MSI MPG 321URX QD-OLED review: 4K gaming monitor with OLED screen and 240Hz frequency

OLED panels are a near-perfect solution for gaming thanks to their minimal response time, so it’s no surprise that they’re slowly starting to appear in flagship gaming monitors. Recently, we have already reviewed the 34-inch ultra-wide MSI MEG 342C QD-OLED with a curved screen, and today we are reviewing another model from the same manufacturer – the 32-inch MPG 321URX QD-OLED with more traditional screen parameters.

MSI MPG 321URX QD-OLED specifications

Design

Unlike its predecessor, the MSI MPG 321URX QD-OLED has more conventional desktop monitor parameters: it’s also a large-screen model, but with a more traditional 16:9 aspect ratio and a flat screen.

However, it’s hard to call this look “traditional”: as with OLED TVs, this monitor has a very thin screen body – less than 5 mm. Of course, you can’t hide electronics in such a case, and there’s no separate module, as is the case with TVs, so there’s still a significant thickening of the case – but the manufacturer seems to have deliberately made it in the form of a kind of additional unit to which the screen itself is “attached.”

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 ~8 mm on the sides and 6 mm on top.

The stand is relatively compact for a 32-inch monitor and allows you to adjust the screen tilt (-5°~15°) and height (0~110 mm) and swivel it left and right (-30°~30°).

The bottom of the leg has a hole for cable management.

All video connectors are located in a small niche under the stand mount: one DisplayPort 1.4a, two HDMI 2.1, and one USB-C (DP Alt Mode). You can also find a mini-jack for connecting a headset and a USB hub – according to official specifications, it has 2 USB 2.0.

It’s a very strange decision for a top-of-the-line monitor in 2024 (by the way, the same MEG 342C QD-OLED we mentioned at the beginning of the article had 4 USB 3.2). One might think that this is just a mistake in the table, but the “flash drive” connected to it showed the typical USB 2.0 write speed of 28 MB/s.

Menu

MSI MPG 321URX QD-OLED is controlled by a 5-way joystick, which can be found in the center on the back of the case, opposite the logo below the screen. There are two large buttons on either side of it – to turn on and launch the proprietary Gaming Intelligence utility.

The first item in the menu is G.I. (Gaming Intelligence) with KVM settings and gaming functions – crosshairs and “optical sight” (zooming in on the center of the screen).

After it is another gaming section, this time Gaming. Here you can find the menu of gaming video modes, activation of adaptive frequency, illumination of dark areas of the image (Night Vision), etc.

The Professional section contains “professional” video modes, activation of the mode with a reduced proportion of blue in the backlight, and the “image enhancement” function. The Image section contains traditional image settings: brightness, contrast, color temperature, clarity, and a choice of two HDR modes.

Input Source allows you to manually switch between video inputs and activate automatic detection of connected signal sources, PIP/PBP contains parameters for frame-to-frame operation, and Navi Key allows you to reassign “quick” functions to joystick deflection.

System parameters (OSD settings, LED behavior, HDMI CEC activation, etc.) are collected in the Settings menu, and in the last item, MSI OLED Care, you can find the settings for protecting the OLED panel from premature burnout.

Features

The MSI MPG 321URX QD-OLED uses a 31.5-inch 10-bit QD-OLED panel manufactured by Samsung. The aspect ratio is 16:9, the resolution is 3840×2160 dots (4K). The density of dots is almost 140 PPI, the physical size of a dot is 0.1816 mm.

The maximum refresh rate is 240 Hz, and there is support for adaptive frequency technology (although there are no Nvidia G-Sync and AMD FreeSync Premium certifications). The response time, according to the manufacturer, is 0.03 ms (GtG). HDR support is available – the monitor has a VESA DisplayHDR True Black 400 certificate. The monitor also has a “console mode” that supports refresh rate adjustment (VRR).

The MSI MPG 321URX QD-OLED has RGB backlighting, but it is very moderate: only a small logo with a pattern around it at the top of the case glows. You can customize its behavior (or turn it off completely) in the system settings of the OSD menu.

To control the monitor, you can also use the proprietary Gaming Intelligence utility, which duplicates the OSD functions and offers some additional features, such as reassigning the G macro button next to the joystick.

This monitor can receive video signals not only via DisplayPort and HDMI, but also via USB-C. Additionally, there is KVM support, so you can connect two systems to the MSI MPG 321URX QD-OLED – for example, a desktop and a laptop – and conveniently work with them using a single set of keyboard and mouse thanks to the presence of a USB hub. The laptop can be charged at the same time – USB-C supports Power Delivery (90W).

MSI MPG 321URX QD-OLED image quality

The screen is glossy, which makes black look “blacker” than on matte displays. As with the MEG 342C, it also has an anti-reflective coating, but this model seems to have a slightly weaker one. Whereas the previous monitor had almost no reflections visible when the screen was turned off, the MPG 321URX still has some reflections that can be seen – mainly bright or very light objects in a brightly lit room.

According to the manufacturer, this model uses a new generation QD-OLED panel with an updated subpixel arrangement (to be more precise, this is the third generation of Samsung’s QD-OLED). This can be seen in the macro photo – compared to MSI MEG 342C QD-OLED, which had a previous generation panel, the subpixels are really arranged differently and are noticeably denser.

As a result, the image on the screen looks dense, with clear letters and no hint of “jaggedness” in the diagonal lines. You can see individual pixels only if you look at the screen surface very closely.

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

The response time is 0.03 ms – traditionally, OLED panels have a significant advantage in this parameter even over fast gaming IPS panels, which have a response time of 1-2 ms at best. This makes MSI MPG 321URX QD-OLED a great option for fast-paced online shooters that require instant response to what’s happening in the game.

At the maximum refresh rate, the clarity of dynamic scenes is almost perfect, and blurring of objects moving quickly across the screen is impossible to see. At 60 Hz, it becomes a little noticeable, but who will play games at this frequency when the monitor supports 4K@240 Hz?

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 a turned-on screen with a black background can be confused with a turned-off monitor.

The first photo was taken with a shutter speed of 1/10 of a second, and the second – 4 seconds:

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

Traditionally for OLED, the maximum brightness in HDR dynamically changes according to how bright the current scene is. Just like MEG 342C, there are also two modes for working with HDR content – in True Black 400, the maximum brightness is limited to 400-450 cd/m², while in Peak 1000, it can reach a peak value of 1000 cd/m² (provided that the screen is almost black with a white window of 2% of the entire image area).

In the second case, the automatic brightness control works more aggressively, and you can see it when working in Windows – so it’s better to leave this mode for movie sessions or games, and use True Black 400 in all other cases.

Traditionally for MSI monitors, the on-screen menu has two video mode menus – Gaming and Professional. The first one contains modes customized for different game genres, a mode for custom settings, and Premium Color, in which the screen displays the most vivid and spectacular image.

In the second, you can find modes for emulating the main color spaces and various templates for office use. The last selected mode is active regardless of which of the two menus it is located in.

Let’s start with Premium Color mode, which is supposed to demonstrate all the advantages of QD-OLED. In this mode, we see the maximum color coverage of the panel – it significantly exceeds the sRGB space and covers 95% of Adobe RGB (98% of DCI-P3).

The brightness in SDR mode varies in the range of 31-253 cd/m², which is quite enough for gaming in almost complete darkness and for working in typical office lighting.

The static contrast value (9040:1) obtained during the tests, of course, does not correspond to reality: in the absence of backlighting, the black field has no brightness, and some result is obtained here only due to the colorimeter measurement error when measuring the maximum black color.

The MSI MPG 321URX QD-OLED does not have manual gamma adjustments, but the value set by the manufacturer is almost perfectly consistent with 2.2.

The color temperature in Normal mode is also completely the same as the standard value of 6500K (a very rare case, usually the “normal” temperature in other monitors is overestimated, and close to 6500K is “warm”). You can make the image warmer or cooler if you wish by switching to Warm (5570K) or Cool (9400K).

In the absence of a separate backlight, the uniformity of the color temperature and white field across the entire screen area is also perfect: fluctuations in these parameters are minimal.

The image in Premium Color mode has bright, saturated colors and looks even more impressive than on “regular” monitors with Quantum Dot. However, this has a negative impact on color accuracy: the average ΔE value is almost 4, and the maximum is almost 7.

Therefore, it is better to use the next mode in the same game menu – User. It produces the same color gamut, so the color saturation remains at the same level, but the image looks “calmer” and the monitor demonstrates the color accuracy declared by the manufacturer: the average ΔE value is slightly more than one, the maximum is 2.39. It is believed that the average user is not able to notice the difference between the reference color and the one displayed by the monitor at ΔE <3.

Modes that emulate different color spaces effectively reduce the coverage to the size of the corresponding spaces: 100% sRGB (77% Adobe RGB, 81% DCI-P3) in sRGB mode, 95% Adobe RGB (92% DCI-P3) in Adobe RGB, etc. Their color accuracy is also on par, with an average ΔE value of around one.

Color gamut, Premium Color – User – Display P3 – Adobe RGB – sRGB modes:

The rest of the modes, both in the game and professional sections, are just different templates that differ in the initial settings of the main image parameters (brightness, gamma, color saturation, color temperature, etc.).

Game modes, from left to right: Premium Color – User – FPS – Racing – RTS – RPG:

Professional modes, from left to right: Eco – User – Anti-Blue – Movie – Office – sRGB – Adobe RGB – Display P3: