ASUS TUF Gaming VG30VQL1A monitor review

ASUS TUF Gaming VG30VQL1A is a monitor with a slightly unusual diagonal of 29.5″. It looks like an “intermediate option” between compact gaming models with screens of traditional proportions and large ultrawide monitors, the screens of which are already approaching television dimensions.

Specifications of ASUS TUF Gaming VG30VQL1A

Design

The monitor has a typical design of the TUF Gaming line – we have already seen the same one, for example, in ASUS VG247Q1A. This line is considered more affordable compared to the “top” Republic of Gamers, and this is reflected in the appearance: ASUS TUF Gaming VG30VQL1A has a more restrained design than many other gaming devices, without bright design elements and even without illuminated parts of the case. Practical black matte plastic, a minimal pattern on the back of the case with almost no glossy parts – if it weren’t for the curved screen and the TUF Gaming logo, the VG30VQL1A could be mistaken for a universal multimedia model or even a monitor for work.

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 body, a frame 8 mm wide on the sides and top and 22 mm wide surrounds the bottom. The screen is curved, radius of curvature is 1500R (1.5 m). The stand is fully functional and allows you to turn the screen left-right (+25°..-25°), tilt forward-backward (+20°..-5°), adjust the height (0..13 cm) and even turn it into portrait mode (although in this case, given the diagonal, proportions and curvature of the surface, it looks a little strange).

All video connectors are located in a small niche under the stand mount: this is one DisplayPort 1.2 and two HDMI 2.0; also here you can find a USB hub for 2 USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports and a minijack for wired headphones.

For cable management, there is a removable panel at the bottom of the stand that presses connected cables to the leg.

Menu

ASUS TUF Gaming VG30VQL1A is controlled using four hardware buttons and a 5-position joystick located in the lower right corner on the back panel. Two buttons can be assigned custom functions in the system menu (by default, this is a call to the GamePlus game menu and the GameVisual video mode menu). Tilting the joystick does nothing, pressing it brings up a quick menu with access to the main and “hot keys”.

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, color saturation, and skin tone. The Input Select menu allows you to manually switch to another video input, in PIP/PBP you can activate the “frame-in-frame” or “frame-by-frame” mode and select image sources.

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 built-in speakers, eco mode, illumination of the power indicator, information about the monitor and the current operating mode, reset to factory settings, etc. By the way, this seems to be the first ASUS monitor in which we finally saw the Ukrainian localization of the OSD – although it is currently hidden under the name “English”, but we hope that this will be fixed in the next firmware updates.

Functionality

The ASUS TUF Gaming VG30VQL1A uses an 8-bit 29.5-inch VA panel with an aspect ratio of 21:9 and a resolution of 2560×1080 pixels. The pixel density is 94 PPI, the point size is 0.27 mm; in this it is very similar to Full HD monitors with a diagonal of 24″ and “normal” screen proportions. From a typical 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 200Hz (via DisplayPort; if using an HDMI connection, the maximum available frequency is 180Hz). In addition, the ASUS TUF Gaming VG30VQL1A supports AMD FreeSync Premium adaptive frequency technology (no NVIDIA G-Sync compatibility).

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 screen flickering in normal mode.

As in some other game models, there is an opportunity to increase the clarity in dynamic scenes by turning off the backlight “through the frame” (the ELMB item in the game settings, has five levels of clarity). 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. In addition to flickering, it should also be taken into account that ELMB is not compatible with FreeSync Premium, dynamic contrast and eco mode so the user will have to choose which function is more important to them.

You can control the monitor not only in the OSD but also through the utility ASUS DisplayWidget Lite — it allows you to quickly choose video modes, change the main image settings and activate gaming functions.

Image quality of ASUS TUF Gaming VG30VQL1A

The screen coating is “semi-matte”, which has almost imperceptible parasitic reflections on a dark background if you look at it from a typical position of a PC user. When tilted to the side, the screen gradually becomes more “glossy”, but it does not interfere with work. The so-called crystal effect is present but very moderate – it is best seen in a macro screenshot.

The manufacturer states the response time of the panel at the level of 1 ms (MPRT), but this is only achieved if ELMB mode is used. VA panels have always been more inertial than IPS, and the real response time of the ASUS TUF Gaming VG30VQL1A without increasing clarity by turning off the “interframe” backlight turns out to be greater – at the level of 10 ms (with the use of maximum overdrive and a refresh rate of 200 Hz).

By the way, the overclocking settings of the panel (Variable OD in the game menu) have five levels of intensity and the possibility of complete shutdown. It should be noted that almost all overdrive modes have a very small effect on reducing the blurring of fast-moving objects – the difference is felt only at the maximum overclocking value, and there are still no overdrive artifacts on it, so it is quite usable for games.

Overdrive Off/Medium/Maximum (200Hz):

The uniformity of black is mediocre – but we did not expect anything else from a curved screen of such a diagonal and proportions with a relatively thin case.

The glow effect for a VA panel is expectedly moderate: if you look at the screen from the side and top, a faint blue glow appears against a black background.

Regarding the viewing angles, they are also typical for VA technology: when looking from the side, the screen noticeably “warms up” and loses saturation, but in general, the decrease in brightness at a large viewing angle is quite moderate for this type of screen.

The color coverage in all GameVisual video modes is almost the same: it significantly exceeds the “standard” sRGB space and is 95% DCI-P3 (87% Adobe RGB). This applies even to the sRGB mode, which, it would seem, should be limited to the dimensions of this space.

By default, the GameVisual menu is set to Racing video mode. We will start with it. The lowest brightness is 47 cd/m², which is a good indicator for a desktop monitor; at such brightness, you can work or play quite comfortably even in a very dark room. The maximum brightness is significantly higher than that declared by the manufacturer — 370 cd/m² (against 300 cd/m² “according to the passport”). But the static contrast is exactly as promised, 3000:1. This is a good result, although quite standard for a VA panel, and significantly higher than the typical contrast ratio of IPS monitors, where it usually does not exceed 1500:1.

Color temperature can have three values ​​— Cool (13,000K), Normal (9000K) and Warm (7300K). There is also a custom mode in the settings with manual adjustments for the three main colors — by default, the temperature value is a little lower, 7100K. 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 TUF Gaming VG30VQL1A has no additional gamma settings, and its standard value is significantly overestimated — up to 2.6..2.7 in most modes (including Racing). This makes the image rich, with deep blacks, but results in a loss of detail in dark areas. You can correct the situation with the Shadow Boost game function — it is designed to highlight shadows and has three levels of intensity. At the first level, the gamma remains almost the same as without using Shadow Boost, but the second level reduces its value to 2.3, while the third level reduces it to the standard 2.2 altogether. So we would recommend using this feature on an ongoing basis.

The uniformity of the color temperature is very good for a gaming monitor with a large diagonal: the maximum deviation in different areas of the screen ΔE is slightly less than 4. The uniformity of the white field is also surprisingly very good: the brightest area is the center of the screen, and the darkest is the lower corners; the difference between them is only 7%.

Other GameVisual video modes (Scenery, Cinema, RTS/RPG, MOBA) differ in basic settings of brightness, contrast, color saturation, gamma, color temperature, etc. The sRGB mode is not officially calibrated at the factory, but it offers the highest color reproduction accuracy compared to the other modes: the average ΔE value is slightly less than 1.5, which is a very good indicator. However, in sRGB, almost all manual settings are blocked, including even the brightness (which is quite high in it – 240 cd/m²). Therefore, if you want to be able to manually adjust this or that parameter, and the accuracy of color reproduction is not critically important, you should choose the Racing mode, in which this indicator is not much worse (average value ΔE=2.1).

Color accuracy, Racing, and sRGB modes: