ASUS ROG Strix OLED XG27AQDMG review: gaming OLED monitor with a refresh rate of 240 Hz

OLED is a near-perfect technology for gaming monitors. Such a screen has a bright image with rich colors, very high contrast with perfect blacks, high refresh rates and minimal input lag. All of this is true for ASUS XG27AQDMG, the new 26.5-inch model in the renowned ROG Strix gaming lineup.

ASUS ROG Strix OLED XG27AQDMG specifications

Design

ASUS XG27AQDMG has a fairly typical design for the ROG Strix line: dark gray matte plastic, a massive “leg” and the presence of both embossed patterns on the back panel and bright RGB backlighting. In general, it immediately becomes clear that we are looking at a gaming model, but as compared to other representatives of this class of devices, its design is still quite restrained and not “flashy”.

But in general, the usual design has one very unusual feature: like other OLED monitors, ASUS XG27AQDMG has a very thin screen body – less than 5 mm. Of course, you can’t hide the electronics in it, so it’s located in a thickening in the center, which is deliberately made in the form of a separate block, as if fixed to the panel – clearly to emphasize its small thickness.

The screen is made in the traditional “bezel-less” design, when it is framed only by a thin line of the side edge of the case. However, in this case, even in the off state, if you look closely, you can see a black frame around the screen, which is hidden under the protective glass; its width is approximately 5 mm on the sides and top.

Unlike the stand in the form of huge “paws” that we are used to seeing in gaming monitors, here it is compact. There is a recess under the screen for a smartphone, which can be convenient if it supports the horizontal Always-On Display mode.

The leg has all the necessary degrees of freedom – screen height adjustment (120 mm travel), left-right rotation (+45° ~ -45°), forward-backward tilt (+20° ~ -5°), and portrait mode in both directions. At the top of the camera, you can see a tripod socket, which is very handy for streamers.

If desired, the monitor can be mounted on another stand or wall: it has a VESA-compatible mount, and a special adapter is included to replace the leg.

All the connectors are located in a niche under the stand mount and are oriented downward: DisplayPort 1.4 and two HDMI 2.0. You can also find a wired headphone jack and a USB hub with 2 USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports.

The power supply in the ASUS XG27AQDMG is external.

Menu

The ASUS XG27AQDMG is controlled by a 5-way controller located on the back in the center, behind the ROG logo, and two buttons on either side of it: power and exit.

They are practically imperceptible to the touch and can be found using the icons on the screen when the OSD is open, located directly opposite them.

The first item is the game section: here you can select the video mode in the Game Visual section, activate the variable refresh rate, access game settings in GamePlus (for example, enable the display of the frame rate and even a graph of its change over time), highlight shadows and get a QR code to download the DisplayWidget Center utility.

The Image menu contains traditional image settings, such as brightness, contrast, backlight blue filter, Uniform Brightness, and more.

In the next menu, Color, you can change the color temperature, gamut, color saturation, and select one of three color space options: sRGB, DCI-P3, or full panel color gamut.

The Input Select menu allows you to manually switch to a different video input, MyFavorite allows you to change the functions of “hot keys”, and System Setup contains system settings – the language and behavior of the OSD menu, the volume level of the headphones (the monitor does not have its own speakers), and so on. It is also worth noting the presence of the Ukrainian localization of the OSD menu, which is still not very common, unfortunately.

Functionality

ASUS ROG Strix OLED XG27AQDMG uses a 10-bit WOLED panel. It has a diagonal of 26.5 inches, a resolution of 2560×1440 pixels, and a maximum screen refresh rate of 240 Hz. The dot density is almost 111 PPI, and the dot size is 0.2292 mm.

As we’ve noted many times before, this combination of characteristics is perhaps the most versatile for gaming monitors: the physical dimensions of the screen are already large enough to create an immersive gaming experience, and the resolution doesn’t yet place too many demands on the power of the gaming system. At the same time, the dot size on such a diagonal is also relatively small, and the image from a typical distance to the monitor appears dense and does not break up into individual pixels.

The maximum refresh rate is 240 Hz (via DisplayPort; when connected via HDMI, the maximum is 144 Hz). In addition, ASUS ROG Strix OLED XG27AQDMG supports AMD FreeSync Premium adaptive frequency technology and is compatible with NVIDIA G-Sync.

Traditionally for OLED technology, users with sensitive eyes may notice screen flicker at minimum brightness (although it is weak here, thanks to the high refresh rate). If this creates discomfort, you can get rid of it using the OLED anti-flicker option in the Image menu: it has two levels of flicker reduction, and even at the weakest level, it stops being felt. This option operates at a frequency of 240 Hz for QHD and Full HD resolutions, and its activation blocks Aspect Control from changing the proportions and size of the image.

In addition to the OSD menu, you can also control the monitor using the DisplayWidget Center utility. It requires an additional USB connection – which users will most likely do anyway if they need a USB monitor hub – and offers a more convenient way to configure all the basic settings.

ASUS ROG Strix OLED XG27AQDMG image quality

The screen is glossy, which makes black look “blacker” than on matte displays when you play with the lights on. Apparently, this model does not have an anti-reflective coating (or it is rather weak), so parasitic reflections on a dark (and even more so on a completely black) screen are noticeable here.

Under typical room lighting conditions, this is almost not a problem: only very light or bright objects can be seen against a black background, but the brighter the lighting, the better the screen will show the environment. That’s why ASUS XG27AQDMG is better to play in low light or in the twilight.

According to the manufacturer, this monitor uses an “exclusive third-generation ROG OLED panel”. This is a WOLED panel produced by LG Display – with an additional white subpixel and using MLA+ technology (Micro Lens Array+, a layer of microscopic lenses that is superimposed on top of OLED pixels). This allows for 20% wider viewing angles and higher brightness – the manufacturer says that this parameter in an all-white window in SDR mode is 20% higher than the previous generation panel.

The presence of an additional white subpixel is very clearly visible in the macro image: only it glows on the white field, and it is clearly much larger than the “usual” RGB subpixels.

During operation, you can sometimes notice some asymmetry of the black bezels around the image – for example, the left one may be wider than the right one. It seems that this is a manifestation of the OLED protection functions in action: under strong direct light, you can see that part of the frame is actually the screen, and the static image is slightly shifted to the side – most likely to prevent premature burnout of the OLED.

The reaction time is 0.03 ms – traditionally, OLED panels have a significant advantage in this parameter even over fast gaming IPS panels, which have a reaction time of 1-2 ms at best. This makes ASUS ROG Strix OLED XG27AQDMG a great option for fast online shooters that require an instant response to what’s happening in the game.

An indirect proof of this, by the way, is the absence of the overdrive function standard for gaming IPS or VA monitors: with such a response time, there is simply no need to overclock the panel. At the maximum refresh rate, the clarity of dynamic scenes is almost perfect, and blurring of fast-moving objects on the screen is impossible to see.

Also, thanks to the OLED panel, this monitor displays a completely black color: the absence of additional screen glow is well felt in complete darkness, where it is simply impossible to see a screen with a black background in the room. In addition, OLED completely lacks the black background glow when viewed from a high angle – which is fully present in both IPS and VA panels.

Viewing angles are maximized, and in this regard, the OLED monitor is also significantly superior to the highest quality IPS models: even when viewed from the side, the brightness and color saturation remain at the same level.

Traditionally with OLEDs, the maximum brightness changes dynamically depending on how bright the current scene is. As a result, when working in Windows, you may experience an unpleasant effect when an all-white screen (for example, when using a light system theme and a text editor or Windows Explorer open in full screen) is noticeably dimmer than when a small light window is open against a dark desktop wallpaper.

Thus, in SDR mode, with a white rectangle on a black background of 10% of the total image, the maximum brightness is about 470 cd/m². If you increase it to 50%, it drops to 350 cd/m², and with a completely white screen, it drops to 300 cd/m².

You can get rid of this effect by using the Uniform Brightness feature in the Image menu, which reduces the maximum brightness to 300 cd/m² regardless of the amount of white on the screen. This greatly improves the Windows experience, but for movie and gaming sessions, it’s best to disable it because it significantly reduces peak brightness, which is important in such uses.

As for the HDR mode, the screen demonstrates a very high peak brightness with a minimum amount of white on the screen: more than 1,100 cd/m² at 2% white. However, with an increase in the size of the white window, it quickly decreases: just under 800 cd/m² by 10%, 330 cd/m² by 50%.

Like the ASUS ROG Strix XG27ACS, the ASUS XG27AQDMG also has the ability to select one of three color spaces regardless of the current GameVisual video mode: the corresponding setting is called Display Color Space, which can be found in the Color item. It can take on three values: sRGB, DCI-P3, and Wide Gamut, in which case the panel will have maximum color coverage.

After the first power on or factory reset, the GameVisual – Racing video mode and Wide Gamut color space are automatically set. Let’s start with this.

The color gamut is well beyond the sRGB space and is 92% Adobe RGB (95% DCI-P3).

The gamma value is significantly underestimated in all variants offered by the manufacturer: the closest to the standard value of 2.2 is the maximum gamma in the monitor settings, “2.6”, where its real value is 2.1.

The color temperature is slightly overestimated in all settings; at the standard value of 6500K, the real temperature is 6900K, which is not at all critical for a gaming monitor.

The color temperature uniformity across the entire screen area is rather mediocre: the maximum deviation ΔE almost reaches 5 (the best match is in the center, the worst is in the upper left corner).

But the uniformity of the white field in the absence of additional backlighting is expected to be very good: the maximum difference in brightness between different parts of the screen does not exceed 4%.

But the color accuracy is not very good here: the maximum value of ΔE exceeds 7, and the average is about 5.5. It is believed that an average user can see the difference between the reference color and the one displayed by the monitor if this parameter exceeds 3-4.

Yes, unfortunately, unlike other monitors from this manufacturer, where we saw high color accuracy in several video modes, including purely gaming ones, in this case we have to state that if this moment is critical for the user, it is limited to a single mode – sRGB CAL, which, as the name implies, is factory calibrated for the sRGB color space.

It has a really high color reproduction accuracy: the maximum value of ΔE = 2 (except for one color, which is out of the picture due to the peculiarities of the test colorimeter), the average value is about 1.5.

But at the same time, almost all image settings are blocked, except for brightness adjustment. So, the color gamut is set, quite logically, to sRGB (full coverage of this space, 78% of Adobe RGB and DCI-P3), the gamut value, somewhat unexpectedly, turns out to be quite high – up to 2.4, and the color temperature is 7000K.

The uniformity of the color temperature and white field across the entire screen area is also noticeably improved: in the first case, the maximum deviation is only ΔE=2.8, and in the second case, the maximum difference in brightness is only 3%.

Other GameVisual video modes differ in basic settings for brightness, contrast, color saturation, gamma, etc. The MOBA mode, in which only green remains of the entire color gamut, and the Night Vision mode, which simulates the image in a night vision device, stand out a bit.

You can visually compare the GameVisual modes in the following gallery.

Scenery – Racing – Cinema – RTS/RPG – FPS – sRGB Cal – MOBA – Night Vision – User: