ASRock Phantom Gaming PG27FFX2A
Introduction
The PG27FFX2A is a new 27″ sized gaming screen from ASRock in their ‘Phantom Gaming’ line-up, boasting a very high 520Hz refresh rate IPS panel. This will be the first IPS LCD screen we’ve had chance to test with this kind of refresh rate, as in the past we’ve only tested 540Hz TN Film models, and of course super-fast OLED screens which currently go up to 480Hz maximum in this kind of range.
It feels like a long time since we’ve reviewed an LCD screen actually, so it’s interesting to return to this technology. Some users don’t want to sacrifice colours, image quality and viewing angles for a TN Film gaming screen, while others don’t want to spend as much money on a top-end OLED monitor, or worry about potential risks of image retention and burn-in either. An IPS LCD monitor could provide a nice middle ground for gaming still.
The PG27FFX2A is aimed primarily at gamers, offering a 1920 x 1080 resolution, adaptive-sync VRR support, a wide colour gamut and a pretty good range of extras including HDMI 2.1 connections and integrated Wi-Fi antennas – something which we’ve seen featured on previous ASRock monitors we’ve tested in the past. Let’s see how it performs in our tests.
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Key Specs
- 27″ screen size with a flat format and 16:9 aspect ratio
- IPS-type technology panel
- 1920 x 1080 (Full HD) resolution
- 520Hz refresh rate
- Adaptive-sync for VRR with AMD ‘FreeSync Premium’ certification
- Wide colour gamut covering 94% DCI-P3 and 123% sRGB
- 1x DisplayPort 1.4 and 2x HDMI 2.1 video inputs
- 2x USB 3.2 data ports and 1x headphone jack as well as 2x 2W integrated speakers
- Tilt, height and swivel stand adjustments
- Integrated Wi-Fi antenna (compatible with Wi-Fi 4/5/6/6E/7)
Design and Features
The PG27XXF2A comes in a matte black design with a 3 side borderless panel. There’s a thin black edge before the image starts which measures ~8.5mm along the sides and top. The bottom edge has a thicker ~22mm plastic bezel with a “Phantom Gaming” logo in the middle, and some labels to mark the OSD controls in the bottom right hand area.
The arm and foot of the stand are finished in a matte black plastic as well, with a fairly wide base as shown in these photos. There’s an ASRock logo on the front of the foot but this doesn’t have any RGB lighting or anything.
The back of the screen is encased in a matte black plastic. There’s a carry handle integrated in to the upper section at the back for moving the screen around. The stand attaches via a quick release mechanism, and can be removed in favour of VESA 100mm mounting if you’d rather. There’s a cable tidy hole in the arm of the stand, and a ‘Phantom Gaming’ branded cable sleeve is provided in the box as well to help keep your cables tidy. The ASRock logo on the back of the screen is not an RGB lighting feature here either, despite how the photos may make it look.
On the back of the stand are the Wi-Fi antenna connections, a unique feature for ASRock’s gaming monitors which some people may find potentially useful. You connect these back to your PC using SMA connectors and cables if your system supports this. These are commonly used to connect external antennas, but here you can use the monitor as your antenna.
The theory here is that your monitor could be positioned in a better location to optimise signal quality back to your internet hub/main Wi-Fi point than your PC system and case might be. If your PC is tucked away under a desk for instance, or in a cupboard a Wi-Fi card or adapter in the PC might not be able to get an optimal signal. Additionally, those separate devices can be of varying quality, and so the idea here is that by providing a Wi-Fi antenna built in to the monitor, it might be of a better quality, and be in a better position to improve your signal and coverage. In turn, that could maybe improve your online gaming experience.
Whether or not the screen’s integrated antenna is of use to you will depending obviously on whether you have these connections on your system. Not every motherboard features these kind of connectors, and so that does exclude its use from many people. The other question here is whether it’s really going to offer you an improved device positioning and signal compared with your PC where you might instead just connect simple antennas straight in to the motherboard. That will depend on where you have your PC case positioned and what other Wi-Fi devices you have. Still, it’s a potentially useful feature for some people.
The stand offers a good range of adjustments which are all smooth and pretty easy to use.
There’s tilt, height and swivel, but no rotation function. There’s a little wobble when moving the screen around or using the OSD controls but nothing major, and the screen feels sturdy.
There is a reasonable set of connections on this screen with 1x DisplayPort 1.4 and 2x HDMI 2.1 video connections available. There is no USB type-C connection on this model, or features like PiP / PbP and KVM switches that you might find on higher-tier gaming monitors nowadays. There are 2x USB data ports provided though, something that was missing from some previous ASRock monitors we’ve tested. There’s also a headphone connection provided if you want to use that. The screen also has some basic 2x 2W integrated speakers which are ok for the occasional sounds clip or YouTube video but aren’t very powerful.
The OSD control buttons are located on the bottom right hand edge of the screen and are reasonably easy to use. It takes a little bit of getting used to and they’re not as intuitive as a good joystick toggle for getting around the menu, but they serve the purpose fine once you get used to them.
The actual OSD menu has a modest set of options and settings. For instance, the preset ‘color modes’ are really just a series of defined and locked combinations of colour temp and gamma combinations so aren’t of much use. Thankfully the ‘standard’ and ‘user’ modes allows you to configure these yourself. There’s controls for gamma, colour temp modes and RGB channel adjustment, but no colour space option available. There’s limited gaming extras like crosshairs, and sniper modes etc, but there is an FPS counter in the menu and a dark boost setting at least. It feels a more minimalist and basic menu compared with higher end gaming screens but there’s a modest range of options overall.
Testing Methodology Explained (SDR)
Performance is measured and evaluated with a high degree of accuracy using a range of testing devices and software. The results are carefully selected to provide the most useful and relevant information that can help evaluate the display while filtering out the wide range of information and figures that will be unnecessary. For measurement, we use a UPRtek MK550T spectroradiometer which is particularly accurate for colour gamut and colour spectrum measurements. We also use an X-rite i1 Pro 2 Spectrophotometer and a X-rite i1 Display Pro Plus colorimeter for various measurements. Several other software packages are incorporated including Portrait Displays’ Calman color calibration software – available from Portrait.com.
We measure the screen at default settings (with all ICC profiles deactivated and factory settings used), and any other modes that are of interest such as sRGB emulation presets. We then calibrate and profile the screen before re-measuring the calibrated state.
The results presented can be interpreted as follows:
- Gamma – we aim for 2.2 gamma which is the default for computer monitors in SDR mode. Testing of some modes might be based on a different gamma but we will state that in the commentary if applicable. A graph is provided tracking the 2.2 gamma across different grey shades and ideally the grey line representing the monitor measurements should be horizontal and flat at the 2.2 level, marked by the yellow line. Depending on where the gamma is too low or too high, it can have an impact on the image in certain ways. You can see our gamma explanation graph to help understand that more. Beneath the gamma graph we include the average overall gamma achieved along with the average for dark shades (0 black to 50 grey) and for lighter shades (50 grey to 100 white).
- RGB Balance and colour temperature – the RGB balance graph shows the relative balance between red, green and blue primaries at each grey shade, from 0 (black) to 100 (white). Ideally all 3 lines should be flat at the 100% level which would represent a balanced 6500K average colour temperature for all grey shades. This is the target colour temperature for desktop monitors, popular colour spaces like sRGB and ‘Display DCI-P3’ and is also the temperature of daylight. It is the most common colour temperature for displays, also sometimes referred to as D65. Where the RGB lines deviate from this 100% flat level the image may become too warm or cool, or show a tint towards a certain colour visually. Beneath this RGB balance graph we provide the average correlated colour temperature for all grey shades measured, along with its percentage deviance from the 6500K target. We also provide the white point colour temperature and its deviance from 6500K, as this is particularly important when viewing lots of white background and office content.
- Greyscale dE – this graph tracks the accuracy of each greyscale shade measured from 0 (black) to 100 (white). The accuracy of each grey shade will be impacted by the colour temperature and gamma of the display. The lower the dE the better, with differences of <1 being imperceptible (marked by the green line on the graph), and differences between 1 and 3 being small (below the yellow line). Anything over dE 3 needs correcting and causes more obvious differences in appearance relative to what should be shown. In the table beneath the graph we provide the average dE across all grey shades, as well as the white point dE (important when considering using the screen for lots of white background and office content), and the max greyscale dE as well.
- Luminance, black depth and contrast ratio (static) – measuring the brightness, black depth and resulting contrast ratio of the mode being tested, whether that is at default settings or later after calibration and profiling. We aim for 120 cd/m2 luminance which is the recommended luminance for LCD/OLED desktop monitors in normal lighting conditions. Black depth should be as low as possible, and contrast ratio should be as high as possible.
- Gamut coverage – we provide measurements of the screens colour gamut relative to various reference spaces including sRGB, DCI-P3, Adobe RGB and Rec.2020. Coverage is shown in absolute numbers as well as relative, which helps identify where the coverage extends beyond a given reference space. A CIE-1976 chromaticity diagram (which provides improved accuracy compared with older CIE-1931 methods) is included which provides a visual representation of the monitors colour gamut coverage triangle as compared with sRGB, and if appropriate also relative to a wide gamut reference space such as DCI-P3. The reference triangle will be marked on the CIE diagram as well.
- dE colour accuracy – a wide range of colours are tested and the colour accuracy dE measured. We compare these produced colours to the sRGB reference space, and if applicable when measuring a wide gamut screen we also provide the accuracy relative to a specific wide gamut reference such as DCI-P3. An average dE and maximum dE is provided along with an overall screen rating. The lower the dE the better, with differences of <1 being imperceptible (marked by the green area on the graph), and differences between 1 and 3 being small (yellow areas). Anything over dE 3 needs correcting and causes more obvious differences in appearance relative to what should be shown. dE 2000 is used for improved accuracy and providing a better representation of what you would see as a user, compared with older dE methods like dE 1994, as it takes into account the human eye’s perceptual sensitivity to different colours.
Brightness and Contrast
The screen provides a wide luminance adjustment range between 480 and 73 nits. The maximum adjustment of 480 nits is quite a lot higher than the advertised 400 nits which was pleasing and useful for those who like a bright screen. The lower end adjustment should provide good flexibility for those who need to use the screen in darker room conditions too. Contrast ratio remains stable across that adjustment range with 1362:1 average measured. This was also higher than the spec of 1000:1 which was great news, and a strong result for an IPS-type panel.
Default Setup (SDR)
The screen comes out of the box in the ‘standard’ colour preset mode, with a few other options available for game, movie and user. There doesn’t seem to be any mode for sRGB emulation on this screen, so we will have to see how it fairs in our testing when considering sRGB / SDR content usage. The screen has a native wide colour gamut which according to the spec, covers 94% DCI-P3.
The gamma was nice and accurate overall with a 2.22 average measured. The RGB balance was a little off in blue, leading to a slight greenish tint to greys and whites, but only by a minor amount as you can see from the greyscale patch test above. White point was slightly too warm / green by around 3% but it was pretty close to the target which was good.
The contrast ratio was very good for an IPS-type panel, measured at 1362:1 and being a fair bit higher than the spec of 1000:1 which was pleasing. Obviously not as high as an OLED panel and you don’t get the true blacks that those panels offer, but it was good for an IPS LCD. The shadow detail was good as well, although the very darkest grey RGB shades get crushed due to the relatively limited black depth of the IPS panel. There’s also a ‘dark boost’ setting in the menu should you want to tweak things here for certain situations, or for dark games for instance.
The colour gamut of the screen extends a fair way beyond the sRGB reference space and results in a 121.5% relative sRGB coverage measurement. This leads to poor colour accuracy for sRGB colours with a dE 3.7 average, but that’s normal for any wide gamut screen and is expected.
Unfortunately there’s no provided sRGB emulation mode on the monitor which is a pretty major omission nowadays and so your only options would be to use Windows Auto Colour Management (ACM) if you’re on a recent version of Windows 11 which supports it, equivalent colour management settings via some graphics cards, or calibrate and profile the screen yourself using a colorimeter. Or use our calibrated ICC profile perhaps.
The native colour gamut is more closely matched to the DCI-P3 reference space as you can see from the bottom left hand CIE diagram where we measured 92.8% absolute coverage, over-extending slightly in some shades and resulting in a 96.9% relative coverage. The 92.8% measurement was very close to the advertised 94% coverage spec. With the colour gamut more closely matching DCI-P3, the accuracy of P3 colours was reasonable with dE 2.3 average measured. The screen is more suited to use with DCI-P3 mastered content than it is sRGB content. There isn’t really sufficient coverage (93.1%) for work with the Adobe RGB colour space though.
sRGB Emulation (via Windows ACM)
In the absence of a hardware-based sRGB emulation mode we reverted to testing the screen using the Windows 11 ACM feature that many users should at least have access to. This is designed to clamp the wide colour gamut back to sRGB in desktop usage and for SDR applications so is a reasonable alternative to there being an option on the screen to use.
The gamma curve was less accurate when using Windows ACM with it being too high in darker grey shades, and too low in lighter grey shades. The colour temp was still slightly too green but only by a small amount and we had very similar greyscale accuracy overall with dE 2.9 average, and the same contrast ratio as the normal mode tested before. No major changes in these areas other than the gamma curve.
The main change when using Windows ACM is the clamping of the native colour space back close to the sRGB reference. This had cut back a little too far now, dropping from the original 98.9% absolute coverage to 96.9%, but this was a minor under-coverage. It had done a pretty good job though of cutting back from the 121.5% relative coverage before, to only 103% relative coverage now. This brought it much closer to the sRGB reference space and improved colour accuracy of sRGB / SDR content nicely. We had a dE average of 1.7 / max of 4.0 now which was reasonable.
This is a workable approach if you want to clamp back to sRGB and have the latest Windows 11 build that supports this feature. We would have obviously liked to have seen a provided sRGB emulation mode at a hardware level though for those on other operating systems, or in case you wanted to force the sRGB gamut at a hardware level for other uses and other devices. It’s a shame that’s missing.
Calibration
Calibration and profiling can produce excellent results if you have a suitable calibration device and software. This was profiled to 2.2 gamma, 6500K colour temp and to the sRGB colour space. The screen was left in its native wide gamut mode, but this profile will be used in colour-aware applications (e.g. Photoshop) to map back to sRGB in this instance.
Overall the calibrated results were excellent as you’d hope, with the only real error being in 100% blue where the colour gamut can’t quite cover that portion of the sRGB colour space (that’s the missing 1.1% from 100% coverage). This calibration had now corrected the colour temp, greyscale accuracy and colour accuracy very nicely.
On our Patreon you can find our ‘Best settings guide’ for this screen which includes all our recommended calibrated settings and ICC profile.
ICC Profiles and Monitor Calibration Database
Find the recommended settings and a calibrated ICC profile for your display.
[View here]
General and Office
The PG27FFX2A is fairly limited for office usage mainly due to its comparatively low resolution of only 1920 x 1080. This may be ok for gaming and multimedia on a 27″ screen size, but for anything more than occasional office and internet it is very low, and gives us a low pixel density of only ~82 PPI as well. This means text is large and not as sharp as it would be on a common 1440p resolution screen of this size. Perhaps some people who are used to larger text size will find it ok, but having used a lot of higher pixel density 1440p and even 4K resolution 27″ monitors, 1080p feels like a significant step backwards.
The IPS-type panel does at least provide a decent and stable image with wide viewing angles associated with this technology. You don’t have to sacrifice in image quality like you do on a TN Film gaming screen.
| Flicker | |
| Flicker free verified |  |
| PWM / flicker frequency | n/a |
The screen is flicker free at all settings without needing to use PWM for backlight dimming which is great news.
| Brightness | |
| Maximum brightness (SDR) | 480 nits |
| Minimum brightness | 34 nits |
| Uniform brightness behaviour | |
| Flicker free | |
The screen offers a good brightness adjustment range for use in a range of ambient light conditions. The matte anti-glare coating handles reflections and glare nicely as usual although looks quite grainy because of the lower pixel density and this matte coating combined. Being an LCD screen you thankfully don’t have to worry about image retention and burn-in like you would on an OLED monitor.
| Features | |
| USB type-C connectivity (DP Alt mode) |  |
| USB type-C power delivery | |
| KVM switch | |
| PiP and PbP support | |
| USB data ports | |
| Easy access USB data ports | |
| Integrated speakers | 2x 2W |
| Audio output / headphone out | |
| Mic input | |
| Ambient light sensor | |
| Motion sensor | |
| Stand adjustments | Tilt, height, swivel (no rotate) |
| Tripod socket | |
| Integrated Wi-Fi antenna | |
| Fan-less design | |
Being aimed at gamers there is a limited range of extra features on this display for office and productivity uses, missing things like USB-C and a KVM switch for instance that you will find on some top-end gaming displays, but obviously at a much higher price point. There are 2x USB data ports, a headphone jack and some basic integrated speakers included though which could be useful.
The spectral distribution of the backlight is shown here at a 6500K white point. The blue peak is at 460 nm wavelength which means it is outside of the reportedly harmful range according to Eyesafe that sits between 415 – 455nm. There are no low blue light settings available in the OSD menu.
Gaming
| (at native resolution) | Refresh Rate |
| Maximum Refresh Rate DisplayPort | 520Hz |
| Maximum Refresh Rate USB type-C | n/a |
| Maximum Refresh Rate HDMI | 520Hz |
| VRR range | 48 – 520Hz |
| ClearMR certification tier | |
The PG27FFX2A offers a very high refresh rate of 520Hz, the highest that we’ve tested to date from any IPS-type panel. This is supported by adaptive-sync for variable refresh rates (VRR) from compatible NVIDIA and AMD systems. The screen only has a 1920 x 1080 resolution, so it lacks the sharpness and image detail that higher resolution screens can offer. It’s not as well-suited therefore to graphically oriented games or AAA titles. On the plus side, being only 1080p does make it easier to power and should make it a lot more feasible trying to reach up to the upper end of the supported frame rates than if the resolution was higher. The screen is really aimed at fast FPS-type games, where gamers are more focused on speed, frame rates and end to end latency than on image quality and eye candy. This screen definitely suits that kind of gaming more.
| VRR capabilities and Certification | |
| AMD FreeSync certification | FreeSync Premium |
| Native NVIDIA G-sync module / G-sync scaler | |
| NVIDIA ‘G-sync Compatible’ certified | |
| VESA ‘AdaptiveSync’ certification | |
| HDMI-VRR (consoles via HDMI 2.1) | |
It’s been certified under the AMD ‘FreeSync Premium’ scheme which should give you some reassurance around VRR performance as well.
| Other Features | |
| NVIDIA DSR / DLDSR support | |
| Black Frame Insertion (BFI) | |
| Gaming extras | FPS counter, Dark Boost |
| Emulated gaming sizes | |
NVIDIA DSR and DLDSR are supported even at the maximum 1080p @ 520Hz and so that could be useful to enhance image detail and resolution in gaming, given the low native resolution of the panel. It’s good to see that available. An FPS counter and a Dark Boost control are available in the OSD menu, but no other gaming extras are provided. There’s no blur reduction mode on this model either.
Our thanks to the following manufacturers for support in the build of our new test system:
 | AMD Ryzen 9 7950X | Buy AMD Ryzen 9 CPUs here on Amazon |
 | Asus ProArt B650-Creator | Buy Asus B650 motherboards here on Amazon |
 | Corsair DDR5 RAM | Buy here on Amazon |
 | Corsair H100i Elite Capellix AIO cooler | Buy Corsair coolers here on Amazon |
| Corsair iCUE RGB Elite Fans | Buy here on Amazon | |
 | NVIDIA RTX 3090 | Buy NVIDIA RTX graphics cards here on Amazon |
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Response Times and Motion Clarity
As discussed in our detailed article about Response Time Testing – Pitfalls, Improvements and Updating Our Methodology we are using an improved and more accurate method for capturing G2G response times and overshoot, based on figures that are more reflective to what you see visually on the screen in real-World usage. Our article linked above talks through why this is better and how we arrived at this improved method in much more detail.
There are 3 overdrive modes available in the OSD menu (off, normal and enhance) and the screen comes out of the box in the ‘off’ mode, so you’ll probably want to change that for gaming. We first of all measured the panel response times and carried out various motion clarity tests at the maximum refresh rate of 520Hz, switching between each of the overdrive modes in the menu.
From the response time measurements you can see that the average G2G figure is improved a small amount as you move up through the different OD settings. The main area that this improves is with the transitions from light shades to dark, in the bottom left hand corner of the G2G table. In the ‘off’ setting these transitions were a bit slower, and in practice that resulted in a little more noticeable smearing on moving images, captured in our pursuit camera photos that are below.
As you move up to the ‘normal’ and the ‘enhance’ modes the smearing is reduced a little but only by small amounts. At the same time the overshoot starts to creep up though, but there is still a bit visible on lighter coloured transitions even in the ‘off’ mode. In the ‘enhance’ mode this starts to become a lot more noticeable, and you will see more pale halos in practice which we felt became too distracting. This is again captured in our pursuit camera photos below, especially on the lighter background images.
There’s not a huge amount of difference between each mode, but we felt that the ‘normal’ mode provided the best balance, improving the smearing a little and without introducing too much visible overshoot in practice. Note that the actual RGB overshoot values are high in the response time measurement tables, but because of the short frame duration time (1.92ms) this doesn’t linger on the screen for long and so in real use, it’s lower than the figures alone might suggest. That’s why it’s important to consider visual tests and motion clarity alongside the hard data and is where our overshoot rating comes from.
We should also comment here on the “refresh rate compliance”, that being how many of the pixel transitions can keep up with the high 520Hz refresh rate. In the optimal ‘normal’ overdrive mode, only 53% of the transitions were within the refresh rate window which is pretty poor. This leads to some additional smearing in motion, although it’s not terrible. It’s just not as crisp and sharp as the image would be if the refresh rate compliance was better. On an OLED panel with their near-instant response times you get 100% refresh rate compliance, including on the fastest 480Hz panels. The IPS panel used here can’t offer the same pixel response time performance, and so some added smearing is caused. You can judge the motion clarity from the pursuit camera photos above too.
Having settled on the ‘normal’ overdrive mode, we tested the screens performance in VRR situations, at a range of different frame rates right down to 60Hz. Overshoot and motion clarity were also evaluated visually, with the overshoot rating for different frame rates and refresh rates included accordingly.
The screen seems to offer a pretty good variable overdrive performance which is good news. That means that as the frame rate lowers, the pixel transitions are slowed down a little to help control overshoot. That means that at nearly all refresh rates across the VRR range, there’s no further overshoot introduced, and actually it gets clearer and better as the refresh rate lowers from 520Hz down to even as low as 120Hz.
At 60Hz the frame rate is so low that the overshoot starts to become more visible in the ‘normal’ OD mode, and in practice you get a lot of dark and pale halos. For a 60Hz fixed input device like an older games console or a Blu-ray player, you’d probably want to use the overdrive ‘off’ mode instead which looks better.
Stroboscopic effect
As well as improving motion clarity as we’ve shown above, a higher refresh rate can also help reduce (but not fully eliminate) the stroboscopic effect (aka the Phantom Array Effect) that can be seen as you focus on a single area of the display, and objects move past your line of sight. For instance this might happen if you are focused on a crosshair or target in a fast FPS game like CS:GO, while the scenery around you scrolls past your line of sight.
In the example above we’ve used the mouse cursor animation which you can try for yourself from Blurbusters here. Taking a fixed position photo captures how this appears to the naked eye, as shown above where the test simulates a scroll at various frame rates including the maximum 520Hz.
As the mouse cursor (or any moving image in dynamic content) move past your line of sight, low refresh rates can result in noticeable “stepping” or “strobing” of the image. This is one reason why higher refresh rates feel more fluid and smooth. As the refresh rate increases, the step distance reduces as you can see from the image above that we captured from this screen. The step distance is halved as you go from 260Hz to 520Hz for instance which significantly reduces its visibility.
Not everyone is susceptible to this stroboscopic effect in dynamic content, but those who are will see benefit in the increased refresh rate here, with decent and noticeable gains compared with traditional and common 144Hz – 360Hz refresh rate range gaming screens. So not only are you getting motion clarity and latency benefits from the higher refresh rate, but you’re also getting benefits when it comes to this stepping, stroboscopic effect which impacts some users. More on the stroboscopic effect here on Blurbusters.com.
Console Gaming
| Console Gaming | |
| Native panel resolution | 1920 x 1080 (1080p) |
| Maximum resolution and refresh rate supported | 1080p @ 120Hz |
| Virtual 4K support | |
| 4K at 24Hz support | |
| 4K at 50Hz support | |
| HDMI connection version | 2.1 |
| HDMI-CEC auto switch | |
| HDMI-VRR (over HDMI 2.1) | |
| Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM) | |
| HDR10 support | PS5 Only |
| Dolby Vision HDR support | |
| Integrated speakers | |
| Headphone connection | |
| Ultra high speed HDMI 2.1 cable provided | |
Modern console support is limited in some ways on this screen despite the inclusion of HDMI 2.1 ports on this model. The main gap is that there is no “virtual 4K” support on this screen, so the maximum resolution and refresh rate you can select is 1080p @ 120Hz. That matches the native resolution of the panel and will allow you to prioritise frame rates instead of resolution, had 4K been available. It does mean that you can’t input a higher resolution to maybe improve image detail a bit in gaming, you’re stuck with only the panel’s native 1080p resolution. There is support for VRR and for ALLM though.
Without Virtual 4K support, the Xbox Series S/X cannot output in HDR mode as that only operates at 4K resolution, although there’s no real HDR hardware capabilities from this screen anyway so it isn’t really a major gap. From PS5 you can output HDR at 1080p if you want to, but don’t expect much in the way of improvements given the lack of HDR hardware support like local dimming and a high peak brightness. Overall, you aren’t really buying this screen expecting major HDR capabilities, and so being able to run at the native 1080p @ 120Hz is probably going to be adequate for most users anyway.
Input Lag
Read our detailed article about input lag and the various measurement techniques which are used to evaluate this aspect of a display. The screens tested are split into two measurements which are based on our overall display lag tests and half the average G2G response time, as measured by our oscilloscope. The response time element, part of the lag you can see, is split from the overall display lag and shown on the graph as the green bar. From there, the signal processing (red bar) can be provided as a good estimation of the lag you would feel from the display. We also classify each display as follows:
Lag Classification (updated)
- Class 1) Less than 4.17ms – the equivalent to 1 frame lag of a display at 240Hz refresh rate – should be fine for gamers, even at high levels
- Class 2) A lag of 4.17 – 8.33ms – the equivalent of one to two frames at a 240Hz refresh rate – moderate lag but should be fine for many gamers. Caution advised for serious gaming
- Class 3) A lag of more than 8.33ms – the equivalent of more than 2 frames at a refresh rate of 240Hz, or 1 frame at 120Hz – Some noticeable lag in daily usage, not suitable for high end gaming
Lag was measured at the max 520Hz refresh rate, as well as at 60Hz to account for external devices, including some games consoles. The overall lag at 520Hz was measured at only 1.333ms but with the response times accounting for a lot of that, we had a very low estimated signal processing lag of only ~0.56ms which was very good. The lag was a bit higher at 60Hz but still remained very good compared with many screens. Remember that the 60Hz number is only applicable for devices set with a fixed 60Hz refresh rate. For VRR gaming, even if frame rates drop down low, the 520Hz input lag figure will apply (assuming you’ve set the screen to that in your graphics card settings).
Conclusion
The PG27FFX2A offers some decent performance as long as you go in knowing the limitations of the screen spec. The low 1080p resolution is not ideal on a 27″ sized screen and it isn’t very well-suited to office and general uses as a result, nor is it well-suited to games based on impressive graphics, lots of detail or high end HDR capabilities. But then you should know what you’re buying going in if you’re looking at a 1920 x 1080 resolution IPS screen. Being an IPS LCD panel it’s clearly not going to be as fast and clear as a modern OLED monitor, but it does pretty well still.
The response times are a little slower than we’d like, not really being able to keep up with the high frame rate demands properly, but in practice the motion clarity is still overall good with only small amounts of additional smearing visible. It’s missing a lot of the bells and whistles we’ve gotten used to seeing when testing top-end monitors, but given this is a more mid-range monitor you still get decent VRR performance, variable overdrive and very low input lag that make it well-suited to gaming. The very high refresh rate will also support higher frame rates than most monitors if that’s something important to the games you play, and this in turn results in better overall latency as well.
We were pleased with the default setup and accuracy of the screen considering it’s primarily a gaming screen as well as support for a wide colour gamut; but we would have liked to have seen a hardware sRGB emulation mode offered. Brightness was very good and contrast ratio was surprisingly good for an IPS panel, above the advertised spec in fact. There’s a modest set of extras like the integrated wi-fi antenna, USB ports, a headphone connection and even the basic integrated speakers that may be useful to some people. It’s lacking other productivity-enhancing features like USB-C, a KVM switch etc though but that’s not really the market it’s going after. We felt the provided extra features were adequate for the type of screen this is.
The PG27FFX2A is available for $417.99 USD at the time of writing which makes it considerably less than equivalent competing models, like for instance the Dell Alienware AW2524HF ($599.99 USD). If you’re after a fast IPS monitor for gaming, don’t mind the lower resolution and want to focus on pushing high refresh rates instead, then this is a competitively priced option to consider. You can check pricing and availability for your region using the link below.
| Pros | Cons |
| Very high 520Hz refresh rate for gaming | 1080p resolution is limiting on a screen this size for non-gaming uses (but should be expected from the spec) |
| Very low input lag | Missing an sRGB emulation mode |
| Good accuracy and all-round performance from the IPS panel | Response times could be better to improve refresh rate compliance |
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