ASUS ROG Swift Pro PG248QP review – an esports monitor with a frequency of 540 Hz

In recent years, IPS technology has become increasingly “faster” and has gradually replaced the traditional TN gaming panels of the past. Refresh rates of 144+ Hz and response times below 5 ms are enough for most gamers. But not for eSports, where super-fast TN is still out of the running. For example, such as ASUS ROG Swift Pro PG248QP with a refresh rate of 540 Hz and a response time of 0.2 ms.

Specifications

Design

The appearance of the ASUS ROG Swift Pro PG248QP immediately strikes the eye with the typical features of the ROG gaming series: a recognizable pattern on the back of the display with an illuminated logo, a massive “leg” and a “bezel-less” design, thanks to which, when turned off, it seems as if the screen is “supported” only by a thin dark gray strip at the bottom.

After switching on, a fairly wide (~8 mm) frame around the image is visible, hiding under the protective glass.

The stand is fully functional, allowing you to change the height of the screen (0…110 mm), rotate it left-right (+30°…-30°), tilt it back and forth (+20°…-5°) and even switch it to portrait mode – not the most necessary function for a gaming monitor.

The connected cables are routed through a dual cable management system, so it looks very tidy overall.

On the top of the stand you can find a standard tripod socket, so you can attach a camera for streaming or any other object, such as an additional display, to this monitor via an adapter.

However, the most interesting feature of the stand is, of course, its “transformer” base. If desired, the “legs” can be either pushed apart or folded together, depending on the current situation on the desktop.

The first option will be convenient if you use a miniature TKL gaming keyboard that fits between the “paws”, and the second option will be convenient if there are other objects on either side of the monitor.

All connectors are located in a small niche under the stand mount and are covered with a decorative cover. Here you can find one DisplayPort 1.4, two HDMI 2.0, a USB hub for two USB 3.2 Gen 1 and a mini-jack for a wired headset.

On the top edge is a light sensor that can adjust the brightness of the monitor to match the ambient light.

The power supply in ASUS ROG Swift Pro PG248QP is external.

Menu

The monitor is controlled by a 5-way controller and three hardware buttons located in the lower right corner behind the screen.

The first item in the menu is the G-SYNC Processor section, where you can analyze the overall input latency of the system using the G-SYNC hardware module (which also requires a compatible mouse with Reflex Latency Analyzer) and activate NVIDIA ULMB 2 technology.

The next item is Gaming, where you can find overclocking up to 540 Hz, overdrive settings, GamePlus game menu (fps counter, timer, crosshairs, etc.), Game Visual video modes and Dark Boost shadow lighting.

The Image section contains the basic image settings – brightness and contrast, and some other options (color space selection, reducing the proportion of blue in the backlight). In the next section, Color, you can find the rest of the picture settings – color temperature, gamma selection and, a bit unexpectedly, an additional gamma selection between sRGB and BT.1886 for SDR content – separately for HDMI and DP connections.

Input Select allows you to manually switch between video sources and activate their automatic detection, Shortcut allows you to assign your own functions to two hardware buttons, Lighting Effect controls the RGB backlighting of the ROG logo, and System Setup contains system settings such as selecting the interface language, activating automatic brightness control, setting up the audio system, and more.

Features

ASUS ROG Swift Pro PG248QP uses an E-TN panel (Esports TN) manufactured by AU Optronics, which, according to the manufacturer, is 50% faster than traditional TN panels. The screen diagonal is 24.1 inches and the resolution is 1920×1080 pixels. The pixel density is ~91.5 PPI, and the dot size is 0.2779 mm. The pixels are quite large and can be seen from a typical distance from the screen.

There are several things worth noting about the refresh rate. First, 540 Hz is the frequency after overclocking using the corresponding item in the OSD menu (without it, its maximum value is 500 Hz). Secondly, it also requires the latest version of Windows 11 – on Windows 10, the maximum frequency will be 500 Hz due to the limitations of the operating system itself.

ASUS ROG Swift Pro PG248QP has hardware support for NVIDIA G-Sync, as it has the appropriate NVIDIA module installed. Because of this, by the way, the monitor has active cooling, and in complete silence you can hear the fan working up close.

This leads to another nuance regarding the frequency – full support for adaptive frequency at 540 Hz is available only on NVIDIA graphics cards. AMD graphics cards can also achieve a maximum frequency of 540 Hz, but VRR (variable refresh rate) support will not work on them – you will have to lower the frequency to 500 Hz.

As mentioned above, ASUS ROG Swift Pro PG248QP supports NVIDIA ULMB 2 (Ultra Low Motion Blur 2) technology. This is the second generation of the technology to reduce blurring of fast-moving objects by turning off the screen backlight (backlight strobing) – ULMB 2 differs from its predecessor, among other things, by operating at a wider range of refresh rates.

At low frequencies, this usually leads to a strong flickering of the screen, up to a stroboscopic effect. But at frequencies close to the maximum for this monitor, the flicker becomes almost imperceptible – in this case, only users with sensitive eyes who also notice flickering of OLED displays in smartphones will be able to feel it.

It is also worth noting that ULMB 2 does not work simultaneously with active G-Sync and can only be used at fixed frequencies – 360, 480, 500 and 540 Hz (yes, ULMB 2 is not available at frequencies below 360 Hz).

The monitor is equipped with a light sensor that allows it to automatically adjust the screen brightness (System Setup – Auto SDR Brightness).

A little more unconventional functionality for monitors – ASUS ROG Swift Pro PG248QP has a built-in ESS audio codec that can improve the sound on a headset connected to the monitor. The Audio Enhance Mode item in the system settings amplifies the sounds of enemy footsteps, equalizes the volume of shots, creates a surround sound effect, and allows you to customize the user’s equalizer.

In addition, the audio codec allows you to process high-quality audio from USB-connected devices that support Hi-Res audio (up to 32 bit/384 kHz).

ASUS ROG Swift Pro PG248QP image quality

The screen is matte, and there are almost no parasitic reflections on a dark background, even when viewed from a very high angle (in this case, semi-matte screens turn into almost glossy ones). Because of this, the monitor has a so-called “crystal effect” – a slight graininess of the image on a monochromatic background. This is clearly visible in a macro view of the pixels.

In the game menu, you can activate the panel overdrive – the OD item offers Normal, Esports, Extreme options and the ability to completely disable it. ASUS ROG Swift Pro PG248QP demonstrates a very clear image even at 240 Hz (the maximum frequency for HDMI 2.0 connection). With overdrive completely turned off, fast-moving objects on the screen appear a little blurry, but even at “normal” overclocking they become noticeably clearer. At the same time, even at “extreme” overdrive, there are practically no overclocking artifacts in the form of dark plumes.

After switching to DisplayPort and 540 Hz, the blur becomes even slightly smaller, but overclocking artifacts at the maximum level become more noticeable. Completely deactivated overdrive at this frequency no longer seems very acceptable – it is better to switch to Normal or Esports, the difference between which is minimal.

The effect of 540 Hz is clearly visible even when working in Windows – dragging windows or scrolling through web pages feels smoother even compared to a regular 144 Hz gaming monitor, and fonts and small interface elements remain clear and legible.

In games, the minimum reaction time (0.2 ms) and refresh rate of 500+ Hz create an incredible impression – after that, dynamic shooters on “ordinary” gaming IPS monitors with frequencies of 100+ Hz seem inertial and blurry. Moreover, in games, ULMB 2 does not cause any inconvenience even for users with sensitive eyes who notice it when working in Windows.

By the way, another drawback of the previous generation of ULMB – a noticeable decrease in maximum brightness – is also not so significant in the second generation: with ULMB 2 enabled, this parameter is 300 cd/m², which is more than enough for comfortable gaming.

The black uniformity is very good: the black background in a dark room looks almost black across the entire screen plane, without light spots; at the same time, it is much darker than the “black” of IPS screens: the illustrative photo was taken with a shutter speed of 10 seconds, while the IPS monitor achieves a similar level of glow in the same conditions at shutter speeds of 1-2 seconds.

The glow effect is very moderate: even if you look at the screen from a very large angle, the glow of the black background is weak and does not interfere in any way.

But the viewing angles of ASUS ROG Swift Pro PG248QP are typical of TNs. If you look at the screen from the side, it loses a lot of contrast and color, the image becomes pale. Vertically, the deviations from the reference image are even stronger: if the image simply becomes brighter and lighter when viewed from above, then from below the color distortion completely changes the “picture”. Well, relatively small viewing angles are traditionally the biggest drawback of this technology, and there were no surprises here.

A little unexpected for a gaming model, but ASUS ROG Swift Pro PG248QP is factory calibrated – the corresponding report can be found in the box with the monitor. However, it indicates the calibration of the Default mode, while there is no such mode in the GameVisual menu. During the tests, we decided to consider Racing as such a mode – it is set as the initial mode after resetting the monitor settings to factory settings.

In this mode, the color accuracy is really the highest – the maximum ΔE value is slightly more than three, the average is below 2 (the only much larger deviation is due to the peculiarities of the test colorimeter). Among the other GameVisual modes, sRGB and RTS/RPG turned out to be the best after Racing in this indicator, and G-SYNC Esports was the worst (however, the latter produces the brightest and most effective image, so it can be used in games).

Color accuracy, Scenery – Racing – Cinema – RTS/RPG – G-SYNC Esports – sRGB modes:

The monitor has an extended color gamut, but the default setting is sRGB emulation mode, which results in an image with moderate color saturation. You can switch to full coverage in the Image – Display Color Space menu. In this case, the color gamut of ASUS ROG Swift Pro PG248QP completely covers the sRGB space and is 85% Adobe RGB and 93% DCI-P3. In sRGB emulation mode, the coverage is reduced to 99% sRGB, 75% Adobe RGB and 75% DCI-P3.

Color gamut, Wide Gamut and sRGB modes:

In the settings, you can choose a gamut from five options – its real value in all cases is 0.1 higher than the specified value, which is quite acceptable for a gaming TN monitor.

The minimum brightness is 43 cd/m², and the maximum is 425 cd/m². This range will be quite enough for comfortable gaming in any lighting conditions. It should also be noted that in ASUS ROG Swift Pro PG248QP the brightness is adjusted by changing the current, PWM is not used over the entire brightness range, so there is no screen flicker (provided that ULMB 2 is inactive). The maximum static contrast ratio is 1210:1, which is significantly higher than the official specifications (1000:1).

The user can also choose the color temperature, and the corresponding menu section is pleasantly surprising – such a number of options is more typical of professional models than gaming ones. As you can see, in all variants, except for the very first one, the real temperature is slightly higher than the declared one – for example, at 6500K its value is 7000K. You can adjust the temperature to your liking in the User Mode option, where you can adjust the three main colors.

You can also use another section of the menu, the Blue Light Filter. It offers four different degrees: for the temperature set to 6500K in the previous menu, you can get results from 4700K to 6000K. Note that the strongest filter also significantly reduces brightness (up to 115 cd/m²) and contrast (820:1).

The uniformity of the color temperature in different areas of the screen is mediocre: the maximum deviation ΔE for it exceeds 6 (the most accurate match is in the lower left corner, the least accurate is in the lower right corner).

But the white field uniformity of this monitor is one of the best we’ve seen: the biggest difference in brightness between the center and the right side of the screen is only 6%.

It’s also worth noting that with a wide color gamut, the color accuracy is slightly lower than in sRGB emulation mode, but not at all.

Other GameVisual modes differ in initial brightness, contrast, sharpness, gamma and color temperature settings – you can visually compare them in the following gallery.

Scenery — Racing — Cinema — RTS/RPG — G-SYNC Esports — sRGB: