Reviews

Asus ROG Swift PG27AQDP

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Introduction

There’s been a huge amount of investment in OLED monitors in the last couple of years and manufacturers are really focusing on refresh rates in this space, made possible thanks to the near-instant response times of this panel technology and something you simply can’t achieve with LCD panels. We’ve seen 4K 240Hz models released this year, and lower resolution 1440p models were also pushed up to 360Hz refresh rate to bring them in line with what is available in the LCD market. We also saw some dual-mode screens launched which offers 4K 240Hz, but also the ability to drop to 1080p at 480Hz for some specific gaming situations.

This is being taken a step further now by Asus with their new ROG Swift PG27AQDP which was originally announced and demo-ed at CES 2024 in January. This new display is 27″ in size, has a 1440p (2560 x 1440) resolution but pushes the native refresh rate up even higher, to a massive 480Hz! It’s the World’s first native 480Hz OLED monitor.

It’s also the first screen to be released to market using LG.Display’s latest WOLED panel, with an updated and improved sub-pixel layout, with a flat screen format and their standard matte anti-glare coating. Asus have added a load of familiar ROG OLED features including HDMI 2.1 connections, a custom heatsink for panel cooling, a wide range of OLED care features and also their Black Frame Insertion (BFI) blur reduction mode via their ELMB (Extreme Low Motion Blur) feature. The screen promises the fastest refresh rate and clearest motion clarity available in the OLED market right now and we’re excited to see what the screen can offer for gamers.

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Supplementary Video Review

Key Specs and Features

  • 27″ in size (more precisely 26.5″) with a flat format
  • 2560 x 1440 resolution (1440p)
  • LG.Display WOLED technology panel
  • Standard matte anti-glare (AG) coating
  • 480Hz refresh rate, 0.03ms G2G response time
  • Adaptive-sync for VRR, certifications pending at the time of writing
  • Extreme Low Motion Blur (ELMB) mode available (otherwise known as BFI)
  • 1300 nits peak brightness spec for HDR, as well as VESA DisplayHDR 400 True Black certification
  • 1x DisplayPort 1.4 (with DSC) and 2x HDMI 2.1 video connections. Headphone jack and 2x USB data ports
  • Custom heatsink and optimised cooling design means no need for active cooling fan
  • 3 year warranty including burn-in cover

Design and Features

The PG27AQDP comes in a familiar ROG styling, with a thin dark grey plastic edge around all 4 sides, along with a thin black panel border before the image starts. This border measures a total ~9mm along the sides and top, and ~11.5mm along the bottom edge. There is a small “chin” on the bottom edge of the screen where the OSD control joystick is located on the back, with an ROG logo on the front that glows red normally, but can be disabled from the OSD menu if you want to. It looks very similar from the front to their other recent OLED monitors.

The stand is thick and sturdy with a matte dark grey plastic finish arm, and dark grey metal feet. This provides a wide and very stable base for the screen, without being too deep as well. There is a cable tidy hole in the arm of the stand too.

The back of the screen is encased in a dark grey casing, and then there is a larger protruding section in the centre where the stand attaches, and connections are housed. This is a new, slightly transparent black plastic which is different to their other recent displays. There is a large “for those who dare” logo on the back of the screen too, along with an RGB lighting logo. The side sections of the screen are very thin thanks to the OLED panel, and because no backlight unit is needed for this technology. It also has an external power brick rather than the power supply being built in to the screen.

There’s a modest range of modern connectivity provided on the screen with 1x DisplayPort 1.4 (with DSC) and 2x HDMI 2.1 ports for video. There’s also a 2 port USB hub and a headphone output available. “Why not DisplayPort 2.1?” you might ask – that’s discussed at length in our article here: When is DisplayPort 2.1 Going to be Used on Monitors? It’s not needed here, you can power 1440p @ 480Hz fine over the included connections thanks to DSC.

Like their other OLED monitors this screen is fan-less, thanks to the use of a custom heatsink to keep the components cool and so is silent in operation. There is a ROG logo RGB lighting feature on the back of the screen, and also a ROG logo projector from the bottom of the stand which you can turn on and off via the OSD if you like.

The stand provides a full range of ergonomic adjustments with tilt, height, swivel and rotate offered. These are all smooth and mostly easy to re-position, although we found tilt to be stiff on our sample. The screen remains stable with basically no wobble at all as you move it around. The stand also supports the screen very well when you use the OSD joystick, without causing the screen to move around or wobble at all. It feels very strong and stable on your desk, Asus have really got these stands nailed now.

The OSD is controlled primarily through a small joystick toggle on the back of the screen’s “chin” section on the bottom edge. There are also two pressable buttons, one either side of the joystick. One gives you quick access to the ‘AI Assistant’ gaming options, while the other is the power on/off button. A nice touch is that if you press the power button, it prompts you to confirm you definitely want to turn the screen off, to avoid those accidental power-offs.

There is also some quick access to key settings via the directions on the joystick which you can customise in the menu, or if you press the joystick in you can enter the main menu. Navigation is quick, snappy and intuitive thanks to the joystick controller. There were a decent range of settings and options available too.

OSD Menu
Joystick toggle controller
Quick and snappy
Intuitive to use
User updatable firmware

The screen supports user-updatable firmware and we have installed the latest MCM102 version that was released during the testing phase, but before we had completed our testing and review.

Brightness and Contrast

For this testing we disabled the OLED care features including screen saver, auto logo brightness, taskbar detection, outer dimming control and local dimming control in the OSD menu as those have a small impact to screen brightness. We will comment on their impact to brightness below as well.

Uniform Brightness = OFF

Out of the box the screen operates with the ‘Uniform Brightness’ (UB) setting turned off, which is a feature we’ve seen many times now on Asus OLED screens that if enabled would help maintain a consistent screen brightness regardless of the content you show, the size of your windows or your Average Picture Level (APL). With this setting turned off you can see that the screens brightness varies depending on the APL and so you get fluctuations in brightness as you resize and move windows around or change your content. This is distracting for office and desktop uses we find, although may not be as problematic for dynamic content like games and multimedia. You may want to try using this mode for SDR dynamic content as it could reach higher luminance levels than the uniform brightness mode.

With UB turned off the screen reaches up to a maximum 425 nits in SDR, although this drops down to 255 nits when you view a full white screen (100% APL). The Automatic Brightness Limiter (ABL) kicks in to dim the screen as the content changes. This applies even at lower brightness settings as you can see from the graph above. The minimum luminance the screen can reach (at a 10% APL measurement) was 29 nits.

Uniform Brightness = ON

Uniform Brightness mode behaves accurately with the same luminance being retained regardless of the APL window size being tested and the content being displayed. The screen can reach up to 259 nits at maximum brightness setting in this UB mode which is decent, and actually identical to their 27″ 240Hz PG27AQDM monitor. This range of around 260 – 280 nits is common for an OLED monitor at the moment with uniform brightness behaviour. At the lowest setting the screen could reach down to a nice low 29 nits when using the UB mode, affording you good flexibility for darker room conditions.

We expect this to be the mode most people will want to use for desktop and office SDR content, with a pretty decent range of brightness available, and the avoidance of any noticeable ABL dimming.

Note about OLED care settings: If you enable and use the ‘auto logo brightness’ setting it lowers the luminance by around 6 nits. The ‘outer dimming control’ also seems to have a direct impact on luminance, but only around the edges of the screen, creating somewhat of a vignette effect. This seems to be enabling the LG.Display panel CPC (Convex Power Control) function. It reduces the luminance around the edges of the screen by around 37 nits when enabled. If you want to use those features then add a few % to the recommended brightness levels in the graph above to reach the desired 120 / 150 / 200 nits.

Black Depth, Shadow Detail and Contrast

Black depth and contrast
Contrast ratio ~Infinite:1 (OLED)
Black depth (nits)0.00
Shadow detail rating (SDR)Very good
First visible RGB greyscale = 3
Shadow detail adjustment control

One of the key benefits of an OLED panel is the fact it is capable of generating true blacks and a basically infinite contrast ratio. Each pixel can be fully turned off individually, and there’s no need for backlight local dimming here like there is on LCD’s. As a result, the black depth and contrast ratio can surpass all LCD panel technologies including VA panels by a long way. Blacks look inky and deep, and you get local contrast between different areas of an image.

Your ambient lighting may have some impact on perceived contrast ratio as it does with all screens, although this is far less noticeable on a WOLED panel like this than it is on competing QD-OLED models, including their own 32″ model, the PG32UCDM. On QD-OLED panels in brighter rooms there is a fairly noticeable issue with raised blacks due to the panel structure and the fact that a polarizer is not used. The ambient lighting can cause inadvertent activation of the Quantum Dot layer on those panels, and blacks can start to look more grey or have a purple hue. We studied the impact of this in detail recently, which is linked below if you want to know more. In darker rooms or where you can more carefully control your light sources, it is not a major problem, but competing WOLED panels like this one do fare better in a wide range of viewing conditions.

The matte screen coating used here handles reflections and glare very well, but does cause diffusion of external light sources and impacts perceived black depth more than glossy panel coatings do. This is again discussed and tested in detail in our article below.

The near black shadow detail was good out of the box in the default ‘Racing’ mode and using this test image we could just make out box 3 as the first we could distinguish before calibration. This is something that can often be an issue on OLED panels. It’s even a bit better in some other preset modes like ‘FPS’ for example (box 2 visible), but that is less accurate in many other ways so not ideal for general and desktop uses. You can make some tweaks yourself using the ‘Shadow Boost’ and ‘AI shadow boost’ settings which can help a little although tends to impact more of the mid-grey shades than those near black.

Backlight or Panel Flicker

Flicker
Flicker free verified
PWM / flicker frequencyn/a

Like other OLED screens there is a minor fluctuation of the backlight, and in this case it operates in sync with the refresh rate, whatever you have that set at. Above it’s operating at 480Hz so there’s a small fluctuation every ~2.08ms. You can see on the graph above that the 0V would be an “off” state, so the amplitude of this fluctuation is minor, and does not produce any visible flickering or anything like that in practice. It’s not the same as PWM on an LCD monitor where the backlight is rapidly switched fully off and on when trying to dim the brightness level. Obviously being an OLED panel there is no backlight here anyway, and this minor fluctuation didn’t cause us any problems in real use and would be considered flicker free.

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. 

Default Setup

The screen comes out of the box in the ‘Racing’ preset mode which we tested first of all. Note that ‘Uniform Brightness’ was also turned off by default.

Gamma tracking was very good overall and we measured a 2.20 average. The colour temp and RGB balance in the middle section were good too, with a good balance between the red, green and blue channels. This resulted in a 6674K average greyscale temp and a 6679K white point, being a small 3% out from our target of 6500K. This left us with a good overall greyscale accuracy with a dE average of 2.0 measured.

The screen has a wide colour gamut which extends a reasonable way beyond the sRGB colour space in red and green shades, and results in a ~125% relative coverage calculation. This is a bit lower than competing QD-OLED panels (including the 27″ 360Hz Dell Alienware AW2725DF for instance) which have a wider colour space of ~142% sRGB thanks to their use of Quantum Dot coating. With the wide colour gamut active here, the accuracy of sRGB colours was only moderate, with a dE 2.9 average measured. This is normal for a wide gamut screen though and we will look if we can improve sRGB / SDR accuracy in a moment.

The native colour gamut of this panel matches the DCI-P3 reference very closely as you can see from the bottom left CIE diagram, and we measured a 97.2% absolute coverage, 99.5% relative coverage. With that close match, the accuracy of DCI-P3 colours out of the box was very good, with a dE 1.2 average and 2.5 maximum measured. This provides a nice accurate performance for content which might be mastered in this colour space, even out of the box. Overall there was a good default accuracy on this screen in the wide gamut mode which was pleasing.

There is also good coverage of the Adobe RGB gamut as well on this screen with 95.7% measured, although it extends a fair way beyond that space (107% relative coverage) and so will need to be profiled using a calibration device to more accurately cover that gamut if you want to use it for professional or photography work which is commonly based on that colour space. There is no provided Adobe RGB emulation mode on this screen like there is on some competing QD-OLED models unfortunately, so you would need to be able to calibrate and profile the screen yourself for Adobe RGB content, for which you will need a calibration device. We’d like to see Asus add this on future screens.

sRGB Emulation Modes

The screen comes factory calibrated in the Racing mode when you switch to the sRGB colour space according to the provided report in the box:

There are actually two ways to achieve an sRGB emulation mode. There’s the Racing/sRGB mode as indicated by the calibration report, and then there’s also a dedicated ‘sRGB Cal’ preset mode in the Game Visual menu which offers clamping of the native colour space back to sRGB, but has nearly all of the other OSD settings locked except for the brightness control.

We measured the Racing mode first of all while selecting the sRGB colour space setting:

sRGB Colour Gamut mode (Racing preset)

This mode operates with a 2.2 power gamma and follows that pretty closely overall, with 2.18 average measured. Colour temp and white point strayed a little further from our target, now being 5% too cool. This was overall very similar to the default setup of the screen though when running in the ‘wide gamut’ mode as the only thing we’ve changed is the colour space setting.

With the sRGB colour space selected, we had good emulation and clamping of the target, with 95.1% coverage measured. It had perhaps gone a little too far and resulted in a small amount of under-coverage, but nothing too drastic. Colour accuracy for sRGB colours was very good in this mode with dE 1.2 average measured. This is a good and flexible way to use the sRGB emulation mode on this screen, giving you much better flexibility to alter other settings if you want than using the ‘sRGB Cal’ mode which we will test next.

sRGB Cal mode

This mode has been configured to the sRGB gamma instead of 2.2 gamma, but that does at least give you a simple preset mode to use if you specifically wanted to work with that very similar, but slightly different gamma curve for SDR and desktop content for any reason. White point and colour temp remained similar to how they were before in the default ‘Racing’ mode, with a small 3% deviance for white point.

The native colour space has been clamped back here quite close to the sRGB reference, although it has gone ever so slightly further with its clamping and left us with a 94% coverage only. This was 1.1% less than the Racing/sRGB approach. With the approximate sRGB colour space in play, we had similar colour accuracy for sRGB content with a dE 1.6 average measured. The main problem with this mode is that nearly all the OSD settings are locked, so there’s no way to customise anything if you wanted to apart from (thankfully) the brightness setting. We think most people will prefer to use the other modes and simply change the colour space if they want to use the sRGB emulation.

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Calibration

Calibration and profiling can produce some very good overall results and could be useful though if you wanted to operate the screen within its native wide gamut mode, but then map the colour space back to something else like sRGB or Adobe RGB for instance for colour-aware applications (e.g. Photoshop). You would need a suitable calibration device and software.

In this section the screen 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 to map back to sRGB in this instance. Overall the calibrated results were very good as you’d hope, although it didn’t seem to be possible to fully correct the colour accuracy despite multiple attempts. It remained very good overall though. You can find our calibrated settings and ICC profile in our ICC profile database now.

beenhere

ICC Profiles and Monitor Calibration Database

Find the recommended settings and a calibrated ICC profile for your display.
[View here]

General and Office

The PG27AQDP is quite well suited for office work, although caution as ever is advised when it comes to using an OLED panel for lots of static content. The technology carries an inherent risk of image retention and burn-in, and so it’s certainly a screen more suited to dynamic content like gaming and video. Having said that, the panel does pretty well for some office use if you need it to. The 2560 x 1440 resolution is pretty standard on a screen this size. It won’t provide the same sharpness and pixel density as a 4K resolution (not currently available in 27″ OLED size) but should be perfectly comfortable and fine for most users.

One random note, and I forget who asked us to check this – but in a multi-monitor configuration if you lock Windows and the screen goes off, the open program windows remain in the same place, they do not move or go all over the place. Hopefully whoever asked us to check that reads this.

Sub-pixel Layout and Text Rendering

This is first 27″ size WOLED monitor we’ve tested that features the updated sub-pixel layout from LG.Display’s latest generation of panels. We saw this new structure used on their new 32″ 4K panel, as featured in the Asus ROG Swift PG32UCDP for instance, but this is the first display to be released using the new structure in the 27″ 1440p space.

Previously their WOLED monitor panels, including all the previously released 27″ 240Hz models, had an unusual RWBG sub-pixel structure, which includes not only an added white sub-pixel (used to boost brightness) but has the RGB out of their usual order. This leads to fairly poor text clarity on their panels, with quite noticeable issues in practice. It causes text to look less clear and more blocky which we commented on in our various reviews of 27″, 34″ and 45″ WOLED-based monitors. That includes for instance Asus’s previous 240Hz WOLED monitors like the popular ROG Swift PG27AQDM and the more recently released glossy ROG Strix XG27AQDMG. They both had the older RWBG layout.

LG.Display are updating the layout on several of their new panels, and our latest update on all OLED panel roadmaps can be found here. This new 27″ 480Hz panel used in the PG27AQDP has this updated layout, where the RGB have been put back in the right order, and the white sub-pixel has been moved in to a different place (third in the layout).

Magnified macro photos of text on two different 27″ WOLED panels. IPS LCD for reference

We are pleased to report that text clarity has been improved a reasonable amount on the new panel, with the text looking a little sharper and clearer to the naked eye. We compared the PG27AQDP side by side with an earlier 27″ WOLED monitor (with the old pixel layout) and felt that the text was quite nicely improved here. It looks a little sharper and more defined and we’ve tried to capture this as best we can with some magnified close up photos above. It’s not perfect as there’s still the added white sub-pixel, but it’s a bit clearer and sharper looking.

Please keep in mind the magnification on these photos, but hopefully you can see the improvements made here. We think this makes the new 27″ 480Hz panel more suited to desktop, office and text usage.

The same new RGWB layout has also been used on their 32″ panel (as used in the Asus ROG Swift PG32UCDP for example) and comparing those side by side showed some further slight improvements on the larger panel thanks to the increased pixel density it offers. Using 125% or even 150% scaling results in slightly cleaner text thanks to the increased 140 PPI of that panel, compared with the 110 PPI of this 27″ model. The text is also a bit smaller when using 125% scaling than on the 27″ 1440p panel, even more so if you were to use 100% scaling on the 32″ and so that has some impact on visual clarity.

Screen coating

The panel has the standard matte anti-glare (AG) coating that we’ve seen on pretty much all previous WOLED monitors to date, it’s the same as the wide range of earlier 240Hz 27″ WOLED panels on the market too, and on the new 32″ WOLED displays like the PG32UCDP. This is despite some early rumours and mis-information coming out of CES that it was going to be a glossy panel. This is a little more grainy in appearance than modern LCD IPS panels, and doesn’t look quite as clean and clear as a result. It does a good job of handling glare and reflections though, better than standard semi-glossy QD-OLED panels in this regard so it more well-suited to brighter room conditions, daytime use and office environments.

Which is better then at the moment, the 27″ QD-OLED panels or this new 27″ WOLED panel? This is going to be very much down to user preference and your individual viewing environment. We personally prefer the semi-glossy coating finish of QD-OLED panels overall at the moment. They look cleaner, clearer and sharper and have more of a “pop” to the image than these AG coatings. The AG coating of the WOLED panel will be more appropriate if you’re viewing the screen in the day time, in well lit rooms or have problems with glare and reflections that you want to mitigate. Each use case will be different so you can select the right coating for your uses.

Screen Brightness

Brightness
Maximum brightness (SDR)259 nits
Minimum brightness29 nits
Uniform brightness behaviour
Flicker free

The screens brightness should be adequate for most users, reaching up to around 259 nits maximum in SDR mode when the uniform brightness setting is enabled, which we would recommend for these kind of uses. As a result that is all without the need for ABL to be used. This is great news as it ensures a consistent and stable brightness no matter the content you view, or no matter your window sizes and we would recommend this mode for desktop applications for sure. The screen can’t reach as bright as LCD panels for desktop use, but 259 nits is still decent, and unless you need to use the screen in a very bright room, it should be more than adequate. It also has a pretty good lower adjustment range down to 29 nits if you need to use the screen in a darker room. If you have ‘adjust logo brightness’ enabled in the OLED care section you may see slightly different results to this by a few nits.

Useful Office Features

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
Audio output / headphone out
Mic input
Ambient light sensor
Motion sensor
Stand adjustmentsTilt, height, swivel, rotate
Tripod socket
Fan-less design

The screen has limited additional features unfortunately for office and general uses. There’s no USB type-C connection, KVM switch, PiP/PbP support or integrated speakers. We’d seen a lot more of these features included on their 32″ PG32UCDP model, and it was a bit of a shame these had been left off this new model. It is a more gamer-focused screen so we expect this has been done to keep production costs down, but there are other competing 27″ OLED screens available that have many of these features – but none yet with this 480Hz refresh rate admittedly. For office uses we would have also liked to have seen a motion sensor to help turn off the screen when it’s not being used.

Warranty and image retention risks

One challenge with OLED panels in general is the inherent risk of image retention and burn-in. It’s a technology more suited to dynamic and changing content, which is why these are largely positioned as gaming and multimedia screens. There is more of a risk of image retention if you are using these screens for lots of static desktop and office use though. Display manufacturers provide a range of measures to help mitigate that risk, and maintain the panel over time and we will talk about the OLED Care measures in a moment.

Asus include a 3 year warranty with the monitor, including burn-in cover which gives some added peace of mind around usage and image retention risks. This is the same as on their other recent OLED monitors.

To help mitigate the risks of image retention Asus provide a decent and expanded set of OLED care options within the OSD menu. Familiar options include the pixel shift / screen move which moves the image slightly a few pixels at a time periodically (you can turn this off fully if you want). There’s also a screen saver which dims the screen off if there is no change to the image for an extended period of time. There’s also an image cleaning cycle which will run automatically from time to time, or you can run manually in the menu if you want. An ‘auto logo brightness’ (logo dimming) option is also available as we’ve seen on some of their other displays.

Newly added features include 1) taskbar detection – to dim the taskbar area, 2) outer dimming control – which seems to activate the LG.Display CPC (Convex Power Control) feature which dims the edges of the screen. This seems to be quite drastic and noticeable in real content and on the windows desktop, producing a fairly noticeable vignetting effect. We doubt many people will like this in practice.

There’s also 3) a feature which is labelled as ‘local dimming control’ in the OSD menu and user manual, but seems to perhaps be the new ‘global dimming control’ as it is called on their product page. This “detects image information and balance luminance by analyzing image deviation” as the user manual puts it.

A final feature called ‘Target mode’ is listed on the product page, but not actually available in the OSD menu at the moment. We’ve queried this with Asus, along with the potential mis-labelling of the global dimming control discussed above.

Note that the OLED care settings are remembered separately between SDR and HDR modes, so you may want to have some of them set differently depending on the mode you’re using.

All the OLED care options and other screen settings can be accessed via Asus’ Display Widget PC app as well.

Blue Light and Eye Care Modes

The native panel spectral distribution is shown above at a calibrated 6500K white point, where the blue peak is at 455 nm. This means it is just on the edge of the Eyesafe certified range of products where there is a supposed harmful range between 415 – 455nm.

There is a ‘Blue light filter’ setting in the menu with 4 levels available, making the image slightly warmer and more yellow each time. Each mode measures at 5967K (1), 5731K (2), 5544K (3) and 4674K (4). The highest setting looks pretty yellow in appearance though.

Gaming

The PG27AQDP is heavily focused on its gaming capabilities and is the first 1440p native 480Hz OLED panel launched to market. This combines this super-high refresh rate with a 1440p resolution to offer an amazing gaming spec for many people. We have already recently tested a couple of 32″ panels which were capable of reaching 480Hz using their Dual-mode feature, but only if you were prepared to drop down to a 1080p resolution. That resulted in a noticeable drop in image clarity and resolution though which many people were put off by. Here on the PG27AQDP the 480Hz refresh rate is available when using the panel’s native 2560 x 1440 resolution, so you don’t have to make any sacrifices to resolution or picture quality to get there.

Refresh Rate
Maximum Refresh Rate DisplayPort480Hz
Maximum Refresh Rate USB type-C480Hz
Maximum Refresh Rate HDMI480Hz
VRR range48 – 480Hz
ClearMR certification tier

The OLED panel provides super-deep blacks and a basically infinite contrast ratio which is of course excellent for gaming too. The per-pixel level dimming and high contrast ratio also make it well suited to HDR gaming, and we will measure HDR performance a bit later. The very wide viewing angles of this technology are also excellent and make the screen suitable for viewing from many different positions if you need. These wide viewing angles importantly include the freedom from things like the pale/white “IPS glow” that you get on darker content on that common LCD technology. There’s none of that here on the OLED panel.

Variable Refresh Rates (VRR)

VRR capabilities and Certifications
AMD FreeSync certification
AMD ‘FreeSync Premium’ tier
Native NVIDIA G-sync module / G-sync scaler
NVIDIA ‘G-sync Compatible’ certified
VESA ‘AdaptiveSync’ certification
AdaptiveSync 480 tier
HDMI-VRR (consoles via HDMI 2.1)

To help support the hefty demands of 2560 x 1440 @ 480Hz the screen features adaptive-sync, giving Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) support for both NVIDIA and AMD systems which is great news. It’s been certified under all the key programs as well.

VRR flicker and Asus Anti-flicker technology

VRR flicker is a very tricky area to quantify and measure on a monitor. All OLED panels can suffer from VRR flicker, it’s an inherent challenge with these panels. But whether or not you will experience that or see it depends on so many factors, it is hard to standardise a sensible and meaningful testing approach. Whether you will experience flicker can depend on the screen itself, your system and graphics card, the game you’re playing, the type of scene in that game, your settings, and also the frame rates you are achieving in the game. A large number of variables as you can see.

Large swings in frame rates within the VRR range seem to commonly trigger flicker though, especially in darker scenes and often on loading screens. At TFTCentral we are not keen on creating a “stress test” approach to testing VRR flicker; as just because a screen can show flicker in the most extreme scenarios and synthetic tests, doesn’t mean that it will show flicker in normal, typical situations or for your usage.

We are still exploring potential ways to measure and quantify flicker in the future in a meaningful way for our readers but even if we can standardise some testing, we clearly can’t test every scenario and game, and our system will be different to your system. We also don’t have the time and bandwidth to play lots of games around our testing and reviews, so it’s of questionable value to comment on whether we experienced VRR flicker or not. We would encourage you to read user comments when this screen is released, preferably based on the games you are going to play. Although always take feedback with the caveat that every scenario and test system will be different.

For now one standardised approach we are exploring as a starter is to use this small ‘VRR Flicker test’ application. The program creates a full-screen OpenGL context on the monitor in the desktop resolution, renders a gradient from mid grey to black and then varies the framerate up and down between 1/120th and 1/40th of a second. The unstable frame rate can cause flickering on many displays. We tested this application on this monitor and saw some occasional flickering across the screen, and some artefacts produced in the darkest shades near black.

Asus OLED Anti-flicker setting

Asus provide an additional setting in the OSD menu, oddly within the ‘image’ section instead of the ‘gaming’ section. This ‘OLED Anti Flicker’ setting has options for off, medium and high. We tested this using the VRR flicker test application above and saw some small improvements to overall screen flicker when moving up the modes. It didn’t eliminate 100% of the flickering, but it did offer some improvements. It does this by restricting the VRR range that is available, therefore in theory reducing the potential frame rate swings that you might be impacted by. As we said before, it’s hard to know whether your system and your game will cause flickering or not. These extra settings could help a bit and it’s good to see them offered. Capping your frame rates, or perhaps even just turning VRR off altogether are other options you could consider if flickering does become an issue for you.

Gaming Features and Settings

NVIDIA DSR / DLDSR

NVIDIA DSR / DLDSR
Support with DSC active
Support with DSC disabled
Max resolution and refresh rate supported
over DisplayPort (with DSC disabled)
1440p @ 240Hz, 8-bit, 444 chroma
Max resolution and refresh rate supported
over HDMI (with DSC disabled)
1440p @ 240Hz, 10-bit, 444 chroma

We tested support for NVIDIA DSR / DLDSR which can sometimes work on monitors with DSC (Display Stream Compression), but not always. We found that these technologies were not available on this screen by default, even if you drop down to a lower refresh rate like 60Hz or a lower resolution.

Res/refresh rate support over DisplayPort with DSC disabled
Res/refresh rate support over HDMI 2.1 with DSC disabled

There is a setting in the OSD menu to disable DSC if you want, but if you do you will be significantly limited in the available refresh rate without DSC in use. The maximum you can now run the screen at would be 1440p @ 240Hz, but over DisplayPort that will force you down to 8-bit colour depth as well. Not something you’re likely to see a difference with anyway and the screen can still operate at 4:4:4 chroma thankfully, which would have made a visual difference if that had been lowered.

If you have a graphics card with HDMI 2.1 output and you specifically want to use DSR technologies, you may be better off using that connection. That allows the maximum 1440p @ 240Hz at 10-bit and 4:4:4 chroma as the connection has more bandwidth than DisplayPort 1.4. Regardless of which connection you use, to make use of DSR you’d need to sacrifice refresh rate a lot which we don’t feel is worthwhile for a lot of users. Although if you can’t power your games over 240fps anyway and want to prioritise image detail then this could be worth exploring. You could also then use the added ELMB / BFI feature (discussed in a moment) to boost your motion clarity nicely. That’s available up to 240Hz too.

At least with the screen being a lower-than-4K display there is some potential benefit in pushing resolution and detail up higher, with these technologies being more valuable on a 1440p display than they are on a 4K display for instance.

Gaming AI Assistant

Asus have introduced a range of new “AI assistant” settings and features on this screen which may be useful to some gamers, including:

  • AI crosshair – automatically changes the crosshair to a contrasting colour to the background so it stands out more
  • AI shadow boost – automatically adjusts dark areas of the scene to make it easier to pick out details in darker areas
  • AI sniper – automatically zooms in on the centre of the in-game target for better aiming
  • MOBA map helper – reminds you to keep a lookout whenever a group batter is detected in a MOBA game
  • AI visual (coming a bit later apparently and not currently present in the OSD menu with MCM102 firmware) – automatically detects what is on screen and adjusts the preset mode and monitor settings to the most appropriate options

In addition to the new AI features, there are also a range of familiar gaming options in the ‘GamePlus’ menu including FPS counter, crosshair, timer, shadow boost and stopwatch for example.

Aspect Ratio Controls

For those who want to game with either a smaller screen size, or a lower resolution, the PG27AQDP has a range of modes to help support this. For instance if you are playing a competitive / esports game at a 4:3 aspect ratio like 1280 x 960 or maybe 1024 x 768, the screen can handle those properly and support up to 480Hz. Likewise if you wanted to game at a lower 16:9 aspect ratio resolution like 1920 x 1080, there are a couple of ways the screen can handle that for you. Playing games at these lower resolutions will make it easier to achieve the higher frame rates, and some people just prefer the smaller screen size area to focus on in competitive situations. The PG27AQDP can give you a decent option for those situations, while also being able to support the larger 27″ size and 1440p resolutions when you want.

There are a couple of limitations with using the aspect ratio controls though. Firstly you can’t use VRR in these modes, although a lot of competitive gamers don’t use that anyway if they’re playing with some of these non-typical resolutions. Secondly you can’t use the ELMB / BFI feature (covered more later) which is a shame.

Here’s how the screen can handle non-native resolutions:

  • 1920 x 1080 (1080p) – you can set the screen to 1:1 pixel mapping which gives you a small screen area of ~ 19.75 inches diagonal. You could also force the screen to simulate a 24.5″ screen size, although you lose some clarity and sharpness, especially visible in desktop applications, as the resolution is stretched a little now. You could also stretch the 1080p resolution to fill the whole screen which actually doesn’t look too bad, being a little sharper and clearer than the 24.5″ emulated mode at 1080p.
  • 2368 x 1332 (24.5″ emulation mode) – if you switch the screen in to the 24.5″ emulation mode then this new resolution appears. It’s an exact 1:1 pixel match to the screen size and should therefore look as sharp and clear as native mode. We actually found this to look a little blurred, and have fed this back to Asus as there must be something slightly wrong here at the moment. This should be something they can easily fix in a firmware update.
  • 1280 x 960 (4:3) – there are 3 options in the menu under the ‘square’ setting when you input this resolution. You can choose to fill the screen, which stretches the image horizontally – not sure why you’d want to use that. You can choose ‘equivalent’ which stretches the image to fill as much as the screen as possible while still maintaining the 4:3 aspect ratio. Or you can choose 1:1 mapping mode which provides the sharpest and clearest image, but is much smaller at ~14.25 inches diagonal.
  • 1024 x 768 (4:3) – there are 3 options in the menu under the ‘square’ setting when you input this resolution. You can choose to fill the screen, which stretches the image horizontally – not sure why you’d want to use that. You can choose ‘equivalent’ which stretches the image to fill as much as the screen as possible while still maintaining the 4:3 aspect ratio. Or you can choose 1:1 mapping mode which provides the sharpest and clearest image, but is much smaller at ~11.5 inches diagonal.

Response Times

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.

The above G2G response times are consistent at all refresh rates, including 480Hz, 240Hz, 120Hz and 60Hz and during VRR situations with changing frame rates. Thanks to the OLED panel the response times are super-fast and near-instant, with an average of only 0.44ms G2G measured. The best case was an incredibly impressive 0.29ms and the overall response times were as expected from an OLED panel. All transitions can keep up easily with the frame rate demands of even 480Hz, and there was also no visible overshoot evident which is great news too, so overall there was nice and clean pixel transition times.


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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Motion Clarity

We captured some pursuit camera photos of the screen at a variety of refresh rates, designed to capture real-world perceived motion clarity. This gives you a good indication of how the screen looks in real use, beyond G2G response time measurements.

We’ve provided above a comparison of the motion clarity compared with other common OLED refresh rates, including the fastest currently available QD-OLED panels at 360Hz (e.g. MSI MPG 271QRX and Dell Alienware AW2725DF). You can see from these pursuit camera photos, which to clarify again capture real-world perceived motion clarity you will see with the naked eye, that the motion clarity is noticeably improved as you move from 240Hz up to 480Hz. We were really impressed with how sharp and clear the image looked, it really is amazing motion clarity. The image is sharp and clear, a little more so in practice in fact than the 1080p dual-mode 480Hz OLED’s we’ve tested thanks to the increased pixel density and resolution of this 1440p panel.

To benefit from this top-end motion clarity in games you’re going to have to be able to power very high frame rates from your system, but the capability is there as graphics cards and other components improve further over time and you upgrade your system. We’ll talk about the practicalities more in a moment.

We can also compare the motion clarity of the 480Hz OLED monitor with the fastest LCD monitor panel currently available, which is a 540Hz refresh rate TN Film panel used in monitors like the Asus ROG Swift Pro PG248QP which we’ve reviewed before. The refresh rate of the OLED is slightly lower, but in practice the motion clarity was a little better, being clearer and sharper we felt thanks to the near-instant response times. It’s also free from any visible overshoot artefacts at all.

If you add in a decent strobing blur reduction mode to a super-high refresh rate LCD then you can take motion clarity a step further, but not everyone likes the strobing, flickering and brightness sacrifices that involves. For those who like strobe-free gaming, which is the majority of gamers out there, the performance here on this 480Hz is amazing.

Some people may still prefer a small 24″ sized TN Film screen for competitive gaming like the 540Hz models available, for taking to events, focusing on a small screen area etc, but from a wider image quality point of view there’s no contest here – the OLED wins easily. A 480Hz OLED panel destroys a 540Hz TN Film panel in image quality, colours, contrast and HDR performance.

Courtesy of Blurbusters.com

At a 480Hz refresh rate, and with with the near-instant response times (0.44ms G2G) of the OLED panel there is 2.08ms of persistence of the image, half that of a typical 240Hz OLED display. Even in desktop applications and Windows, the 480Hz refresh rate feels so snappy, and it’s smooth, quick and clear when you move windows around. You may think that 480Hz is all about gaming, but even in other applications you can see and feel the difference. Obviously it’s of less practical value in those situations to most people, but it’s still there.

Stroboscopic effect

Photo capturing mouse cursor animation test at Blurbusters.com

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 240fps and 480fps scroll.

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 240Hz vs 480Hz image above that we captured from the PG27AQDP. It is also demonstrated in the reference image below from Blurbusters at other lower refresh rates. The step distance is halved as you go from 240Hz to 480Hz in fact which significantly reduces its visibility.

Example reference image courtesy of Blurbusters.com. Not from this specific display reviewed.

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 240Hz OLED screens. So not only are you getting motion clarity 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.

Is 480Hz worth it?

Is 480Hz worthwhile though some people will ask? Will you really notice a difference over a 240Hz OLED? Can you even benefit from this higher refresh rate practically anyway?

We’ve talked above about the small but noticeable incremental benefits that 480Hz refresh rate can have over “slower” screens when it comes to motion clarity, the stroboscopic effect and overall system latency. To really get any benefit from the 480Hz refresh rate on offer here, you’re going to need to be reaching those higher frame rates though. If you’re only outputting 240 fps (and let’s assume you have VRR enabled) then the screen is going to operate at 240Hz and so will look identical in motion clarity to a standard 240Hz 27″ WOLED screen.

It should be obvious that you’re going to need a very powerful system to reach up to 1440p @ 480 fps, and so achieving those kind of frames rates will be out of the reach of many users right now. But this kind of top-end refresh rate monitor is really aimed at very competitive and esports gamers who have the latest and greatest hardware and are pushing frame rates hard, potentially allowing them to maybe reach these kind of levels. For them, the small differences in motion clarity, frame rate support and system latency that this head-room offers could make a difference in competitive situations. We should also remember that there are some competitive gamers who play much older titles, with lower settings and graphical details where 1440p @ 480 fps might become more achievable. They may also be playing at a lower resolution like 1080p or even some 4:3 aspect ratio resolution, and that will make reaching 480Hz a lot easier too.

Even if you can’t reach those kind of frame rates now, then keep in mind that this screen will provide lots of future-proof headroom for you as other system components improve over time. Even if you could only power 1440p @ 240 fps for instance now, you will have room to grow into when you update your graphics card and PC later on. As you increase your frame rates and system performance over time, there are improvements to be had in gaming performance and experience as we showed earlier.

So we think the primary use case for this kind of screen will be for competitive and esports gamers. It’s fair to say that this screen is aimed at a niche audience, and an average gamer is either not going to be able to reach anywhere near 480 fps, or isn’t playing at a level where the small visual and latency benefits will make a difference to them. In that case for gaming they may be just as happy with a lower refresh rate screen like the wide range of 27″ 240Hz WOLED monitors which are becoming increasingly competitively priced. You can save yourself a fair bit of money and go for a “slower” screen, with 240Hz OLED of course still looking amazing anyway. Some people just like to have the latest and greatest tech as well, or have money to spare we should keep in mind so there’s probably an audience out there who will buy this screen for that reason alone.

One final note is that we are talking about gaming experience here, but there may be other benefits that this new 480Hz WOLED monitor offers over the older 240Hz models, discussed elsewhere in this review. That includes things like text rendering, pixel structure, HDR performance, ELMB support and feature set. Some users may want to get this new screen for some of those benefits, regardless of whether they can reach the 480Hz refresh rate or not.

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

There is an extremely low lag on the PG27AQDP measured at 0.20 ms total display lag, and leaving us with only 0.09 ms of estimated signal processing lag. This is perfect for competitive gaming and basically zero. We measured the lag in a variety of aspect ratio modes and several didn’t change the lag at all. The 24.5″ simulation mode and the 1:1 pixel mapping modes seemed to add around 3ms of lag to the screen, but the other ‘aspect’ and ‘fill’ type modes didn’t add any.

With ELMB / BFI enabled and the screen running at 240Hz we measured around 4 – 5ms of lag, so it’s a little higher in that mode.

The lag is also a fair bit higher at 60Hz refresh rate, measured at 19.1ms total display lag but this is common on most screens. Remember that it is the lower number (0.20ms) that will be relevant for VRR gaming as well, even where frame rates drop. The 60Hz figure is only applicable for fixed 60Hz input sources.

Extreme Low Motion Blur (ELMB) / BFI

Like other recent OLED monitors in their range (including the 32″ PG32UCDM QD-OLED and PG32UCDP WOLED models) the PG27AQDP has an added BFI (Black Frame Insertion) mode for blur reduction. Asus call this ELMB (Extreme Low Motion Blur) and it’s the alternative to a strobing motion blur reduction backlight you might find on some LCD monitors. Rather than the backlight being strobed off and on rapidly (because there is no backlight on an OLED panel), a black frame is inserted periodically in to the image instead. Thanks to the near-instant response times of the OLED panel, it allows clear and sharp motion across the whole screen at once, without needing to worry about strobe cross talk, ghost images or any overshoot halos either. With the panel manufacturers not offering panel support natively for BFI at the moment Asus have introduced a scaler-based BFI function on several of their new OLED monitors, including this model.

ELMB activation and operation

We tested this on the PG27AQDP and confirmed that it is available via the OSD menu, but has some limitations like it did on their other screens. This feature is only available when using a fixed refresh rate of either 240Hz or 120Hz. The maximum of 240Hz is because the panel still operates at it’s native 480Hz behind the scenes, but a black frame is inserted for half of the frames, giving you 240Hz. There’s no support at the moment to use BFI at any other refresh rates like 60Hz or 144Hz for instance, but the flexibility to use it at 120Hz was a pleasant surprise. It also cannot be used at the same time as variable refresh rate, and can only be used in SDR mode, not in HDR.

Motion Blur Reduction Mode
Motion Blur Reduction mode / BFI
Refresh rates supported240Hz and 120Hz
60Hz operation
Blur reduction available with G-sync/FreeSync VRR
Available in SDR mode
Available in HDR mode
Viable with games consoles
Brightness capability (SDR, max refresh rate supported)
Brightness control available
Independent brightness between on/off modes
Motion blur OFF – Max brightness ~259 nits
(uniform brightness mode)
Motion blur ON – Max brightness221 nits (max)
15 nits (min)

ELMB Performance

horizontal scale = 5ms

We confirmed that at 240Hz the black frame in inserted in sync with the refresh rate, every 4.17ms as shown above with a 50:50 duty cycle.

horizontal scale = 5ms

At 120Hz the black frame in inserted in sync with the refresh rate, every 8.33ms as shown above with a 50:50 duty cycle.

With ELMB enabled, the brightness control was not available for some reason when we first received the screen (original MCM101 firmware) but we fed this back to Asus and it was updated in the newer MCM102 firmware which is great news. There were also a couple of operational bugs we’d spotted that they also fixed.

The screen can get brighter in BFI mode than the other models we’ve tested, reaching up to 221 nits here on the PG27AQDP, relative to 134 nits on the PG32UCDP and 96 on the PG32UCDM. Overall this means that the ELMB mode is decent in brightness and likely to be adequate for most users. It’s certainly better than the 32″ models in this area. At the moment the brightness setting is the same between on/off modes, whereas we’d like this to be remembered independently really. We’ve suggested this tweak to Asus too.

Pursuit camera photos comparing 120Hz and 240Hz normal operation, alongside ELMB / BFI at 120Hz

Above is the perceived motion clarity of the screen at 120Hz, 240Hz and 480Hz when running in normal mode, and then also at 120Hz and 240Hz with ELMB enabled. You can see that the motion clarity looks very similar at 120Hz ELMB as it does at 240Hz regular. Likewise 240Hz ELMB looks very similar to 480Hz regular. This is to be expected given the 50:50 duty cycle of the BFI function.

The other great thing about ELMB on an OLED screen is that this clarity is the same across the entire screen thanks to the super-fast response times of the OLED panel, you don’t need to worry about which area of the screen is the cleanest and clearest, like you do on an LCD screen with a strobing blur reduction backlight. There’s no ghosting or strobe cross-talk here, just nice, consistent blur-free performance.

Using ELMB mode – a shortcut to 480Hz-like motion clarity

ELMB can be potentially very useful on this screen, as it had on the 4K 240Hz models. If you can only realistically power this screen at 1440p up to around 240fps for instance, like if you have an older system, or are playing a demanding game, then using this feature at 240Hz could be really useful for boosting the motion clarity on the screen to 480Hz-like clarity! It’s a shortcut to getting the higher motion clarity performance of the 480Hz panel, without needing to power the full 480 fps frame rate.

Similarly if you can only power up to around 120 fps from your system, you could game at 120Hz and use ELMB in that mode to bump your motion clarity up to the equivalent of 240Hz. Also if you’re playing a game that doesn’t even support the higher refresh rates, then this is a good way to give yourself a motion clarity bump. It was the same thing with the 4K 240Hz models, which is even more demanding than 1440p 480Hz in fact. On those, if you can only realistically get up to around 120fps, you could stick to 120Hz operation and use ELMB to get 240Hz-like clarity.

On these new top-end gaming OLED displays ELMB / BFI could be a really useful stop-gap for improving motion clarity while your other system components and graphics cards catch up, and while you wait to be able to really power 480fps. This is actually a somewhat overlooked benefit of the 480Hz panel, as only by having that native refresh rate in the first place does it open the door to allowing 240Hz BFI. You couldn’t get 240Hz BFI on an older 240Hz OLED monitor. This feature at the moment is limited to a max of half the native refresh rate of the panel. So even if you can’t realistically power 480fps at the moment, you can get the same motion clarity by using ELMB even if you can only reach half that at 240Hz.

Keep in mind you do have to make some sacrifices in other areas like the loss of VRR, a slightly more limited brightness, potential flickering / eye strain, and it’s a bit fiddly to turn on and off. But for those who want a nice boost in motion performance and sharpness it’s a very useful option.

If your system is more powerful, you can get the same motion clarity if you stick with 480Hz and can reach up to 480fps, along with the improved latency and frame rates that running that high will offer. You can also then use VRR and other settings, and reach better brightness levels, so if you can power the screen at that level you will probably want to try and just use the screen at 480Hz instead where possible. Had this BFI mode also been available at 480Hz, it could have offered another step up in motion clarity, but 480Hz OLED is already extremely impressive.

Another use case might be if you are disabling DSC from the menu in an effort to use DSR / DLDSR features. You are restricted to 240Hz maximum in that situation anyway, and so you could consider using ELMB to give you a motion clarity boost from there. All in all we can see decent value in the ELMB feature here.

ELMB Console Support

One other use case where this could be potentially useful is for console gaming, with ELMB available when you’re running the console at 120Hz refresh rate. You would have to live without VRR and HDR, but it’s available to use for consoles which is good news. That gives you a motion clarity boost even where the console can only support 120Hz maximum.

You just need to ensure your console is set to 120Hz output, as it won’t be available if you’ve only selected 60Hz. It doesn’t matter if the game itself doesn’t run in 120Hz mode from our testing, you just have to set it to 120Hz in the main settings. That worked from an Xbox Series X at least. You may have to manually disable HDR10 in the console settings though as many console games support HDR, and if a game loads up in this mode it this will preclude you from using ELMB unfortunately. If you’re playing a particularly fast-paced or competitive game, you may want to consider disabling HDR and using ELMB at 120Hz to boost your motion clarity.

Console Gaming

The screen features offers a 4K resolution and support for high refresh rates including 4K @ 120Hz, making it very well suited to modern games consoles like the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5. Asus have included two full-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 ports, delivering 48 Gbps speed and therefore supporting the max bandwidth capabilities of the two consoles.

The support for 4K resolution (natively here) means you can make use of HDR from the Xbox where that mode is only available at 4K, which is of course one of the key capabilities of this screen. The OLED panel with its amazing contrast and blacks comes in to its own here for HDR gaming, providing an excellent image quality and HDR experience. More on HDR in a moment.

Console Gaming
Native panel resolution2560 x 1440 (1440p)
Maximum resolution and refresh rate supported4K @ 120Hz
Virtual 4K support
4K at 24Hz support
4K at 50Hz support
HDMI connection version2.1
HDMI connection bandwidth48 Gbps
HDMI-CEC auto switch
HDMI-VRR (over HDMI 2.1)
Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM)
HDR10 support
Dolby Vision HDR support
ELMB / BFI support
120Hz, SDR only
Integrated speakers
Headphone connection
Ultra high speed HDMI 2.1 cable provided

We confirmed via an Xbox Series X that 4K 120Hz works fine along with HDR10 support. There is support for 4K 50Hz and 24Hz content along with VRR which is very useful. Unlike on the 32″ PG32UCDM QD-OLED monitor there is no support for Dolby Vision HDR content on this screen which is a bit of a shame but you won’t find any 27″ OLED gaming monitors that have this so far.

Note that there are no integrated speakers on this model and so you’ll need to connect headphones or some kind of external soundbar/speaker system when using a console. That’s one potential gap for the PG27AQDP if you’re looking to play console games or connect other external devices.

HDR

Being an OLED panel, the PG27AQDP is well equipped to handle HDR content with its per-pixel level dimming allowing for true blacks, a basically infinite contrast ratio and the avoidance of all blooming and halos. In these regards it can easily surpass any Mini LED backlit LCD monitor. However, it cannot reach the same luminance levels as Mini LED screens, and carries a “peak brightness” spec of 1300 nits, which will then also lower as the content on your screen changes and the APL increases which is normal on this technology. This is one key area where Mini LED screens can look brighter and deliver a more impactful HDR experience.

Being a WOLED panel it does not suffer from the reduced perceived black depth and contrast that QD-OLED panels do, and so is definitely more suited to viewing in brighter room conditions than those competing models. The AG coating helps mitigate glare and reflections too.

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HDR Demo and Test Video

Test and demo the HDR on your display using our handy compilation, highlighting black depth, contrast and peak brightness capabilities.
[View here]

HDR modes

There are a number of HDR modes and settings available to choose from – Gaming (the default on this model), Cinema and Console HDR modes as well as a ‘DisplayHDR 400 True Black’ mode. By default each of these modes has locked settings for brightness, contrast and the entire ‘color’ menu in the OSD. However, if you want to make tweaks you can enable an option called ‘adjustable HDR’ which then gives you access to those sections. That’s useful to see available.

Note that we disabled all the OLED care features for this testing, which are independently remembered in HDR mode from SDR mode. Some of these could impact brightness a little.

HDR Testing Methodology Explained

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). The results presented can be interpreted as follows:

HDR accuracy section

  • 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.

  • 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. 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.

  • ST 2084 EOTF (PQ) tracking – this graph tracks the PQ curve in HDR mode, akin to gamma measurements in SDR. The yellow line represents the ideal PQ curve, while the grey line plots the monitors measured performance.

  • Luminance, black depth and contrast ratio (top right hand table) – measuring the brightness, black depth and resulting contrast ratio of the mode being tested. The luminance figure captured here is from a standard 10% APL window area measurement, although further luminance measurements are included in a separate section to capture “peak brightness” and the luminance at other APL areas. This section also measures the black depth on the screen and the resulting contrast ratio.

    For HDR, any local dimming is left enabled, and so we measure the black depth adjacent to a white test image and calculate the “local contrast ratio” from there. We also measure the black depth towards the edges of the screen, away from the white test area in order to calculate the “maximum full frame contrast ratio” across the whole panel. These figures will often be different on LCD screens with local dimming, as this dimming can be more effective for dark areas further away from light areas.

HDR colours section

  • Gamut coverage (2D) – we provide measurements of the screens colour gamut for HDR relative to the very wide Rec.2020 colour space. 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 2D colour gamut coverage triangle as compared with Rec.2020. The higher the coverage, the better.

  • dE colour accuracy – a wide range of Rec.2020 colours are tested and the colour accuracy dE measured. An average dE and maximum dE is provided along with an overall screen rating. These numbers are calculated based on the colour tone and hue, and ignore any luminance error. 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.

Like with most modern OLED monitors there are two fundamental HDR configurations to choose from on this screen. You can use the Gaming/Cinema/Console modes which support the full brightness of the panel, but may not be as accurate in the PQ EOTF tracking, or the mode designed for the VESA DisplayHDR 400 True Black certification (referred to here as TB400) which doesn’t reach nearly as bright, but may be a bit more accurate. We will provide mainly measurements for the Gaming and TB400 modes, while also commenting on any differences with the Cinema and Console modes where appropriate. We’ve also provided data for the Gaming mode where we’ve used the ‘HDR adjustable’ setting and increased the brightness up from the default 90% to 100% which helps boost brightness further.

PQ EOTF Tracking and Greyscale

Click between each tab to see results and analysis for each of the HDR modes

Gaming
True Black 400
Gaming (Brightness 100)

Colour temp and white point actually seemed to be a bit better in the Gaming mode than in TB400, being very close to our D65 (6500K) target and having only a small 2% deviance. This was a little cooler with a 4% deviance in the TB400 mode we found.

The Gaming mode shows good overall EOTF tracking (at the industry standard 10% APL window size measurement). It is a little darker than intended in some darker grey shades where the grey line from the monitor measurements dips slightly below the yellow target line, but nothing too serious. It’s a little brighter than intended for mid grey shades between 50 – 65 though, but again not by a massive amount. This is exaggerated a little more if you manually change the brightness up to 100%.

The EOTF tracking of the TB400 mode is more accurate overall including for those light grey shades. In both modes the first shadow detail greyscale shade visible was RGB 4. Note that this is using HDR test patterns/greyscale, not just observing an SDR test pattern within HDR mode – which looks fine and shows all RGB shades visible by the way.

Click for larger version

We also measured the EOTF tracking in the other modes and you can see some small differences here. Cinema looks very similar to Gaming except it starts to roll off a little earlier around greyscale 70 where the yellow line suddenly flattens. This can help preserve some tonal values in light grey shades, but may be a little darker in practice. The console mode is slightly brighter than intended for the darker grey shades now, and goes even more bright than intended for light grey shades as you can see above. The Gaming mode is probably the best balance we think for the brightest screen performance out of the three.

Colour Accuracy

Click between each tab to see results and analysis for each of the HDR modes

Gaming
True Black 400
Gaming (Brightness 100)

There was no real difference between the 3 modes here in terms of colour accuracy, all showing very good accuracy for HDR colours regardless of the brightness setting. The highest errors come in the pure 100% RGB colours in Rec.2020 which the panel cannot fully reach.

HDR Brightness

Peak White Luminance

Gaming
True Black 400
Gaming (Brightness 100)
Comparison

The common peak white luminance measurements are included here. As is usual for these OLED monitors the True Black 400 mode is capped at a fairly low brightness, reaching only 464 nits maximum in our measurements. The Gaming HDR mode showed some significant increases, now reaching 788 nits maximum by default with the brightness setting in the OSD at 90%. If we manually change the brightness setting to 100%, you can see that the panel now reaches close to its maximum advertised peak brightness, measured at 1208 nits. That’s a higher peak luminance than any other 27″ OLED monitor available at the moment, although a little under the spec of 1300 nits. The Cinema and Console modes performed the same, it didn’t seem possible to improved the luminance further without impacting the colour temperature/white point.

Remember that this is only measuring peak white luminance which is limited for HDR brightness evaluation, and we need to consider the HDR brightness in real-scenes, for greyscale performance and for colours to get a fuller picture. We can at least see that it’s the brightness setting in the OSD which influences how bright the screen can reach.

Luminance Accuracy

To consider the “luminance accuracy” further of the HDR modes we need to consider the EOTF and luminance performance at a range of different APL’s. Our recent investigation of OLED HDR brightness has revealed that we can’t just rely on a single 10% APL measurement any more. If you’re unfamiliar with the testing and data in this section, you can expand the section below for more information.

Luminance Accuracy – Testing and Data Explanation

Example EOTF and luminance graphs for HDR measurements

Let’s just explain the EOTF graphs a little further here before we consider the luminance accuracy of this screen further. In the left hand image above you have an EOTF graph tracking the PQ curve for HDR. Along the horizontal X-axis you have the greyscale from 0 (black), through different shades of grey which get progressively lighter, to 100 (white). The vertical Y-axis is the PQ value, but basically you can think of this a bit like luminance. As you move up the value the screen has a higher luminance. This graph is just a logarithmic conversion of what an actual luminance graph would look like, which is included on the right. You can see the same greyscale 0 > 100 along the bottom but the vertical Y-axis is now luminance measurements directly.

The problem with the luminance graph is that the line is very flat until about greyscale 20 when it then starts to rise on the curve, even though visually you can identify differences in the image for those darker grey shades. In fact small differences in dark shades are more discernible by the human eye than the same differences in lighter shades. The curved graph is harder to read and compare which is why it’s converted to the PQ EOTF graph typically instead. Both graphs are measuring the same thing, but they’re presenting the data in a different way. The EOTF graph on the left is easier to identify where there are errors in not only the lighter shades, but also in the darker shades.

One other thing to note it that you will see in both cases when the lines reach greyscale value 70 (light grey) the yellow target line flattens out completely which would mean that if this is followed exactly by the monitor, all those grey shades from 70 to 100 should actually have the same luminance, and would therefore look the same. Those lightest grey shades get clipped and lost and become white basically. This is how it’s defined in the HDR PQ standard but it is down to the display manufacturer to determine the “roll-off” point. Often you will see the luminance drop a little lower and more gradually level off rather than take such a sharp turn at greyscale 70. That can then help preserve lighter grey tonal values. This is especially useful in situations where the peak luminance of white is lower, like for instance on OLED screens where the APL is high.

Think of it this way – for small 1% APL you might have a full luminance range of 0 – 1000 nits to play with on an OLED monitor, and so clipping light grey shades above greyscale 70 isn’t a major problem as they will be very bright at that point (nearing 1000 nits) and it’s going to be very hard to tell them apart anyway. For a large 100% APL the screen might only be able to reach perhaps 250 nits peak white and now you have a much smaller 0 – 250 nits range to play with. The display manufacturer might choose to clip the grey shades later on by rolling off the luminance more gradually since it’s going to be easier to tell the differences between those lighter grey shades when white is reaching only a much lower 250 nits peak.

Example Data Tables and Graphs – NOT from the screen in this review

To consider the “luminance accuracy” further of the HDR modes we need to consider the EOTF and luminance performance at a range of different APL’s. Our investigation of OLED HDR brightness has revealed that we can’t just rely on a single 10% APL measurement any more.

As well as providing some EOTF graphs at a few different APL’s beyond just the typical 10% APL measurement, we’ve been working on a useful way to measure and represent what we call the “luminance accuracy” of the HDR modes. The tables above are a simple approach which tracks the luminance error. Each grey shade being measured is shown across the top of the table starting from 0 for black, and going through the grey shades until you reach 100 for white. Measurements are taken at a range of different APLs shown down the left hand side, from 1% up to 100% and the measured luminance of each grey shade is compared with the target it should be reaching.

The difference in luminance, whether that’s a positive number where it’s brighter than intended, or a negative number where it’s darker than intended is then captured in the table and colour coordinated. The blue areas are where the luminance is higher, and the pink areas are where it is lower. Ideally for a fully accurate greyscale performance all these squares would be white, which would reflect the ability to achieve the intended luminance for all the different grey shades, and at all the different APL areas. Having said that, as we said earlier it is quite common to have a gentler roll-off for luminance on the higher APL situations, as the absolute peak luminance that can be reached is much lower than at small APL levels, and rolling off a bit earlier helps preserve some light grey details. As a result, some pink-coloured error for larger APL’s in the mid to light grey shades is perfectly acceptable which is what is shown in this example. Some example EOTF graphs are also provided at 10%, 50% and 100% APL.

Example Graph – NOT from the screen in this review

Another good way to represent the luminance is on the above graphs. Here we have considered an average of the measurements across the mid to light grey shades between values 45 and 75, and you can see a visual representation of which shades that covers with the gradient bar under the table on the left. This basically excludes the much darker shades, and also those that are near white, and often where clipping then occurs on OLED screens since they can’t get anywhere near the 10,000 nits upper limited defined for the PQ EOTF. These grey shades from 45 – 75 are the interesting area in terms of where problems arise in real-world brightness, and which will make up a significant portion of any brighter real-world HDR content areas.

On the graph itself the dotted grey line shows the average target luminance that should be reached for those grey shades, while the pale blue line tracks the average measured luminance. Ideally these lines would match if there was no error in the luminance and it was completely accurate. You can see here that for the smallest APL’s the lines meet closely and the achieved luminance is as intended for the different grey shades. In this example, it reaffirms what is shown in the pink/blue tables earlier.

True Black 400
Gaming (Brightness 100)

Measuring the luminance accuracy reaffirms the observations we’d made earlier when looking only at the standard 10% APL measurements. The True Black 400 mode provides the most accurate EOTF tracking at all APL window sizes, with the grey measurement line very closely tracking the yellow target line. As the APL increases, the roll-off point shifts a little to help preserve tonal values, as overall the screen can’t reach as bright now. That’s normal and acceptable behaviour and it’s not too drastic here. The issue of course with this mode is that peak brightness is very limited.

The ‘Gaming HDR’ mode (with brightness 100) has a higher brightness than intended for mid to light grey shades in some situations, mostly for the smaller APL areas less than 25% area. It was a bit more accurate than we’d seen on the 32″ PG32UCDP recently though which was good news. The grey measurement line is higher than the yellow target line on the graphs, and in the data table you can see the luminance is quite a lot higher than intended in many places (blue cells). As the APL increases the lines converge more closely and so at the larger APL’s, the accuracy is better. The EOTF tracking is not far off that in the TB400 mode really for the larger APL areas.

This mode seems to be pretty well configured overall, as it’s only for the smaller APL of around 1 – 10% where the light grey shades are a lot brighter than intended. This can result in loss of some detail and tonal values in those shades, but since this is only really for low APL scenes, with small highlight areas especially for <10% APL images, it’s unlikely that you’d see major issues with this in real content anyway. Beyond that for overall brighter scenes (higher APL %) the accuracy of the brightness is much better.

Greyscale Luminance

True Black 400
Gaming (Brightness 100)
Mode comparison
Comparison with other screens

The easiest view here is to use the ‘mode comparison’ tab where you can see the average greyscale luminance of the 2modes compared. The Gaming HDR mode is brighter then True Black 400 overall in actual greyscale luminance for lower APL below about 25%, where the full capability of the panel is realised. For larger APL the greyscale luminance is slightly higher on the True Black 400 mode, although it’s very close within around 20 nits average so they should look visually close. This difference is not as drastic as you will see on most QD-OLED panels when comparing their Peak 100 mode and the TB400 mode, something that we explored in detail in our article here. On those screens there is more like a 50 – 60 nits average difference between the two modes, in favour of the TB400 mode. Here’s its a much smaller difference thankfully.

If we compare the greyscale luminance with a few other modern OLED monitors you can see that the Asus reaches a much higher luminance than a typical QD-OLED model, represented here by the MSI MPG 321URX (also very similar for the 27″ MPG 271QRX model). The Gigabyte AORUS FO32U2P is the brightest QD-OLED technology 32″ model we’ve tested so far, although this is at the cost of accuracy as the EOTF tracking is further away from the target, as covered in detail in the review of that screen.

The PG27AQDP is a little brighter than the LG 32GS95UE, although not as bright as the 32″ Asus PG32UCDP. Although we should keep in mind that the PG32UCDP was not as accurate for EOTF tracking, being a lot brighter than it should be for those smaller APL. It’s a complicated area to compare and measure.

Generally with all these OLED screens you seem to need to decide if you want to prioritise accuracy or brightness for HDR. The True Black 400 mode is the most accurate, but also doesn’t get very bright at all. The ‘Gaming HDR’ and the other two modes for Cinema and Console all get quite a lot brighter but the accuracy takes a bit of a hit to get there for smaller APL areas. You can take things a step further and push brightness even higher, up to the panels maximum capability, but you sacrifice a bit more accuracy to get there. We expect most average users will prefer to use the brighter modes for more impactful HDR experience, especially when using the screen in brighter room conditions.

Colour Brightness

We’ve already measured the peak white luminance of the screen above, and then delved in to the luminance of the greyscale which has a direct impact on mid tones and overall image brightness during real use. We have also included our additional tests below based on our new testing methodology explained in our detailed article here. These tests are designed to include measurements of colour brightness, based on measurements of RGBCMY colours. For colours, the greyscale measurements earlier will also be relevant to account for all those mid-tones and different shades of colours.

As a brief explanation about these measurements this section includes:

  1. A scale and score based on perceived ‘brightness’ of the display instead of a raw ‘luminance’ measurement. This uses the XCR model developed by Samsung Display and accounts for both the luminance of the colours but also the colourfulness which is impacted by the colour gamut. XCR and its importance is explained in a lot more detail in our article.
  2. The scores are now directly related to how you would perceive and feel the brightness of the display. Where a score is twice as high as another score, it means it should appear approximately twice as bright. You can’t treat luminance measurements in the same way as our article explains.
  3. We will include measurements and brightness scores for colours, not just for white. More important for real-world HDR experience and content.
  4. Evaluation of the performance and brightness of these colours as the APL changes, including for “peak brightness” capabilities at the smallest APL. This shows where colours remain bright as well as just white measurements, or where you can sometimes get washout issues, or colours which cannot reach as bright as you might expect.
  5. Comparisons between different displays and panel technologies where applicable
Asus ROG Swift PG27AQDP
MSI MPG 271QRX (QD-OLED example)
vs Asus PG32UCDP 32″
vs MSI MPG 271QRX
vs Dell AW2725DF

One limitation with WOLED panels for HDR is that the brightness of colours reaches a limit and the panel can only get brighter overall by using the additional white sub-pixel. This is particularly evident at smaller APL where the colour brightness reaches its limit but peak white luminance can reach much higher. This is very similar what we’d seen on the recent 32″ WOLED panels like the Asus PG32UCDP, although the 32″ model is around 2.2% brighter for smaller APL below 10% area, and the 27″ model is around 3 – 6% brighter for APL between 15 and 50%. They’re very close though as you’d expect from two WOLED panels from the same generation.

You can see by comparison that a QD-OLED panel (the 27″ 1440p, 360Hz, MSI MPG 271QRX being used here as an example) can maintain high colour brightness even at the smaller APLs. If you consider the direct comparison graph the MSI, which represents a typical modern QD-OLED panel, is actually slightly darker for colours around 25% APL by about 2.4%, but most notably it reaches up to 26.6% brighter for the smaller APL where the lines on the graph separate significantly.

We do need to keep in mind that these measurements are based on RGBCMY measurements and there is another level of complexity on top of this when we consider the earlier luminance accuracy, EOTF tracking and greyscale luminance. It’s a very complicated area to measure and interpret and we are working on further ways to represent this data in a clear way to compare and analyse modern HDR monitors.

For now, we can say that the WOLED panel’s white sub-pixel allows for higher white luminance than competing QD-OLED monitors but colours do not always look as bright or vivid due to the differences in colour luminance, and also differences in colour gamut available. The use of the “white boost” also causes some colour washout relative to QD-OLED panels in smaller APL scenes. Real-world scene brightness as a whole is however more impacted by the earlier measurements for greyscale luminance so overall the QD-OLED models end up looking darker in practice either way.

Asus Gamescom 2024 coverage and news

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Asus Gamescom 2024 news

All the latest Asus monitor news from Gamescom 2024 including the World’s first 480Hz OLED and G-sync Pulsar monitors. Your common questions answered and all the insider info we have.
[View here]

Conclusion

We think that the ROG Swift PG27AQDP is the best gaming OLED monitor you can buy right now! It won’t be right for everyone, but there’s no denying the performance capabilities of this new 480Hz panel. The super-high refresh rate offers amazing motion clarity and response times along with other benefits like reduction of the stroboscopic effect some people might be susceptible to, improved frame rate support, and reduced end to end system latency. If you’re a competitive gamer who demands the highest performance you can get, it really offers an excellent experience. Input lag was super low, DSC can be disabled if you want to use NVIDIA DSR/DLDSR at up to 240Hz, the anti-flicker modes can help reduce VRR flicker if needed, there’s a great range of aspect ratio control options, a wide range of gaming settings and features in the menu, and console support is also very good.

Best of all you don’t have to sacrifice image quality like you would with a top-end LCD gaming monitor – it’s not all about speed. You get amazing contrast ratio, black depth and local dimming to support both SDR and especially HDR games thanks to the OLED panel. Many top-end gaming LCD’s don’t even support HDR properly at all, lacking the hardware capabilities to actually improve the dynamic range and in some cases even the colour gamut. No overshoot or response time-related trailing artefacts. No annoying IPS glow or poor contrast from IPS panels. No extremely limited viewing angles and weak image quality from TN Film panels. If you want your games to look beautiful as well as being fast, the OLED panel can offer much more than an LCD could.

Not everyone is going to like the matte AG coating compared with the semi-glossy QD-OLED panels available, but the better reflection handling and the avoidance of QD-OLED’s raised blacks do make it more suitable for a wide range of lighting conditions.

Not everyone is going to want or need 480Hz though, with a saving to be made if you are perfectly happy with a 240Hz OLED monitor instead. That might be because your system just isn’t going to be able to power anywhere near to 480fps, you’re only a casual gamer, or your game titles are more focused on image quality and detail instead of speed. A lower cost OLED monitor could be perfectly fine for you, or maybe you might prefer some of the 32″ 4K OLED monitors available instead. Those 32″ models provide a very interesting alternative if you want a larger screen and higher resolution.

Having said that, this new panel does offer some other performance benefits over the wide range of 240Hz WOLED screens on the market that might tip the balance in favour of buying the PG27AQDP, even if right now you won’t be able to achieve 480Hz. Obviously it gives you more head-room to grow in to in the future if you need, but the 480Hz panel also opens the door to supporting BFI (or ELMB) at up to 240Hz. You can’t get that on any other OLED monitor at the moment and so this is the fastest BFI support on an OLED screen currently available. This offers you the motion clarity of 480Hz while only needing to actually power your game up to 240fps, so it’s a great short-cut to better motion clarity that’s only possible thanks to the higher native refresh rate. BFI mode can also thankfully get nice and bright on this model too, higher than we’ve seen on previous Asus OLED monitors. It’s a shame that BFI operation is a bit cumbersome to operate in the menu, and also that it can’t be used in HDR mode too. Ideally it would also be available at the same time as VRR, but that’s going to be very tricky to implement so we’ll cut Asus some slack on that one for now.

Away from gaming the updated pixel structure has helped improve text clarity a bit compared with older WOLED panels. HDR brightness is a bit higher as well now, and Asus have thrown a range of new OLED care features at the screen too. Those, along with the 3 year warranty which includes burn-in cover, should give you some peace of mind when considering this screen for multiple uses. Clearly it’s aimed primarily at gaming and dynamic content though. A few modern features are left off, presumably to help keep retail price down and probably to more firmly position this as a gamers screen. There’s no USB type-C connection, KVM support, PiP/PbP or integrated speakers on this model keep in mind. The accuracy of the screen was very good with a flexible and easy to use sRGB mode too, along with uniform brightness for desktop applications.

Where to Buy
___

The Asus ROG Swift PG27AQDP should be available from 4 September in North America at a RRP of $999 USD and you can check latest pricing and availability here, or using our direct affiliate links above. It looks like it will arrive a bit later in the UK at around £950 GBP, with current forecast availability from mid October.

You may also want to check out our supplementary video review here

ProsCons
480Hz refresh rate provides an amazing gaming experienceMissing some modern features like USB-C, KVM, speakers, PiP/PbP
New pixel structure improves text clarityBFI activation and operation is a bit cumbersome
240Hz BFI is the fastest BFI you can get on an OLED monitor todayHDR doesn’t quite reach the advertised 1300 nits peak brightness

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