ASUS ROG Strix XG249CM is a gaming monitor with a relatively small diagonal and a high refresh rate of 270 Hz. Unlike the budget ASUS TUF Gaming VG247Q1A, which we reviewed a few months ago, this monitor belongs to the “top”, so to speak, line of the company — Republic of Gaming, so its specifications are appropriate.

 

Features

Diagonal 23.8”
Curve none
Aspect ratio 16:9
Panel Type IPS
Resolution 1920×1080
Refresh frequency 270 Hz
Color coverage 105% sRGB
Colors 16.7 million
Brightness 350 cd/m²
Contrast 1000:1
HDR support HDR10
Wall mount VESA 100×100
Regulations height, tilt, rotate left-right, portrait mode
Connectors 1x DisplayPort 1.2, 1x HDMI 2.0, 1x USB-C (with support for Power Delivery 15 W), USB Hub : 2x USB 3.2 Gen 1, headphone output
Additional functionality KVM
Dimensions (including stand), HxWxD 540 x (388~488) x 238 mm
Weight 8.8 kg
Approximate price in Ukraine 20.4 thousand UAH

 

Design

A little unexpectedly, but ASUS ROG Strix XG249CM does not have such a traditional element of gaming products as RGB lighting. It turns out that it is also possible! In general, the design of the monitor can be called restrained, without any “bright” elements that immediately catch the eye. The body uses a combination of matte and glossy plastic, on the back you can find the embossed ROG logo and a pattern in the form of lines, which now serves as the designation of the monitor control buttons.

Around the screen there is a thin “invisible” frame that hides under the protective glass – along with the thin line of the side face of the image, the image is surrounded by a frame 6 mm wide on the sides and top and ~22 mm on the bottom. The stand has a traditional form for the series – metal “paws” in the form of a stylized “screw”. It has all the necessary degrees of freedom — screen height adjustment (100 mm stroke), left-right rotation (+25° ~ -25°), forward-backward tilt (+20° ~ -5°) and switching to portrait mode.

All video connectors are located in a small niche under the stand mount: DisplayPort 1.2, HDMI 2.0 and USB-C – the latter can also transmit a video signal, and the connector also supports charging the connected device (15 W). You can also find a USB hub with USB 3.2 Gen 1 and a mini jack for headphones.

ASUS ROG Strix XG249CM: a monitor for cyber athletes

 

Menu

ASUS ROG Strix XG249CM is controlled using three hardware buttons and a 5-position joystick located in the lower right corner on the back panel. Two buttons can be assigned user functions in the system menu (by default, this is a call to the GamePlus game menu and the GameVisual video mode menu), pressing the joystick brings up a quick menu – with access to the main menu and “hot keys”. It is interesting that its deviation without calling the menu is not used in any way, unlike other monitors.

ASUS ROG Strix XG249CM: a monitor for cyber athletes

The first item in the main menu is the game section — here you can adjust the degree of overdrive, activate AMD FreeSync Premium, choose the video mode in the GameVisual menu and access the game parameters in GamePlus (for example, enable the display of the frame rate and even the graph of its change over time).

The Image menu contains traditional image settings — brightness, contrast, backlight blue filter, dynamic contrast, etc. In the next menu, Color, you can change the color temperature, gamma, and color saturation. The Input Select menu allows you to manually switch to another video input, in MyFavorite you can change the functions of “hot keys”, and in System Setup there are system settings – the language and behavior of the on-screen menu, the volume level of the headphones (the monitor does not have its own speakers), etc.

 

Functionality

This monitor uses an 8-bit 23.8-inch IPS panel with Full HD resolution. The dot density is slightly more than 92 PPI, the dot size is ~0.275 mm. These are quite typical indicators, from a normal distance to the screen it is difficult to see individual pixels, but a sharp eye will notice a slight lack of “smoothness” in fonts or curved lines.

The maximum refresh rate is 270 Hz (when connecting via DisplayPort; for connecting via HDMI, the maximum is 240 Hz). In addition, ASUS ROG Strix XG249CM supports AMD FreeSync Premium adaptive frequency technology and is compatible with NVIDIA G-Sync.

The brightness in this monitor is regulated by changing the current strength, PWM is not used over the entire brightness range, so there is no flickering of the screen in normal mode.

ASUS ROG Strix XG249CM: a monitor for cyber athletes

As in some other gaming models, the ASUS ROG Strix XG249CM has the ability to increase clarity in dynamic scenes by turning off the backlight “through the frame” (the ELMB item in the game settings, has five levels of intensity). This significantly reduces the maximum brightness and causes flickering of the screen, but completely eliminates image blurring in dynamics and trails behind fast-moving objects. ELMB is not compatible with adaptive frequency technologies and can only be used at fixed refresh rates – but this monitor also has another proprietary ASUS technology – ELMB SYNC, which can be activated simultaneously with AMD FreeSync or NVIDIA G-Sync.

ASUS ROG Strix XG249CM has some unusual features for a gaming monitor. For example, it has a USB-C video input with Power function Delivery (15 W), so it is convenient to use it together with a laptop or charge a mobile device from it. An even more unusual feature is the presence of a KVM switch, which you expect to see sooner in an office monitor. In the system tab of the on-screen menu, in the USB Setup item, you can choose which USB port the keyboard/mouse is connected to (USB-C, if a laptop is used, or USB-B — for desktop peripherals), connect two computers to the video inputs — and control them both with a single kit.

 

Image quality of ASUS ROG Strix XG249CM

The screen coating is a traditional matte, it retains its properties regardless of the angle of view, in contrast to the “semi-matte”, which becomes almost glossy if you look at it from the side. The so-called crystal effect is present, but moderate – it is best seen in a macro screenshot.

ASUS ROG Strix XG249CM: a monitor for cyber athletes

The manufacturer indicates the response time of the panel at the level of 1 ms (GtG). That’s a pretty good figure for an IPS panel—ASUS even claims that this panel is “FastIPS,” and its liquid crystal elements switch four times faster than traditional IPS panels.

In the settings, there is an option to overclock the panel through the OSD — the Variable OD item in the game menu. This option has five intensity levels and the option to turn it off completely. Note that even without overdrive, the clarity of the dynamic image is very high – the blurring of fast-moving objects is almost imperceptible. The first three levels of overclocking the panel improve the situation a little more, while on the fourth overdrive artifacts already appear in the form of “trails” behind objects; at maximum acceleration, they are so strong that they interfere with the perception of what is happening on the screen. Therefore, we would recommend using the third overclocking level – on it, the dynamic image remains clear and without artifacts.

Overdrive Off/Level 1/Level 3/Level 5:

Black uniformity is very good, in a dark room with maximum screen brightness, you can see lighter areas in the lower left corner and a slightly less noticeable one in the upper right.

ASUS ROG Strix XG249CM: a monitor for cyber athletes

The glow effect is quite strong: if you look at the screen from the side and from above, a light brownish glow appears against the black background, and it is noticeably stronger on the left side than on the right.

Regarding the viewing angles, they are typical for IPS panels and very decent: brightness, contrast and saturation decrease very moderately, there is almost no change in color temperature.

By default, the Racing video mode is set – it has the most versatile settings and is well suited for use as the main one. Color coverage in ASUS ROG Strix XG249CM is standard, fully covering the sRGB space, 78% Adobe RGB and 79% DCI-P3. In different GameVisual video modes, the coverage remains almost the same, only in the sRGB mode, which passes the factory calibration, it slightly decreases (94% sRGB, 71% Adobe RGB, 71% DCI-P3).

ASUS ROG Strix XG249CM: a monitor for cyber athletes

The lowest brightness is 38 cd/m², which is very good for a desktop monitor; with such brightness, you can work or play quite comfortably even in complete darkness. The maximum brightness is slightly higher than the declared one – 370 cd/m², but the maximum contrast is noticeably lower, only 700:1 (against the declared 1000:1).

Color temperature can have three values ​​— Cool (10600K), Normal (8400K) and Warm (7200K). Also in the settings there is a user mode with manual adjustments for the three main colors – by default, the temperature value in it is the same as in Warm. Note that in all variants the image has a “cold” look, and you can reach the recommended value of 6500K only with the help of calibration (or try to manually set an acceptable value with the RGB sliders).

The ASUS ROG Strix XG249CM has a gamma setting that can take three values ​​— 1.8, 2.2, and 2.5. In all three cases, the actual gamma value is exactly as stated, and for Windows use the middle option, 2.2, is the best option, with balanced saturation and well-developed details in both shadows and highlights.

The uniformity of the color temperature is average — the maximum deviation in different areas of the screen is almost 6%; however, as a gaming monitor, this is not critical at all. White uniformity the field of view is also not the best: the brightest zone is the center of the screen, the darkest are the lower corners; the difference between them is 12-14%.

Other GameVisual video modes (Scenery, Cinema, RTS/RPG, MOBA) differ in basic settings of brightness, contrast, color saturation, gamma, etc. The sRGB mode, which undergoes factory calibration (which, again, is not often done with gaming monitors), stands a little “aside” here. It blocks all manual image adjustments, the brightness is 100 cd/m², the color temperature is 7500K, and the accuracy of color reproduction is very high – the average value of ΔE is significantly less than one.