BFI (Black Frame Insertion) to Feature on the New Asus ROG OLED Gaming Monitors

This hasn’t received much promotion from Asus so far, or much coverage online from what we’ve seen, but a popular gaming feature has been added to the forthcoming OLED gaming monitors that Asus will be releasing this year. BFI (Black Frame Insertion) is set to reappear in the OLED market (to some extent at least), as Asus have included their ‘Extreme Low Motion Blur’ technology on their forthcoming 34″ ultrawide, 39″ ultrawide, 27″ and 32″ gaming OLED monitors. We’ve been able to confirm it’s operation on the 34″ ultrawide model as we have that with us for review at the moment, so we will tell you all about what is and isn’t supported.

What is BFI?

BFI, or “Black Frame Insertion” is the equivalent OLED technology to a strobing backlight on LCD monitors, offering you a motion blur reduction benefit by inserting a black frame in to the image periodically. This helps reduce the perceived motion blur in practice, but it generally works much better than on CLD monitors thanks to the near-instant response times of the OLED panel. You avoid all those issues with strobe cross talk and ghosting that you get on most LCD monitors, with the whole screen looking equally clear.

We saw this available on some older OLED TV’s including the LG CX for instance in 2020 where it could be used at 60Hz and 120Hz, and we were very impressed by the motion blur reduction benefits.

Sadly LG.Display (the panel manufacturer) decided to withdraw support for this feature on later OLED panels and on the LG C1 TV in 2021 and models after that, it is only available at 60Hz. When OLED panels appeared in the monitor market, none featured BFI at all.

Asus add BFI to their Gen 3 OLED Monitors

While BFI hasn’t been featured on any of the previous Asus OLED gaming monitors they’ve released, their CES 2024 press event highlighted this as a feature of their third generation of OLED monitors. The company will be launching new models in 27″, 32″, 34″ and 39″ this year and they will all apparently feature “Extreme Low Motion Blur” (ELMB) which is Asus’ name for any of their motion blur reduction modes. For these OLED panels, that means they’re using BFI technology.

Which new OLED monitors will include BFI?

The ELMB mode will feature on the following Asus OLED monitors this year:

• ROG Swift PG34WCDM (now reviewed) – 34″ ultrawide with 3440 x 1440 and 240Hz.
• ROG Swift PG39WCDM – 39″ ultrawide with 3440 x 1440 and 240Hz.
• ROG Swift PG32UCDM (now reviewed) – 32″ with 4K at 240Hz
• ROG Swift PG32UCDP – 32″ 4K 240Hz (dual mode FHD 480Hz)
• ROG Swift PG27AQDP – 27″ 1440p with 480Hz

We believe this is something Asus are adding to the screens themselves as opposed to it being a feature at the panel level, so there’s no guarantee any other display manufacturer will do the same thing when they adopt the panels. Although we know Dough are planning to feature this on their forthcoming 27″ and 32″ OLED monitors, again implementing this themselves.

What modes are supported for BFI on the Asus screens?

We have the 34″ PG34WCDM with us at the moment for review, and loads more details and results will be available soon in our full review. For now, we have confirmed the availability of this setting within the OSD menu and its operation. You can see this is available above in the menu for the PG34WCDM, although it’s only accessible in SDR mode and when variable refresh rate is disabled.

• Update: Our full review of the Asus ROG Swift PG34WCDM is now available

This ELMB mode only works at a fixed 120Hz refresh rate, with no other modes being supported. So you can’t use this at the maximum 240Hz refresh rate, or at a lower 60Hz refresh rate either unfortunately. We assume this relates to limitations with adding this themselves via the monitor scaler.

We confirmed that at 120Hz the black frame in inserted in sync with the refresh rate, every 8.33ms as shown above. More information on screen brightness, motion clarity improvements and pursuit camera photos coming in our review soon.

Asus CES Press Event

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