Gigabyte M32Q Review, Great Value Monitor for 32-inch 1440p Gaming

[Music] welcome back to hardware unboxed it's monitor review day and today we are checking out the gigabyte m32q which follows on from the highly popular gigabyte m 27q we checked out last year what made the m27q such an appealing monitor was its excellent performance at a relatively affordable price point and the m32q is set to do practically the same thing just add a larger 32 inch panel size the m32q uses a 1440p ips panel with a maximum refresh rate of 170 hertz along with wide color gamut support one millisecond rated response times and of course variable refresh rate support branded as amd freesync premium it also includes a kvm switch just like with the m27q which allows you to control multiple devices with just one keyboard and mouse hooked up to the monitor a handy feature if that's something you require and it definitely adds value to the monitor another excellent aspect to the m32q is that it does not use a bgr subpixel layout this was a common complaint people had with the m27q its use of a non-standard bgr layout instead of the regular rgb used for the majority of displays can cause blurry text and artifacts in some situations the m32q is just a regular rgb panel so this is not something that you have to worry about at all in terms of pricing this monitor comes in at 500 us which is relatively cheap for what it's offering i say relatively cheap because obviously in raw dollar value 500 dollars in is in the mid-range for monitor pricing but compared to other displays of a similar type it is more affordable it's 200 dollars cheaper than the asus pg329q we reviewed on the channel earlier but it is more expensive than today's 32-inch va offerings which makes sense given ips is a more premium technology the design gigabyte have opted for is unsurprisingly pretty similar to the m27q just scaled up to accommodate the larger 32-inch panel this means gigabyte are continuing to use their rather large stand base which does occupy quite a bit of space on your desk but the benefit here is it provides a stable platform with little wobble height adjustability is included here along with swivel and tilt support so the ergonomic capabilities are decent just don't expect to use the monitor in a portrait orientation without buying a separate phaser mount visually the m27q design is pretty good the rear is a simple affair but it doesn't get distracted with unnecessary gamer style or rgb leds i also think it looks pretty good from the front reasonably slim bezels and overall the build quality is good although the majority of the outer materials are just basic black plastic on the rear you'll find the monitor's directional toggle and kvm button for controlling the osd features the kvm button is super simple once you set up you just hit that button to switch between your input devices the directional toggle controls everything else and as usual we find a pretty decent array of features including stuff like crosshairs black equalizers all those sorts of things as for inputs two hdmi 2.0 ports and displayport plus a couple of usb ports there are also built-in speakers if you desperately need them moving now into the response time section gigabyte offers five overdrive modes with the m32q which is a nice improvement on the three modes we usually get the off mode is first up and honestly the m32q doesn't perform too badly here with an 8.7 millisecond graded gray average with no overshoot this indicates a good native panel performance but of course we can do better when overdrive is enabled next up we have the picture quality mode this mode is a little over one millisecond faster than overdrive off however there is no increased overshoot which makes it a good candidate if you find overshoot annoying however refresh rate compliance is low as a 7.41 millisecond graded average is not suitable for a true 170hz experience the balance mode is genuinely a balance between speed and overshoot the average response time increases a fair bit to 4.68 milliseconds however the inverse ghosting rate has also increased to 16 percent this means we will occasionally see overshoot but in general it isn't too bad cumulative deviation has also improved by 14 relative to the previous mode indicating that despite the increased overshoot this mode is an improvement on picture quality the speed mode however is not usable in my opinion due to the significant presence of overshoot the average amount of error here is a huge 37 percent which leads to two-thirds of all transitions exhibiting noticeable inverse ghosting this is not a mode that i would consider using gigabyte also includes a smart od mode which seems to just select one of the existing balance speed or picture quality modes depending on the refresh rate and honestly it doesn't make a great selection in some situations at higher refresh rates and lower refresh rates i've seen it use the what appears to be the bounce mode and then in the middle at times it's used the speed mode for things like 100hz gaming which hasn't been a great result so i would just ignore the smart od mode and stick to the standard modes available in the osd controls switching back to the balance mode it's time to assess performance across the refresh range like most ips monitors response time performance remains consistent at lower refresh rates we're getting in that 4.6 to 4.7 millisecond range however as the refresh rate lowers overshoot increases and around the 120 hertz mark it does start to become noticeable with a 30 inverse ghosting rate that increases up to a maximum of 38 at 60 hertz where in my opinion you will clearly see inverse gross trails behind moving objects because most of the overshoot is occurring in falling transitions in this instance the inverse ghost trail is typically a darker trail but it's still noticeable if you want to avoid inverse ghosting then the mode for you is picture quality this mode typically stays around the seven millisecond mark in terms of response times but has virtually no overshoot even down at 60 hertz so you won't see inverse ghosting trails while using this mode the cumulative deviation numbers which give us an idea of the bounce between speed and overshoot indicate the crossover point where the picture quality mode is better than the bounce mode is around the 100hz mark so balance is better above 100hz and picture quality better below 100hz unfortunately this does lead to the m32q 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 most using and in general i'd probably settle on the picture quality mode if i wanted to set and forget a single overdrive setting but it's not ideal compared to other monitors the m32q performs favorably when looking at the best performance offered at the maximum refresh rate the m32q is in the ballpark of the pg329q only with additional overshoot and performs around the mark of most other modern high refresh rate ips panels that have progressed to fast ips technologies over the last couple of years and thanks to better tuned overdrive settings the m32q provides a huge step up over the m27q at 170hz as we no longer have to worry about considerable overshoot average performance measured across the refresh range isn't as strong for the m32q as we do have to drop down one overdrive setting to maintain acceptable performance for variable refresh rate gaming however the m32q is still 30 faster than the m27q in this metric with a similar level of overshoot notably no overshoot and despite a seven millisecond average response time it isn't that far off other monitors with that said the pg329q does pull ahead here as it is able to provide a single overdrive mode experience with better response time numbers which you would expect from a more expensive product cumulative deviations suggest the m32q sits among most other ips monitors in terms of how close the average response curve gets to the ideal instant response time here we are getting 13 better performance than the m27q and quite similar numbers to most other monitors around this mark despite testing the picture quality mode here dark level performance is good and scales with the response time numbers seen in previous charts there is no dark level smearing visible here which would be an issue with a va alternative like the lg 32g k650f which as you can see here is over twice as bad for dark level transitions not only is the m32q a faster monitor in general compared to most mid-range va panels it also doesn't suffer from these problems at 60hz the m32q is a mid-table offering with its seven millisecond response times not luckily with no overshoot again not quite as fast as the pg329q but a decent step better than the m27q and va models with the exception of the excellent samsung odyssey g7 input lag is as expected delivering under one millisecond of processing delay on the monitor's side which leads to total lag below 10 milliseconds the sort of numbers we like to see from modern gaming displays as for power consumption pretty good for a 32-inch monitor at just 30 watts when calibrated to 200 nits which is more efficient than the pg-329q and more in line with a typical 27-inch display backlight strobing is included with the m32q through gigabytes aim stabilizer technology you can use this mode either with or without adaptive sync enabled and both appear to deliver similar results this is the first monitor i've seen that appears to use the same strobing technique whether at a fixed or variable refresh rate and i'm glad gigabyte has worked on supporting this with g-sync or freesync enabled and yes it does work with adaptive sync enabled and does strobe appropriate to a dynamic refresh rate gigabyte provides one of the better backlight strobing plus variable refresh rate implementations that i've seen with fewer artifacts and less blur than elm b sync from asus and lg similar tech we saw with the 27 gp850 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 on monitors with lg nano ips panels indicating that the backlight being used here to achieve a wide gamut features a slow red phosphor the m32q doesn't use an lg panel it's actually an interlux panel but the results for backlight strobing is similar 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 color performance let's get into that next the m32q is a wide gamut monitor with a rated 94 dc ip3 coverage however in my testing the actual coverage of p3 is a little bit lower than that this is due to an incorrect blue primary you can see here that the measured blue dot is offset from the correct position the square at the bottom of this chart and that leads to just 86 coverage in practice i suspect gigabyte have used a different metric to get 94 here like color volume instead of the more strict coverage metric that we use despite this issue with the blue primary the m27q is still a wide gamut monitor it's just not as wide as the widest panels we've tested 63 coverage of rec 2020 is better than standard srgb panels but not as good as panels that hit 95 p3 coverage like those from lg or the newer au optronics models that also have great adobe rgb support factory grayscale calibration is average my unit had a slight cold tone from the factory but adhered to the srgb gamma curve pretty well more closely targeting just a flat 2.2 delta e performance is average in both delta e 2000 and delta e itp in terms of the color results as expected the m32q does not use srgb emulation by default so out of the box there is over saturation present when viewing standard srgb or rec 709 content this isn't the worst result but due to that incorrect blue primary there is some twisting of the blue results in fact when comparing the m32q to other monitors in terms of factory color checker performance the m32q does pretty well it's just still a fair way off accurate as demonstrated by the pg-279 qm results a monitor that does use srgb emulation by default greyscale results in mid-table again pointing to average factory calibration the m32q includes a functional srgb mode which clamps the gamut down to srgb improving saturation and colour checker accuracy substantially and removing any oversaturation issues it also appears to adjust the gamma curve to properly follow sigp gamma which is a nice touch unfortunately in this mode color temperature controls are locked down unnecessarily so it's impossible to correct the white balance and in this mode my unit was still a bit too blue for perfect results from here we can factory calibrate the m32q and get good results for grayscale flattening that cctv average nicely which reduces delta e performance to sub 2.0 levels color results also improve a lot for srgb the only lingering issue being that blue primary which is reduced to maintain accuracy so we don't get a full 100 coverage p3 calibration results are mediocre as we don't have full p3 coverage so in practice this monitor probably isn't the best for p3 work peak brightness isn't amazing but is acceptable 350 nits which should be fine for most viewers although this is lower than the 400 nits the m27q is able to achieve minimum brightness is 62 nits which is on the higher side or lower in this chart as the m32q uses an interlux panel the contrast ratio is decent for an ips monitor coming in at 1100 to 1 when calibrated higher than modern fast ips displays that use lg or au optronics panels like the asus pg329q in fact contrast is nearly 25 percent higher than the asus alternative in our testing surprisingly the contrast ratio is also around the mark of the m27q despite the m27q using a panel from sharp despite this being a good result among ips monitors fundamentally the contrast ratio here is still poor va panels typically deliver well over twice the contrast producing deeper blacks which are better for viewing in dark environments it's unfortunate that most vas pair this high contrast ratio with terrible dark smearing uniformity was average with my m32q sample not too bad across the spread of the display except for a small section in the upper right area ips glow is average as well and as always this can vary a bit from panel to panel due to the good old panel lottery a final word here on hdr the m32q does support hdr inputs and has somehow achieved display hdr400 certification however in practice this is not an hdr monitor due to its low brightness lack of hdr suitable contrast capabilities and slightly too low wide gamut support it should not be advertised or thought of as an hdr monitor given the experience doesn't differ from sdr in any meaningful way overall the gigabyte m32q is quite an impressive monitor this isn't just a larger version of the m27q with the same specifications and performance it's a fundamentally different monitor using a different panel and even offering new features this makes the m32q quite a bit better than its smaller brother in many areas without even factoring in the advantages of a larger panel the two big improvements here are the use of an inolux panel instead of a sharp panel and the inclusion of backlight strobing that works in conjunction with a variable refresh rate the change in panel manufacturer is significant as we no longer get a problematic bgr subpixel layout and performance is improved across the board this larger variant was 30 faster in terms of average response times in our testing which nudges the m32q closer to the highest end ips panels you'll find on the market today in color performance the m32q is a pretty typical ips display with a better than average contrast ratio for an ips but still far behind va panels average factory calibration and a somewhat wide color gamut let down a bit by some blue primary issues it also has a working though limited srgb mode which is good news for those that want a hardware solution to oversaturation there's no real standout here that will make you go wow but like a lot of today's ips monitors the viewing experience is still really good when you look at the improvements being made relative to the m27q it's understandable that the price tag is a lot higher typically a 32 inch variant within a product line will cost about a hundred dollars more than the 27 inch variant but this time the m32q is 180 more than the m27q however like we've been talking about this is a better panel with better performance so that price difference is justified where it wouldn't be if this was just a simple scaled up version of the m27q it also sits in a pretty competitive position compared to the rest of the 32-inch 1440p market and really the 1440p market overall it's 200 cheaper than the asus pg329q and while the pg329q is a better monitor the m32q still offers a lot of performance for those that can't justify a 700 monitor it's also a lot better than today's mid-range va monitors which tend to go for between 300 and 400 dollars at this size the m32q is faster has no dark level smearing isn't curved has better backlight strobing and just generally better color quality that is to say the m32q is positioned well in the mid-range throw in additions like the kvm which we barely talked about in this review and yeah i think gigabyte has done a great job with the m32q and it gets my recommendation if you're after a larger 1440p mid to high refresh rate monitor for gaming anyway that's it for this review of the gigabyte m32q if you're interested in checking out this monitor or any of the other products we've been talking about in this review you'll find links to those in the description below we also have down there links to our patreon floatplane accounts if you want to sign up and support the monitor testing that we do on this channel it is great to get your guys support as we're able to buy monitors for testing improve our testing equipment all that sort of thing thanks to our patreon and floatplane members and you guys will get access to things like the icc profiles we generate for these reviews behind the scenes content discord community all that great stuff thanks for watching and i'll catch you in the next one [Music] you

Channel: Hardware Unboxed

Views: 143,360

Keywords: hardware unboxed

Id: tS7HYqepUZI

Length: 18min 36sec (1116 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 08 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/firefox57endofaddons]

no sRGB mode yet again. (color temperature setting disabled in the mode at least)

time to wait some more.....

that is the 5th 1440p ips 31.5 inch high refresh freesync monitor, that oversaturates all content massively and thus is a broken product.

<waves money at display industry:

can i please pay for an overpriced ancient lcd tech display, that at least isn't broken?

display industry:

NO!

[u/Phantom_Absolute]

I might end up getting this if the 32" 4k 144Hz models are too expensive.

EDIT: screw it, I ordered one. Newegg has a $100 rebate so for $400 total I just went ahead and pulled the trigger. There's no way I'm going to wait and pay $800+ for the 4k monitors.

[u/johnnycab8675309]

I hope we are getting more monitors to market in this size.

[u/CritThincc]

THIS MONITOR IS NOT "BROKEN" ^ IN ANY WAY.

Unless you need one of those ultra high end professional color matching monitors, or if you have $2,500 for a 4K top of the line gaming monitor, the M32Q can be adjusted in so many ways, on such a high quality panel, that you can get everything to look amazing.

[u/LPKKiller]

I still want more 43” monitors to bring down their cost and cheaper 27” 1440p 144hz+ monitors. Honestly the 43” monitors are the way to go if you don’t want the smart TV features and a decent remote. That said you have to program and make your own stuff for channel changing if you still watch regular tv.

[u/Soupy_Jones]

I saw that this was advertised to have HDR support, whenever I turn it on i just get dark saturated burnt looking colors.