Picture Quality

The Corsair Xeneon 27QHD240 OLED features a 27-inch widescreen 10-bit OLED panel, manufactured by LG Display, with a native resolution of 2560x1440, giving it a dot pitch of 0.2335 mm (108.79 PPI). For the longest time 27-inch 1440p monitors were considered to offer an ideal balance of image sharpness, screen real estate, and "manageability" of the resolution when it came to gaming; there are drastically fewer pixels to push compared to 4K resolution, and the image is noticeably sharper than in Full HD. To anyone with limited desk space, I'd still recommend getting a 27-inch 1440p monitor over pretty much anything else, especially if you're into gaming. For content creation and other types of work, you might see it beneficial to opt for a 27-inch 4K monitor, although then you have to swallow a noticeable price hike compared to 1440p models.

Not everything is unicorns and rainbows when it comes to the image sharpness of the Corsair Xeneon 27QHD240 OLED. WOLED panels, like the one this monitor is based on, have a nonstandard Red-White-Blue-Green (RWBG) subpixel layout, which causes fringing around text; operating systems expect a RGB subpixel arrangement when rendering text. Fringing looks like text elements have a thin shadow added to them, making them look slightly out of focus and softer than expected. Fringing can manifest in various colors and in many situations. As I'm writing this review, I can't notice it in the Microsoft Word window, where I'm using a dark gray background and white font color. At the same time, the other half of the screen is taken up by a standard white-background webpage, where fringing is very apparent. To find out more about fringing in general and see some great examples of WOLED and QD-OLED panel fringing issues, I recommend you check out an excellent article published by PC Monitors. This of course isn't a critique aimed at Corsair. Every WOLED (and QD-OLED) panel suffers from some level of fringing; it's something you simply have to deal with if you decide to go down the OLED route. For gaming, video, and similar types of usage, fringing isn't an issue you should be worried about. However, if you mostly work with text and graphics, especially on a professional level, this could be a reason to steer clear of OLED monitors altogether. They simply aren't a good choice for productivity and pose a substantial downgrade from higher-end LCD monitors in that regard.

The Corsair Xeneon 27QHD240 OLED doesn't have a traditional LED backlight unit. Individual pixels of an OLED panel are self-emitting, and that's where many benefits of such panels, such as infinite contrast, perfect blacks, absence of haloing, and superb response time, come from.

The Xeneon 27QHD240 OLED uses a fairly heavy matte screen coating. It does a very good job of reducing reflections and preserving OLED blacks even in bright conditions. Don't underestimate this aspect of the Corsair's monitor. With SDR brightness being the biggest challenge for all OLED monitors currently on the market, having a screen coating that manages to preserve it in difficult surroundings is hugely beneficial. To some, the coating of the Xeneon 27QHD240 OLED might seem too heavy, but I don't have a problem with it, because the picture isn't perceived as grainy or dirty from a normal sitting distance.

To test the picture quality of the Corsair Xeneon 27QHD240 OLED, I've used a combination of the X-Rite i1Display Pro and DisplayCAL, a powerful software solution for display calibration and profiling that is completely free assuming you own a supported colorimeter.

Measurements shown below were made with Brightness Stabilizer on. Brightness Stabilizer completely subdues the Auto Brightness Limiter (ABL), to prevent oscillations in picture brightness depending on the content currently being displayed, but at the expense of overall brightness. It's also important to point out that I used the latest available firmware (V103). Its patch notes claim a 30% boost in brightness when Brightness Stabilizer is activated, meaning Corsair addressed the single biggest issue that the Xeneon 27QHD240 OLED had when it originally launched—a low brightness.

Picture Quality at Factory Settings

I tested the picture quality of the Corsair Xeneon 27QHD240 OLED at its factory defaults right after plugging the monitor in and allowing the panel to warm up for about an hour. The only change I made was to turn the Brightness Stabilizer on. It's off by default, which makes sense for HDR content, but I find it too distracting for anything else.


My initial measurements showed a picture brightness of only 76 cd/m², which is due to the fact that the brightness is set to 19 (out of 100) in OSD by default. It's an extremely conservative setting, and one that should be changed first, before doing anything else. For most users, 76 cd/m² isn't bright enough even for using the monitor in complete darkness. At 5,818 K, the measured white point is lower than it should be. The black levels are zero, which automatically means that the contrast is infinite, as expected from an OLED panel. When displaying black color, pixels of an OLED panel simply turn off, so there's absolutely no light emitting from them. That's as black as you can possibly go, and also the reason why OLED panels have such attractive, deep, inky blacks. At factory settings, the color accuracy is fairly decent, with the average ∆E sitting at 2.49. My colorimeter picked up some significant deviations when displaying red color (∆E 6.37), as well as various shades of green. The gamma curve looks decent, although not perfect. At lower levels, the measured values are higher than needed and then become lower than the target in the 35-75% range. Changing the gamma from 2.2 to something else in the OSD doesn't improve the situation, so this is as good as you can get without calibrating the monitor.

To improve the white balance, I visited the Picture menu in the OSD and changed the Color Temperature to Custom, which unlocks the individual RGB channel gains. The best results were achieved after I set the red channel (R) to 98, green (G) to 95, and blue (B) to 81. I also cranked the brightness all the way up to 100, knowing that it's not likely that it will go above 200 cd/m² with Brightness Stabilizer active, if that. Let's compare the measurements before and after doing the OSD tweaks.



After adjusting the settings as described we see improvements to white balance and gamma tracking, as well as the brightness reaching 200 cd/m² with the Brightness Stabilizer active, which is a big deal for the Corsair Xeneon 27QHD240 OLED. This was an aspect where its direct competitors performed better, but the V103 firmware update brought the Corsair's monitor in line with them. More importantly, at 200 cd/m² the monitor can be used in rooms that are brightly lit; no longer do you have to pull the shades on to be able to make out what's showing on the screen. At these settings and brightness, the picture quality of the Xeneon 27QHD240 OLED subjectively looks sublime. The deep, rich, punchy colors and inky blacks are a treat for the eye and make going back to a regular LCD monitor almost painful, which I got to experience first-hand after I was done reviewing the Xeneon 27QHD240 OLED.


The monitor offers a sRGB mode, which greatly improves color accuracy and puts gamma in check, too. The white point is still off, though, with a measured value of 5,989 K. You're free to adjust the brightness in sRGB mode to any desired level, but you can't change gamma or color temperature settings.


This is what the CIE diagram looks like. I measured a 99.9% coverage of the sRGB and 94.9% coverage of the DCI-P3 color spaces. The gamut volume equals 143.1% for sRGB and 101.4% for DCI-P3 color spaces, respectively. The measured Adobe RGB coverage is 87.5%, with Adobe RGB gamut volume reaching 98.6%.


This is what the luminance and color uniformity of the Corsair Xeneon 27QHD240 OLED look like when measured at 25 different patches across the panel. Please click on the image to see it in high resolution and examine the data in greater detail. There's of course no backlight bleed anywhere on the screen because there's no traditional backlight that could cause it. The brightness uniformity is very good overall, mostly staying within -6% across the panel, while dropping to -10% around the top and in the bottom left corner. This is still something you can't spot with the naked eye. The contrast deviation is great, but the color uniformity could definitely be better. We can see deviations of up to ∆E 5.1, with the bottom left corner and top edge of the panel being the biggest offenders. Again, this won't be an issue for gaming and media consumption, and the Xeneon 27QHD240 OLED isn't a truly viable productivity monitor anyway, so the issues with color uniformity aren't really worth losing sleep over.

Picture Quality After Calibration

I calibrated the display using the X-Rite i1Display Pro colorimeter and the DisplayCAL software solution.

Here's what we get after calibrating the monitor.



OLED monitors are much harder to calibrate than LCD monitors are, but we still see great improvements in color accuracy. The gamma tracking still isn't perfect, but at least it's now consistent in its overshoot in relation to target values.

HDR Performance

Because of their technological characteristics, OLED monitors, including the Corsair Xeneon 27QHD240 OLED, are a great choice for HDR gaming and content consumption. To get the best performance in HDR mode, you should deactivate the Brightness Stabilizer and let the Auto Brightness Limiter do its thing. With that comes an annoyance: even though the Corsair Xeneon 27QHD240 OLED correctly recognizes when HDR mode is active, it's not capable of turning the Brightness Stabilizer off on its own, so you have to do it manually. Constantly turning the Brightness Stabilizer on and off quickly becomes a nuisance. Corsair should look to implement a feature where it would activate and deactivate depending on the detection of an incoming SDR/HDR signal. Perhaps an idea for a future firmware update?

Depending on the amount of bright content on the screen, the monitor will reach brightness peaks of close to 800 cd/m² for 1% white window sizes. At 10% window size, you can expect around 660 cd/m², dropping down to 150 cd/m² for full-screen sustained brightness (100% white).

Viewing Angles

The viewing angles of the WOLED panel built into the Corsair Xeneon 27QHD240 OLED are excellent. There's no visible shift in colors from any sitting position or when changing positions.