues.

 

[CrAsHnBuRnXp]

Waiting for the 4K PG32UQX model.

 

[Chomiq]

Well... nothing really special? The stars seem to align here in terms of specs.

1440p, ELMB (of which just a handful of monitors exist), variable sync, good refresh rate. The only meh is the curve. And probably pricing as it carries a STRIX sticker. But this will get copied, and THOSE copies are gonna be interesting Just a few years back this set of specs was considered state of the art.

VA panel so it all won't matter because you're limited by response times.

 

[Vayra86]

VA panel so it all won't matter because you're limited by response times.

Then you don't really know how it works. BFI (black frame insertion) means you can work around that, for a good part. I have a VA panel with strobe and it works precisely like that. Motion blur eliminated, and the only visible pixel response that is slow is the usual smearing of darker tones; the fat red 20-30ms transitions. The rest is virtually pixel perfect at 120hz.

This is exactly what motion blur reduction is supposed to do. Eliminate image persistence that is common to LCD. Most color transitions are actually immediately pushed to 100% black. Which is a FAST transition, especially if the same frame has no other information.

Here's what I'm looking at for the past four or five years. Still no urge to upgrade really

https://gaming.eizo.com/wp-content/uploads/file/turbo240_whitepaper.pdf

Now, what ELMB tries to achieve, for those who are unfamiliar; it does what the above whitepaper shows, but not at a fixed rate, but at the same variable refresh rate as whatever the game is running at. My panel runs it at fixed rate, so when I dive down in FPS, it becomes noticeable. Still very usable, but suboptimal. The smoothness will go away at somewhere around 60-70 FPS, whereas with a normal panel you might have a similar feeling when it runs at say 50 FPS. It gets a little choppy.

BFI is highly underappreciated for most, but once you got it, and you don't have a problem with flickering (part of that is your own physique some people can see the same flickering when they look at headlights and traffic lights for example, as they are pulsing light sources), its hard to let it go. Much more so than say Gsync or Freesync... especially if you have a system that can push high FPS.

 

[BArms]

Then you don't really know how it works. BFI (black frame insertion) means you can work around that, for a good part. I have a VA panel with strobe and it works precisely like that. Motion blur eliminated, and the only visible pixel response that is slow is the usual smearing of darker tones; the fat red 20-30ms transitions. The rest is virtually pixel perfect at 120hz.

This is exactly what motion blur reduction is supposed to do. Eliminate image persistence that is common to LCD. Most color transitions are actually immediately pushed to 100% black. Which is a FAST transition, especially if the same frame has no other information.

Here's what I'm looking at for the past four or five years. Still no urge to upgrade really

https://gaming.eizo.com/wp-content/uploads/file/turbo240_whitepaper.pdf

Now, what ELMB tries to achieve, for those who are unfamiliar; it does what the above whitepaper shows, but not at a fixed rate, but at the same variable refresh rate as whatever the game is running at. My panel runs it at fixed rate, so when I dive down in FPS, it becomes noticeable. Still very usable, but suboptimal. The smoothness will go away at somewhere around 60-70 FPS, whereas with a normal panel you might have a similar feeling when it runs at say 50 FPS. It gets a little choppy.

BFI is highly underappreciated for most, but once you got it, and you don't have a problem with flickering (part of that is your own physique some people can see the same flickering when they look at headlights and traffic lights for example, as they are pulsing light sources), its hard to let it go. Much more so than say Gsync or Freesync... especially if you have a system that can push high FPS.

Modern high end VA is where it's at for me too, until they fix burn in and response time with OLEDs at least.

 

[John Naylor]

Testing in recent XG model

Asus ROG Strix XG438Q Review - TFT Central

Here they were able to get an average response time done to 4.2 ms (spec claim is 4.0) but because of the excessively high overdrive setting, image quality suffered from excessive overshoot.

"Let's focus instead on the intended uses for this monster! With the 120Hz refresh rate and adaptive-sync support, fast PC gaming is a differentiator for this display compared with most other large format displays available. It's great to see high refresh rate support of course, bringing obvious improvements in motion clarity and frame rates compared with 60Hz models. The G-sync and FreeSync support make it suitable no matter what your graphics card choice is for VRR. There is no input lag either which is excellent news. Response times were decent enough on the whole and for refresh rates up to 100Hz in keeping with some of the better VA panels we've tested. There's still some characteristic black smearing present, but it's lower than on some other VA screens and up to 100Hz there's very little overshoot too which was positive. You can run up to 120Hz max if you want, although you need to then use the most aggressive overdrive mode which while it does improve motion clarity quite noticeably, does introduce high levels of overshoot. There are also some colour depth sacrifices to use that upper 120Hz end. Given the high 4K resolution we expect "up to 100Hz" using VRR to be more common for most users. For console gaming the performance is decent too, with reasonable response times, no overshoot and low lag. "

You can eliminate the overshoot by dropping to 100 Hz, but then response time drops to 8.7 ms

Here they claim 1 ms response time ... as tested it's 3 ms

Asus TUF Gaming VG279QM Review - TFTCentral

Gaming screen from Asus with a 280Hz refresh rate IPS panel, 1ms G2G response time, G-sync/FreeSync support and ELMB-sync

www.tftcentral.co.uk

I think based on their current IPS panels the QC lottery. Ive never seen so many backlight bleed issues.

Most folks confuse glow with bleed. Bleed is more common in lower priced monitors, rarely seen on quality panels from AUOptronics

Terms and Functions - TFTCentral

Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) Pulse Width Modulation is something you will hear talked about quite a lot nowadays. We have a full detailed article about PWM which is worth reading....[click link for more]

www.tftcentral.co.uk

Terms and Functions - TFTCentral

Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) Pulse Width Modulation is something you will hear talked about quite a lot nowadays. We have a full detailed article about PWM which is worth reading....[click link for more]

www.tftcentral.co.uk

By way of explanation. the difference between Freesync and G-Sync is that G-Sync has a hardware module that provides motion blur reduction and Freesync does not. To obtain parity, Freesync users can select a monitor manufacturer which provides an alternate technogy which nVidia provides via that module. Doing so increases the cost of the Freesync monitor as a result.

 

[phanbuey]

Testing in recent XG model

Asus ROG Strix XG438Q Review - TFT Central

Here they were able to get an average response time done to 4.2 ms (spec claim is 4.0) but because of the excessively high overdrive setting, image quality suffered from excessive overshoot.

"Let's focus instead on the intended uses for this monster! With the 120Hz refresh rate and adaptive-sync support, fast PC gaming is a differentiator for this display compared with most other large format displays available. It's great to see high refresh rate support of course, bringing obvious improvements in motion clarity and frame rates compared with 60Hz models. The G-sync and FreeSync support make it suitable no matter what your graphics card choice is for VRR. There is no input lag either which is excellent news. Response times were decent enough on the whole and for refresh rates up to 100Hz in keeping with some of the better VA panels we've tested. There's still some characteristic black smearing present, but it's lower than on some other VA screens and up to 100Hz there's very little overshoot too which was positive. You can run up to 120Hz max if you want, although you need to then use the most aggressive overdrive mode which while it does improve motion clarity quite noticeably, does introduce high levels of overshoot. There are also some colour depth sacrifices to use that upper 120Hz end. Given the high 4K resolution we expect "up to 100Hz" using VRR to be more common for most users. For console gaming the performance is decent too, with reasonable response times, no overshoot and low lag. "

You can eliminate the overshoot by dropping to 100 Hz, but then response time drops to 8.7 ms

Here they claim 1 ms response time ... as tested it's 3 ms

Asus TUF Gaming VG279QM Review - TFTCentral

Gaming screen from Asus with a 280Hz refresh rate IPS panel, 1ms G2G response time, G-sync/FreeSync support and ELMB-sync

www.tftcentral.co.uk

Most folks confuse glow with bleed. Bleed is more common in lower priced monitors, rarely seen on quality panels from AUOptronics

Terms and Functions - TFTCentral

Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) Pulse Width Modulation is something you will hear talked about quite a lot nowadays. We have a full detailed article about PWM which is worth reading....[click link for more]

www.tftcentral.co.uk

Terms and Functions - TFTCentral

Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) Pulse Width Modulation is something you will hear talked about quite a lot nowadays. We have a full detailed article about PWM which is worth reading....[click link for more]

www.tftcentral.co.uk

By way of explanation. the difference between Freesync and G-Sync is that G-Sync has a hardware module that provides motion blur reduction and Freesync does not. To obtain parity, Freesync users can select a monitor manufacturer which provides an alternate technogy which nVidia provides via that module. Doing so increases the cost of the Freesync monitor as a result.

That.

 

[Vayra86]

View attachment 149881

That.

Wow. The audacity to even produce this junk... I mean I know its a long shutter time photo. But the uniformity... where ? You can even see where the monitor clamps are inside the cabinet... bottom right there, for example. At this rate even a TN will be better

 

[Chomiq]

Then you don't really know how it works. BFI (black frame insertion) means you can work around that, for a good part. I have a VA panel with strobe and it works precisely like that. Motion blur eliminated, and the only visible pixel response that is slow is the usual smearing of darker tones; the fat red 20-30ms transitions. The rest is virtually pixel perfect at 120hz.

This is exactly what motion blur reduction is supposed to do. Eliminate image persistence that is common to LCD. Most color transitions are actually immediately pushed to 100% black. Which is a FAST transition, especially if the same frame has no other information.

Here's what I'm looking at for the past four or five years. Still no urge to upgrade really

https://gaming.eizo.com/wp-content/uploads/file/turbo240_whitepaper.pdf

Now, what ELMB tries to achieve, for those who are unfamiliar; it does what the above whitepaper shows, but not at a fixed rate, but at the same variable refresh rate as whatever the game is running at. My panel runs it at fixed rate, so when I dive down in FPS, it becomes noticeable. Still very usable, but suboptimal. The smoothness will go away at somewhere around 60-70 FPS, whereas with a normal panel you might have a similar feeling when it runs at say 50 FPS. It gets a little choppy.

BFI is highly underappreciated for most, but once you got it, and you don't have a problem with flickering (part of that is your own physique some people can see the same flickering when they look at headlights and traffic lights for example, as they are pulsing light sources), its hard to let it go. Much more so than say Gsync or Freesync... especially if you have a system that can push high FPS.

Causes of Strobe Crosstalk
Blur Reduction modes (ULMB, LightBoost, DyAc, etc) use a strobe backlight which flash in sync with the refresh cycles. We have determined several primary factors of strobe crosstalk:

• LCD pixel response limitations (GtG / grey-to-grey)

So performance of ELMB will be limited by the VA panel.

The odds are you'll also have to drop the refresh rate to further reduce crosstalk.

 

[Gmr_Chick]

unlike almost all other RGB, the backside of monitors is an excellent idea. It can provide backlight for the "office"(gaming) environment you are in, similar to Philips ambilight. Its actually extremely nice to have and provide a very nice addition.

I'm only speaking from personal experience here, mind you. The RGB on the back of my monitor (and most likely most other monitors that feature it) isn't bright at all -- not that I can see it anyway because it's on the back, lol -- and if they wanted RGB on it, I just think it would make more sense to put it, I don't know, somewhere where you could actually SEE it, but not directly in your face lest it prove to be distracting. Though, You could always just turn it off I suppose.

 

[Vayra86]

So performance of ELMB will be limited by the VA panel.

The odds are you'll also have to drop the refresh rate to further reduce crosstalk.

Maybe on crappy ULMB, but ELMB is a little bit of a different beast and I've literally NEVER seen crosstalk on my panel's strobe tech. Then again I've also read of some issues with new ELMB panels.

Its not an easy trick. But you keep harping on about slow VA response times... that is only true for a few color transitions in the darker hues. The rest is pretty quick, pretty much a match for IPS.

And note, this is an AVERAGE G2G. This includes the usual, single extremely high response time of the slowest transition (which can run into 30-40ms). The other hues are often faster than IPS, especially if you don't want overshoot/ghosting. VA is actually better in that case than the vast majority of IPS displays.

I'm only speaking from personal experience here, mind you. The RGB on the back of my monitor (and most likely most other monitors that feature it) isn't bright at all -- not that I can see it anyway because it's on the back, lol -- and if they wanted RGB on it, I just think it would make more sense to put it, I don't know, somewhere where you could actually SEE it, but not directly in your face lest it prove to be distracting. Though, You could always just turn it off I suppose.

Correct, its entirely 100% pointless, its nice for Esports events when they want to shoot a photo of your face while gaming, that's likely why they're on it. And then marketing made it so for everyone else.

 

[Gmr_Chick]

^ The funny thing is, when I was deciding what monitor to buy, I was seriously considering one of those ROG ones, but I ccouldn't justify the $$$ they were asking for it. I found my Aorus one to be a better alternative. It works for me.

 

[Vayra86]

^ The funny thing is, when I was deciding what monitor to buy, I was seriously considering one of those ROG ones, but I ccouldn't justify the $$$ they were asking for it. I found my Aorus one to be a better alternative. It works for me.

I recall reading a review and those AORUS panels appear to be pretty damn good, too.