Gigabyte Aorus FI32Q Review, Most Pointless Monitor of 2021

[Music] welcome back to hardware unboxed today we're checking out the gigabyte auris fi32q the company's flagship 32-inch 1440p ips gaming monitor now you might have seen about a month ago we checked out the gigabyte m32q which is their more value focused variant of this display the fi 32q is meant to instead be the best of the best best specs best features and of course the highest price in terms of basic stuff the fy32q doesn't differ too much from the m32q 32-inch 2560 by 1440 ips panel with a maximum 170hz refresh rate and adaptive sync support it has rated 94 coverage of dc ip3 so it's a wide gamut monitor display hdr 400 certification not that it matters much and it also carries across the kvm functionality so at first glance it really doesn't seem that different to the m32q except for in the price the msrp for the fi 32q is three hundred dollars higher and a whopping eight hundred dollars us versus five hundred dollars for the m32q and that gap is actually widened with current promotional pricing what extra stuff do you get for that price well the design is different and we'll get to that in detail shortly but outside of that there are two obvious things on the spec sheet one is the upgrade from displayport 1.2 to displayport port 1.4 for some reason gigabyte loves to make a big deal about the displayport versions they are using on their monitors but the reality is both the m32q and fi 32q support 1440p8 bit at up to 170hz which is sufficient on a non-hdr monitor with a native 8-bit panel yeah the fy32q can also technically do 10-bit as well at the highest refresh rate but this is not a significant addition on this sort of monitor in my opinion alongside the displayport connector both monitors include two hdmi 2.0 ports and usb type-c the other is the addition of active noise cancellation technology which gigabyte has made a headline feature of their aorus monitors since they first launched this is a pretty neat inclusion and complements the kvm switch the gigabyte are also offering here so the fi 32q has one of the best feature sets available in a gaming monitor today you can throw in osd features as well like crosshairs black boosting modes all the usual stuff we see from high-end monitors of course these feature editions alone don't really justify such a large price increase so we also expect the fi 32q to include higher tier performance for things like response times and color quality which we will assess shortly as for the design well the fi32q sticks to using the traditional aorus aesthetic the build quality is quite premium in my opinion with nice metal legs tight seams decent use of plastic however it's a much more aggressively gamer-focused design than the m32q with the inclusion of rgb led lighting on the back and more angles and patterns of course offering competition to asus rog monitors seems to be the goal here and while i'm sure some people like this sort of aesthetic i'm not as much of a fan and i certainly don't feel the need to spend more money to get rgb lighting on the back of my monitor on the positive side though the fi 32q stand has a great range of adjustability the result of tilt height pivot and swivel support with a good range of motion allowing you to position this monitor how you want even in a portrait orientation which is not something the m32q supports again the build quality is really good and the stand is certainly one area that gets upgraded with the shift up to aorus branding the on-screen display we talked about earlier is accessible through a directional toggle below the aorus logo on the front of the unit however you should also hook up the display to a pc via usb to gain access to all of the features time for everyone's favorite section response time testing the fi 32q includes several overdrive modes the first of which is the off mode showing native performance with overdrive disabled as expected there is no overshoot present however the panel is only capable of an 8.37 millisecond average response which isn't sufficient for gaming at a true 170hz refresh rate when we move up one overdrive mode to picture quality performance does improve to some degree overshoot is still a non-issue but performance is now slightly faster with a 7.07 millisecond average response time this is decent but response compliance is still not great for 170hz gaming so we'll take a look at the balanced mode instead this mode is the best so far for gaming at the highest refresh rate response performance has improved greatly to the point where we now have an average response time below 5 milliseconds and while overshoot has increased as well it's not to a particularly significant degree overall cumulative deviation is lower in the bounce mode than in the picture quality mode at 170 hertz indicating that it's this mode that delivers better image quality and i'd say that holds true when viewing things like the ufo test as well the fastest mode on offer is the speed mode but this mode isn't very usable with high levels of overshoot response times do increase but cumulative deviation also increases making this mode worse than lower modes and not something that i would recommend using switching back to the balance mode time to take a look at response performance across the refresh range while response times do keep consistent as we move to lower refresh rates overshoot increases and it's around 120 hertz where inverse ghosting artifacts become more noticeable at 60hz cumulative deviation has increased substantially and with this level of overshoot the bounce mode is no longer as ideal for gaming as it is at 170 hertz in contrast the picture quality mode is a little too slow for the highest refresh rates but becomes a great option for lower refresh rate gaming as it maintains around that 6.5 millisecond response time average but has no overshoot artifacts the crossover point where picture quality is superior to balance according to the cumulative deviation results is below 120 hertz unfortunately this does lead to the fi-32q having two ideal overdrive modes depending on the refresh rate you plan on gaming at picture quality isn't fast enough for the best experience at 170hz while balance has too much overshoot at lower refresh rates you'll need to choose between these modes depending on the range of refreshes you plan on using most and in general i'd probably settle on the picture quality mode if i wanted to set and forget a single overdrive setting but you know it's not ideal i also think it's disappointing that in a 700 monitor gigabyte did not implement variable overdrive to solve this problem there is an overdrive mode labeled as smart od but the mode isn't very smart at all in my opinion as for example at 100hz the mode selects far too high of an overdrive setting in line with the speed mode which presents a lot of inverse ghosting really at this price tag we should be getting a single overdrive mode experience in comparison to other gaming monitors i was disappointed to discover that at the maximum refresh rate the fi 32q performs no better than the gigabyte m32q which is a much cheaper monitor both of these displays essentially offer identical performance with the same overdrive modes it's a very similar story when looking at average performance across the refresh range the f532q gets pretty close to the m32q in terms of the response times it provides it is slightly faster on average but not to a significant degree both displays feature the same issue of not having a single overdrive mode experience and ultimately the fi 32q is slower than the asus rog swift pg329q which is available at a similar price the reason why the m32q and fi32q offer essentially the same performance is that both use the exact same inner lux m315 kca e7b panel and when both are subject to the same overdrive settings deliver basically the same results i don't necessarily have any problems with this as there are only so many panels to choose from but really if gigabyte were going to reuse the same panel from their cheaper model they should be implementing variable overdrive to improve performance nothing too different from what we've just been talking about in our cumulative deviation results all of the current 32 inch 1440p ips monitors end up relatively the same in terms of general motion performance the fi 32 doesn't perform badly by any means as performance is around the mark of other similar ips monitors it's just the performance is not significantly better than the m32q at a fixed 120hz refresh rate again both the f532q and m32q deliver the same performance this is also true at 60hz the f532q is slightly faster here but it's not to a significant degree then we get to input lag and yep you guessed it the fi 32q offers the same experience as the m32q in both processing delay and overall input latency as the fi 32q includes rgb led lighting and more osd features it does consume 19 more power than the m32q when calibrated to the same 200 nits of brightness that's a non-negligible increase in power consumption though whether this actually matters to you is another question the fi 32q does support backlight strobing through gigabytes aim stabilizer sync which supports strobing and variable refresh rates at the same time we first saw this feature implemented in the m32q so it's another feature that doesn't differ in any way between gigabytes budget and premium monitors and i was able to confirm that the strobing experience is virtually identical between both monitors in terms of performance and image quality that's not a bad thing though because gigabyte provides one of the better backlight strobing plus vrr implementations that i've seen with fewer artifacts and less blur than elm bsync from asus the usable range is also decent at 80 to 170 hertz although notably missing 60 hertz support however it's not without its flaws there is still some strobe crosstalk at pretty much all refresh rates leading to a faint double image and a small amount of blur motion clarity is improved compared to having the mode disabled but it's not a perfect implementation and there is no way to tweak the strobe length or timing we also see red fringing similar to backlight strobing our monitors with lg nano ips panels indicating that the backlight being used here to achieve a wide gamut features a slow red phosphor all up this is an okay to good implementation of backlight strobing and it's worth trying out to see if it's suitable for the games you are playing especially given it works in conjunction with variable refresh rates the fi 32q is a wide gamut monitor and pleasingly despite using the same interlux panel as the m32q dci p3 coverage was better with the higher end variant i recorded 89 p3 coverage which is nothing amazing and not as good as the best ips panels of today but still sufficient for a somewhat wider than srgb experience notably rec 2020 coverage is a lot lower than the pg329q making the fi 32q a less versatile monitor for content creators out of the box grayscale calibration was decent my unit did have a slight blue green tint from the factory but adherence to the srgb gamma curve was decent and delta e results ended up better than average however no srgb gamut clamp is enabled by default so oversaturation will be present and that leads to mediocre though not terrible delta e results in color benchmarks greyscale factory calibration as i said is better than average though only somewhat better than the m32q and not perfectly accurate for a wide gamut unclamped monitor color checker factory calibration is pretty good but still well behind monitors that default to srgb modes the fi 32q does include an srgb mode which is the best way to improve accuracy using the osd unfortunately white balance is locked so you can't make any adjustments to greyscale performance meaning this level of mediocre performance is retained in the srgb mode there is no reason for monitor manufacturers to lock these settings in the srgb mode and they shouldn't do so for the best performance however the srgb mode does work to clamp the gamma down appropriately reducing delta e averages and leading to lower oversaturation when viewing standard content then for a full calibration i was able to achieve great results for srgb fixing any remaining white balance issues and leading to strong delta e results in saturation and color checker however due to only moderate p3 coverage i probably wouldn't recommend this monitor for color critical p3 work as overall coverage of that gamut isn't as good as competing products maximum brightness was around 380 nits with the fy32q which combined with its standard anti-glare coating will be sufficient for most viewing environments this result was slightly higher than with the m32q but not substantially so minimum brightness is mediocre though failing to hit below 50 nits which is what we usually like to see as expected the fi 32q has a pretty typical contrast ratio for an ips monitor of around 1 000 to 1 which is a bit lower than the m32q but within normal variants with the same sort of panel type while contrast overall is still well behind va panels and therefore poor overall the good news is that the fi 32q has better contrast than both of the other similar monitors in this chart the lg 32gp850 and asus pg329q which sit below one thousand to one so you can expect somewhat better black levels with this interlux panel based gigabyte monitor then for viewing angles good as always from an ips monitor i don't expect viewers will have too many issues there whatsoever as for uniformity pretty good as well i describe this as an above average result with some fall off in the top left and right corners but in general the panel produces a uniform image which is a good sign in product reviewing there is an age-old saying that there are no bad products just bad prices and i think that applies perfectly to the gigabyte aurus fi 32q in a vacuum where no other gaming monitors exist this is a pretty great display it offers fast response times decent color quality and a great set of features that includes backlight strobing plus variable refresh rate support active noise cancellation and a kvm switch it's certainly a monitor that you won't be disappointed to be using and with a nice combination of a 32 inch size and 1440p resolution at 170hz it's perfect for today's games and gpus but the problem with the fi 32q is that it's competing up against gigabyte's own m32q a very similar 32 inch 1440p 170hz ips monitor not to mention several other options like the asus pg329q the m32q costs 500 and can be had for as little as 400 us at times while the fi 32q has a price tag of at least 750 dollars and for that massive increase in price gigabyte has delivered no fundamental difference in performance in areas like response times overall motion clarity color quality brightness contrast ratio and uniformity the fi 32q is essentially the same as the m32q at best i could describe it as slightly better that's all because both the fy32q and m32q used the same interlux panel with virtually no difference in its implementation same settings same overdrive modes same lack of variable overdrive when that's the case you can expect a very similar end result what gigabyte are attempting to upsell you on is the aorus brand included noise cancellation slight upgrade to the displayport spec and improved design with fancy marketing it might seem that the fi 32q is a lot better i mean surely a higher end more expensive product is far superior right but the reality is that it isn't making the fi 32q a terrible value product with a price tag that's far too high at most a 50 price difference between the m32q and fi 32q is justified anything more is a serious rip-off and at a 300 difference you can tell gigabyte they're dreaming to make matters even more ludicrous gigabyte have priced this monitor above that of the asus rog swift pg329q which if it ever comes back in stock should be priced at seven hundred dollars the pg329q is a much better product offering faster performance variable overdrive support a wider color gamut and semi hdr functionality the odyssey g7 is also in contention here offering an excellent 240hz va experience that far outstrips the fi 32q i'm honestly left wondering why this monitor exists is it just to prey on consumers that don't do any research when buying a monitor there is really no way i'd recommend it to anyone when the m32q exists and honestly the m32 is great value especially if you can grab it for four hundred dollars get the cheaper option it's basically the same in the areas that matter and just forget about the fi 32q anyway that's it for this review of the gigabyte auros fi 32q definitely a disappointing monitor which i never like to see i was expecting a little bit better here but that's life you just sometimes run into these products that are just not worth buying anyway if you're interested in supporting the channel and our monitor testing you can sign up to our patreon and floatplane accounts links to those are in the description below you'll gain access to you know the icc profiles we create for these reviews you can ask us questions about monitors in our discord community there's monthly live streams behind the scenes videos we've also got a merch store if you're interested in getting stuff like this and yeah that's pretty much it thanks for watching i'll catch you in the next one [Music] you

Channel: Hardware Unboxed

Views: 84,483

Keywords: hardware unboxed

Id: WHpNPRYNpcc

Length: 17min 21sec (1041 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 23 2021