The Gigabyte M27Q surprised us in terms of
image quality and its array of features for a 1440p monitor! We are happy to share our findings with all
of you, as some of them are pretty interesting. Hi, I’m Adam, a Tester here at RTINGS.com
where we help you find the best product for your needs. Make sure you subscribe to our channel for
the latest videos or check out our website for the full review! The Gigabyte M27Q utilizes a 1440p 170 Hz
27’’ IPS display. It’s a great gaming monitor, with its low
input lag, outstanding response time, and high refresh rate. It can also be used as a home office monitor
or for media creation thanks to a variety of additional features. These include a Picture-in-Picture/Picture-by-Picture
mode, a USB-C port with DisplayPort Alt Mode, and a KVM switch that lets you control two
devices with your mouse and keyboard. What we’ll be looking at today is the design
of the Monitor and then move onto picture quality. Afterwards, we’ll examine the color gradient
and text clarity along with supported resolutions and gaming performance. We will also touch on some additional features
this monitor has. Finally, we’ll finish by comparing it to
other competing models on the market. If you’d like to skip straight to our test
results, then see the links in the description below. We tested the Gigabyte M27Q 27" gaming monitor,
and it's the only size available. There are many monitors in Gigabyte's non-Aorus
lineup. Please note that this is in fact different
from the G27Q, but we will be comparing them in this video. You can visit our website to see our list
of some of the variants. Starting off with the design. The Gigabyte M27Q resembles the G27Q, a lot. The screen is flat, with a thin body and thin
borders on 3 of its sides. The build quality is good. It’s made completely out of plastic but
remains sturdy. The stand is V Shaped and flat. It can take up some real-estate on your desk,
so do keep this in mind. It doesn’t swivel, and you can’t easily
switch it to Portrait or Landscape. You could, however, unscrew the monitor from
the mount and flip it in order to switch the orientation. The back of the monitor is identical to the
G27Q, minus the KVM Switch. Wall mount type is VESA 100 x 100, but there
is no quick release feature to remove the stand for VESA mounting. Let’s move on to inputs. The input selection here is good, with a DisplayPort
1.2, 2 HDMI 2.0s, 2 USB 3.0s and a USB B Upstream Port. It includes a USB-C Port, as well. Its intended use is for the built in KVM Switch. Let’s check out this KVM Switch, as it’s
a unique and useful feature. It allows you to use one set of mouse and
keyboard, but control 2 devices. This is achieved by plugging your peripherals
into the USB 3.0 ports on the monitor itself, and then connecting your other device via
the USB C port on the backside of the monitor. Clicking the KVM Button allows you to toggle
controls between the 2 devices. The USB-C port also supports DisplayPort Alt
Mode for those whose PCs are compatible with it. You see, we’ve solved the age-old feud between
Apple and Microsoft. Now they can both play nice and get along
via the KVM. It can even support Power Delivery, though
we aren’t sure of the wattage as we did not test for it. The KVM is built right into the monitor. This can be useful for content creators, programmers,
gamers and more! The controls are found at the back of the
monitor. It consists of a single joystick that allows
you to navigate the menus with ease. Here, you can change the usual aspects of
picture quality, and even enable picture-in-picture or picture-by-picture modes. Now we'll move on to the picture quality. We'll be comparing to currently available
monitors but competing models may change as new monitors are released throughout the year. For an updated comparison with new models
as we buy and test them, see the review page on our website which is linked below. Let’s start with the contrast ratio. Contrast ratio is the difference between the
darkest black and the brightest white that a screen can display, and is considered one
of the most important aspects of picture quality. A high contrast ratio will give a deeper looking
image and prevent blacks from looking gray in a dark room. As this is an IPS panel, we expected it to
have mediocre contrast ratios, in this case a 1184:1. This made blacks appear more on the grey side
in dark environments. We measured a slightly higher ratio compared
to the advertised 1000:1, but this can vary between units. If you own this monitor and have measured
its contrast ratio on your own, let us know how yours compares. Unfortunately, the M27Q does not support local
dimming which would otherwise help to produce deeper dark areas. This is normal for most monitors, though. Now on to viewing angles. The M27Q has great viewing angles in both
vertical and horizontal planes. If you’re one to share content with colleagues
or while at home with family and friends, this monitor can be a great option for you. This monitor is also good for content creators
as the colours won’t be shifting at the edges of the display. Another aspect of the viewing experience is
reflection handling. This can matter for those who work or game
in bright areas. Overhead lighting and direct Sunlight can
negatively affect your viewing experience. In the case of the M27Q, it does have a matte
screen which helps with the reflection handling. However, you may notice in this case that
there may be issues with glare due to direct sunlight. Thankfully the screen does get bright enough
to mitigate some of the glare. <Uniformity (Black, Gray or both)>
One area that our M27Q seemed to struggle in is with Black Uniformity. Our unit’s black uniformity was subpar,
but of course this can vary between units. Ours seemed to have a blueish grey tone to
it, with backlight bleed being visible along the top and bottom edges. This is only completely visible during dark
scenes within a dark room. <Peak Brightness> (SDR and HDR)
If you plan on using this monitor in a bright environment, like an office, then it’s important
to have a high peak brightness. In SDR, we noticed great peak brightness on
the M27Q. During our tests, we actually found that our
unit scored higher than the advertised 350 nits. Ours achieved around 423 nits. This again goes back to the monitor performing
well against glare. This can vary though from one unit to the
next. On the flip side, the HDR Peak brightness
was only decent, achieving 443 nits, which is to be expected as it is certified DisplayHDR
400. If you’re planning to game in HDR with this
monitor, it can bring out some of the highlights in your content but don’t expect it to get
much brighter than in SDR. Looking at pre and post color calibration
now, our unit had outstanding color accuracy right out of the box. The minor inaccuracies in color and shades
of grey wouldn’t even be visible to the naked eye. Color temperatures were very close to our
6500K target, with a slight cooler look to it. The gamma does follow the sRGB curve well,
but the dark scenes do appear to be darker than they should. You can find the ICC profile and calibration
settings in the full review on the website, linked in the description below. Do note though, these settings are specific
to our unit, and should not be copied, as calibration does vary between units. Next lets take a look at the colour Gamut
and Volume In SDR, the M27Q covers the entire sRGB color
gamut, with near full coverage Adobe RGB color space. We found this monitor to have one of the highest
Adobe RGB coverage in a monitor we tested to date. This is a huge win for photo editors who choose
to work in that color gamut. In HDR, the color Gamut again has great coverage
of the commonly used DCI P3 color space and does decently well in wider Rec 2020. I’d like to mention that with its 8 bit
and FRC Panel, the M27Q has exceptional gradient handling. It can achieve 10 bit thanks to its FRC. Gradient handling is how finely levels of
color can be displayed like details in shadows or skin tones. Some minor banding in the greys were noted
during testing but shouldn't be noticeable in most content. Lets move on to text clarity and pixels. To start, this monitor has BGR subpixels when
in its native orientation, vs the standard RGB. What this means is that the subpixels are
arranged from left to right as blue green and red. This can cause minor text clarity issues with
software that expects to read the more standard Red-Green-Blue layout. Even still, the text clarity is good. If you wish to hear more about our findings
and our work arounds, stick around as I will go into a bit more detail. If this doesn’t concern you too much, you
can skip this part and jump to Response Time So, it is possible to hedge against the text
blur by properly configuring Windows ClearType to BGR. This solution only works with programs that
use Windows ClearType. Even with these settings, apps that ignore
Windows ClearType, like Google Chrome, will continue to show slightly blurred texts. Another solution is to flip the monitor upside
down and then change the display orientation. What this does is turns the monitor into an
RGB panel. Thankfully, it’s easy to do with the included
stand, and it will fix all issues with text rendering. You might be asking yourselves “who would
use their screen upside down, and does this even work?”. My simple answer is I’m not sure, and yes
it actually does. You might also be asking “won’t it look
weird” and my answer would be, depends who you ask, I guess. This solution comes with a couple of downsides. Firstly, you’ll have an upside down monitor,
the OSD will also be upside down. Secondly, we noticed a drawback in gaming
performance because the input lag increases to about 15.1ms at 170 Hz, vs the 3.2ms we
acquired in its standard orientation. Another thing to note is VRR doesn’t work
properly either. The monitor acts as if it’s in like a pseudo
v-sync mode that can’t be disabled. We noticed there’s no screen tearing in
games even with VRR and v-sync disabled. We aren’t exactly sure what’s going on
here and this behavior isn’t limited to just this monitor. We got similar results with other monitors
and AMD graphics cards, so we suspect is has something to do with the process of flipping
the image upside down that’s causing these issues. If you have any insight on what’s going
on here, please reach out to us, we’d love to get a better understanding of this phenomenon. Overall, flipping the screen upside-down can
work in an office setting, but can adversely affect a gaming experience. If you do have further concerns, you can check
out our article about this on our website, link down below in the description. Looking at the response time at the max 170
Hz refresh rate, we averaged a total response time of 8.4ms, which is superb. Gamers should be very happy to hear this. Its motion handling is pretty remarkable,
even at 60hz, the monitor performed equally well. The recommended Overdrive setting in both
60 Hz and 170 Hz is the Picture Quality Setting, which indicates well tuned response times
throughout the refresh rate range. Lets take a quick look at BFI or Black Frame
Insertion. Monitors and Tvs use BFI to reduce eye tracking
blur in scenes. The M27Q does have the BFI feature, but take
note that it cannot be enabled in VRR. For our gamers, lets go over what you’d
expect for input lag on this monitor. You’re looking at 3.2ms in its native resolution,
not too shabby So overall,...the M27Q is an affordable and
capable monitor for many different uses. Gamers will love it for its low input lag,
high refresh rate, and really good response times. Media creators and home office users can easily
take advantage of the KVM switch, allowing the control of multiple devices at the same
time under one hood. It performed very well in picture quality
and color space especially in Adobe RGB coverage. Gigabyte created a strong product that fills
out it's own niche, but there are a few other monitors to compare to. G27Q
We can’t speak about the M27Q without mentioning the G27Q. These monitors are identical in the way they
look, minus the KVM Switch at the back. The M27Q boasts a 170 Hz refresh rate which
is higher than the 144 Hz found on the G27Q. The M27Q has a much quicker response time
at 60Hz, resulting in minimal motion blur. It also has a great SDR color gamut and color
accuracy, making it a good choice for content creators. The G27Q does not get affected by the BGR
stuff that affected the M27Q as it’s a native RGB subpixel panel. Dell s2721DGF
For those aiming to use this monitor in office or for content creation, the M27Q is a strong
contender. One of the bigger downsides to this monitor
is its ergonomics. When comparing to something like the Dell
s2721DGF which has really good ergonomics, the M27Q seems to fall short. On a positive note, the KVM switch is a nice
addition for those who tend to use multiple devices but wished they can control them with
a single set of keyboard and mouse. Well that’s it folks! So what do you think of the Gigabyte M27Q? Have you bought it? Let us know what you think below. Also, we are currently hiring in our offices
in Montreal for various positions. So, if you want to help people find the best
product for their needs, have a look at the careers page on our website. You can check out all of the measurements
on our website. If you like this video, subscribe to our channel,
or become an insider on the website for access to our latest results first! Thank you for watching and see you next time.
