The ninth generation of gaming is now upon us and the goal everyone is aiming for is to bring the coveted 4K resolution to all games. In the world of PC Gaming this has now become a reality for some time, but exclusive to a few both for the exorbitant cost of the hardware necessary to allow an experience worthy of the name, and for the cost of gaming monitors and therefore with refresh rate higher than the canonical 60 Hz. Nowadays allowing to play at 4K resolution turns out to be prohibitive for some, even if the average price of monitors is falling considerably, also bringing several and interesting news.
Today we will talk about ASUS ROG Strix XG27UQ, gaming monitor with 27 "diagonal, 144 Hz refresh rate, HDR, DSC with a price of about € 1.000, a third compared to the first 4K @ 144 Hz monitors.
Let's start by talking to you about the design that reflects in all respects the ROG coop of recent years that embody the typical gaming style, captivating and with RGB LEDs. The front is quite sober even if we find the panel with four well-pronounced frames, which make your nose turn up a bit since in other monitors the Taiwanese house tends to hide them as much as possible. On the back, Asus ROG Strix XG27UQ gives its best: we find a line that seems to want to cut the monitor in half from one diagonal to the other. The left side is very clean and has four buttons to call up the OSD, quick functions and a joystick to navigate the menus.
The right side is extremely worked going to recall the ROG DNA: we also find the iconic eye in a silver key, extremely beautiful to see. On the back we also find all the Input and Output inputs: 2 HDMI 2.0, 2 Display Port 1.4, a 4-pole audio jack to connect headphones and a USB 3.0 HUB consisting of two type A ports in and one type B out to connect to your PC.
The pedestal on which we are going to place the panel is very nice to see. The structure is all metal and covered in plastic in the same color as the monitor, or anthracite gray. The support base is formed by between legs in the center of which we also find a red LED that will project the ROG symbol on the top of our desk. The pedestal also offers us the possibility to rotate the panel 90 degrees, in order to keep it vertical, and to adjust its height, in order to offer us the best possible ergonomics.
As explained at the beginning of the review, Asus ROG Strix XG27UQ is one of the first monitors to adopt DSC technology. When the first monitors with 4K resolution, 144 Hz refresh rate and HDR came out, it was practically impossible to use all three of these features at the same time, especially if the Variable Refresh Rate was also used. This was because current image compression technologies generated such a large data stream that the bandwidth of Display Port 1.4 was saturated. All this involved having to give up one of the three features so as not to incur data loss, or to compromise such as lowering the refresh rate.
To overcome all these problems VESA has well thought of optimizing the connections in order to manage the data without having any loss of image quality and without resorting to the aid of two Display Port connections. Asus was the first company to introduce the technology Stream Compression Display within its monitors. The DSC thus allows us to have sharper images, with more intense colors and better brightness without losing quality in blacks. This compression technology is also Lossless and without any kind of data loss.
The panel of Asus ROG Strix XG27UQ is of type IPS (In Plane Switching) and is able to offer bright colors and high contrasts. The maximum brightness offered by the panel is about 350 cd / m400 and is able to reach peaks of XNUMX cd / mXNUMX thus falling within the VESA standards for certification. HDR 400, all with a static contrast of 1000: 1. The panel, despite being 8-bit, is able to cover a good color range, about 90% of the DCI-P3 range.
The monitor also has anti-glare treatment so that it can also be used under a light source. Thanks to the IPS technology, the monitor is able to have extremely wide viewing angles, approximately 178 degrees, so we can perfectly see the images from any position, even if it is usually used from the front and not from under the desk.
As we know and as already reiterated, Asus ROG Strix XG27UQ has a resolution UHD, Then 3840 × 2160 pixels, topped with a 144 Hz refresh rate and a response time of approximately 1 ms. Given the technical characteristics, the monitor of the Taiwanese house has all the credentials and is able to offer an extremely fluid gaming experience, thanks also to the support of technology G-sync di Nvidia which will adapt the refresh rate to the number of FPS generated by your video card. This is extremely useful because, due to the high resolution, even an RTX 2080Ti will struggle to reach a high number of frames and will avoid us looming in annoying tearing and stuttering.
The OSD menu is really well done and, in addition to choosing a large number of profiles designed for each type of scenario, it will allow us to manually change the 3 primary colors, change the color temperature in order to have colder or warmer tones. and select the input input. Asus also offers the possibility to have an FPS counter and to follow the change in the refresh rate, this obviously is only possible if we have G-Sync active. The OSD menu also offers several crosshairs that will position themselves perfectly in the center of our image in order to offer us greater precision in shooter titles.
How does this monitor perform in game? We tested it with an enthusiast end PC equipped with AMD Ryzen 9 3950, nvidia RTX 2080 Ti and 32 GB of 60 Mhz ADTA Spectrix D3600G Ram, the best that the market can offer. Asus ROG Strix XG27UQ has proven to be able to best indulge our desire for fluidity during games, all without losing visual quality. This is due, in addition to the goodness of the panel, to the DSC technology implemented, able to make us enjoy at the same time the high resolution, the high refresh rate, the HDR, without losing any information due to the high amount of band required.
If we have to find a defect in this monitor it is certainly attributable to theHDR: it will in fact be able to offer a maximum peak brightness of 400 nit, too little to fully enjoy content with high dynamic range, because they are designed to work best on panels with 1000 nit brightness. However, this will not affect the visual rendering which remains excellent and of a high level. At the production level it has proved equally valid, thanks also to the high resolution that will allow us to have an extremely large working area. For those who have display problems, we recommend setting the window and font size to 125% and not to 100%.
Asus ROG Strix XG27UQ proved to be an excellent monitor capable of satisfying all of our videogame needs. To be able to make the most of it, you need high-level hardware, unless you want to give up some graphic detail. With an Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti, which is the top on the market, we had no particular problems setting each title to its maximum settings and maintaining an average frame rate above 60 FPS. The color range is really high-level and manages to offer a truly exceptional visual rendering, despite having an HDR 400. The price, although for some it is quite high, makes it extremely competitive compared to similar models of the competition.
If you are looking for a 4K HDR monitor so you can enjoy your favorite titles to the fullest, the Asus ROG Strix XG27UQ could be for you.
