Introduction

Not long after the affordable GNV34DBE2 (reviewed here), an ultrawide gaming monitor I was happy to give our Great Value award, Viotek is at it again. This time around, they sent me a more traditional 27-inch QHD monitor for review. The Viotek GFV27DAB is equipped with a 165 Hz VA panel, and its $250 price tag is again one of its most compelling features as screens with similar technical specifications start at around $270. Sure, that's hardly a massive price difference compared to the GFV27DAB, but the logic here is very simple—why pay more if you don't have to?



The market offers even cheaper 27-inch high refresh rate monitors, although they're equipped with Full HD (1920x1080) panels and should for that reason be avoided. A 27-inch Full HD panel has a pixel density of less than 82 PPI, making it painfully unsharp and frustrating to use for anything other than casual gaming. By bumping the native screen resolution to QHD (2560x1440), the 27-inch panel's pixel density goes up to around 109 PPI, which doesn't sound like much, but makes a huge difference in everyday usage, especially for internet browsing, coding, document creation, photo and video editing, and everything else outside of gaming. The games look much sharper too, of course. Smooth gaming at QHD requires a more powerful graphics card compared to Full HD, but you don't have to aim for the top contenders from the current NVIDIA or AMD lineup. A solid mid-range graphics card from either NVIDIA or AMD will do just fine even if you're aiming to push past 100 FPS, which should definitely be the case if you're upgrading to a high refresh rate monitor or already own one.

Back to the Viotek GFV27DAB. This $250 monitor is built around an 8-bit VA panel and has a 165 Hz refresh rate without overclocking, 1 ms response time, 99% sRGB gamut, rear-facing LED ring, and host of gaming-specific features, such as virtual crosshairs and FPS/RTS-specific picture modes tuned to bring out the shadow details that could otherwise go unnoticed.

Viotek also boasts about their Zero-Tolerance Dead Pixel Policy. Should you find a single dead pixel on your new monitor, they will replace it no questions asked. All their monitors are also covered by a 3-year limited warranty despite their aggressively low pricing. These two facts go a long way in establishing a certain level of trust with a brand that is still fairly unknown to most users.

Specifications